Eunice Boeve

The Orphan Trains

An influx of poor immigrants arriving in New York between 1840 and 1869, all hoping for a better life, found jobs and housing scarce in this overcrowded port city. Often unable to provide for their children, they either brought them to orphanages or abandoned them. One estimate gives the number of homeless children (more…)

Lewis and Clark reached the Weippe Prairie of central Idaho in Nez Perce country in September of 1805 where they would very likely have been killed if not for one Nez Perce woman, who, having lived among the whites, pleaded for their lives. The woman was Wet-khoo-weis which in Nez Perce means “returned from a (more…)

My husband’s paternal grandmother arrived in America from Holland with her parents, siblings, grandparents, and other relatives when she was 4 years old on the ship pictured at the side, the SS Zaandam.
The immigration point in this year of 1883 was Castle Garden which operated as a processing point for immigrants arriving (more…)

During the Civil War it became evident that quill pens and pokeberry juice ink, the writing instruments of the day, were impractical for field use. The Army’s need for maps, written orders, and other messages with desk and chair setting miles away in barracks, tents, or officers quarters, created a demand for the (more…)

Wanted Ranch Work: Will Do Anything But Milk Cows
The above ad in the "60 years past" column of the newspaper from my old hometown of Libby, Montana brought a smile to my face and the image of an old cowboy to my mind. For the old time cowboy had an aversion to milking cows, (more…)

That when England, along with France, declared War on Germany the country prepared for the worst. In the London zoo, all the poisonous snakes were killed for fear Nazi bombs would shatter their cages and set them free. P. 57-58 True Compass by Edward M. Kennedy

That the correct name for Canadian geese is (more…)

Percy Shelley and Mary, his bride-to-be, were vacationing in Switzerland the summer of 1816. The weather was cold and wet and Mary, her intended, and friends passed the time writing ghost stories. Mary’s story, Frankenstein, was penned that summer and published in 1818.

Volcanic eruptions in the East Indies had disrupted the weather pattern throughout (more…)

Early Day Hunting Stories

In Phillips County, Kansas where I live, a newspaper reported that on a July day in 1875 a herd of 30 buffalo was sighted. Ten men hunted them down and killed all but the six or seven that managed to escape by swimming the Solomon River. This was the last herd of (more…)

Ron and I spend our summers on Angel Island on Bull Lake near Troy, Montana. One of the mountains rising to the west of the lake has a jagged rock face bare of trees. This mountain is called Bad Medicine. According to legend, many years ago a band of traveling Kootenai Indians were camped (more…)

While our son and his children were here visiting us in Montana, we drove over to Cocolalla, Idaho to visit the “Wolf People.” They have a small store by the side of the road where they sell shirts, pictures, videos and other items featuring the wolf and other animals native to the region. Out back of the store is a large enclosure where visitors can interact with wolf puppies. An adult wolf or two, not necessarily the parents, for wolves it seems all share in caring for their young ones, are in a connected enclosure and watch anxiously as humans play with the puppies. The “Wolf People” also have an extensive acreage where they raise wolves in their natural habitat. These people have lived with an around wolves since 1987. A blurb on their advertising folder reads: “Wolves are fun, intelligent, beautiful, and yes, challenging animals.” When our granddaughter, Ally, pictured on the left, was about eight, we visited the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone where a wolf pack lives in a semi-natural setting. One of the wolves spied Ally and watched her all the time we were there. We asked a Ranger about the wolf’s interest in our granddaughter, but she could not give us a satisfactory answer. Anyone have any ideas? My best guess is that it is a descendant of the wolf from the Little Red Ridinghood story.


I just finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. It’s about three women who live in Mississippi in the 1960s. Two of the women are black maids, the third, a white girl just out of college and just now realizing the vast gulf that separated the white and black world and the overwhelming (more…)