Julia and Aaron Conner homesteaded in the Bitterroot Valley in 1882, where they prospered and raised six children. Aaron was elected judge at Darby in 1886 and served as Speaker of the House in the Montana legislature in 1900 and 1903. After he died in an accident in 1905, the community of Conner was named in his memory. Julia moved to Missoula so her youngest daughter could attend high school and her son the university, and by 1909 she was the first owner of this newly built home, living there with her two children and several boarders. The side-gabled Craftsman style cottage shares similarities with the Reed residence next door, which Norwegian carpenters Andrew and Theodore Reed built along with dozens of other neighborhood homes, and they likely built this home as well. The neighboring houses both have dominant front-facing dormers and horizontal clapboard cladding, but they are not identical, and this house emphasizes the Craftsman style with decorative triangular braces in the gables and wide, overhanging, open eaves with exposed rafters.