Bohn, Joseph, House
355 S. 200 West, Beaver, UTThe original black rock cottage was probably built for Joseph Bohn by Thomas Frazer sometime c. 1872, though Mr. Bohn lived across the street and to the north in an adobe house that is still extant. Bohn sold the property to David Levi in 1876, and Levi's second wife in polygamy - Christina Gillis Levi- lived there part-time and raised her family. Circa 1885, Christina and David had the pink rock section of the house built.
Jane Gillies, Christina's mother, also lived in the home, apparently taking care of it when Christina was residing and working at her farm just west of Beaver(there was also a house on this farm). In her book, Butch Cassidy, My Brother, Lula Parker Betenson (Butch's sister) states that her brother was born in Beaver, in 1866, at the home of his maternal grandmother, Jane Gillies. If Butch was born on this property, as many Beaver residents believe he was, it must have been in an early log or adobe cabin that is no longer extant. The earliest possible date of construction for the black rock section (original) would be 1869 when Thomas Frazer first arrived in Beaver According to Butch Cassidy's sister, he was born in 1866, thus pre-dating the earliest possible date for the existing stone house by three years.
The fact that the property was owned by Joseph Bohn until 1876 does not automatically rule out the possibility of the Gillies or Levi family living there earlier. Joseph Bohn lived across the street in an early adobe home and it was not uncommon in Beaver for someone other than the legal owner to be living on a piece of property especially if they were related to the owner in some way.
In conclusion, this author has researched three other homes that were thought by some to be the birthplace of Butch Cassidy. None of those three were likely candidates once even a superficial amount of research was done. This property though probably not this house, has encouraging abstracts, but all in all the documentable facts still remain too sketchy at this time for any definitive conclusions.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.