Evan E. Filby's Blog: South Fork and More, page 3

Mine Owner and State Senator Michael Carey [otd 12/12]

Idaho state Senator Michael Carey was born December 12, 1844 in Ireland. The family emigrated to the U.S. in 1850, settling in Keweenaw County, on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The area was known for its extensive copper deposits, and Carey started work in the regional mines as a teenager. He relocated to California gold country when he was twenty years old.
Early Silver City. Directory of Owyhee County.
In 1870, Michael moved to Silver City, Idaho, where he managed area mines for the nex...

Idaho State University President Miles Reed [otd 11/26]

President Reed.
Idaho State University photo.Miles F. Reed, president of the Academy of Idaho, precursor to Idaho State University, was born November 26, 1872 about 20 miles south of Dubuque, Iowa. Reed’s parents moved to Idaho in 1889 and he attended high school at an academy in Grangeville.

After his graduation in 1892, Reed taught in Idaho’s rural schools for a time. From 1891 to 1897, Miles also served in the Idaho National Guard, rising from a Private to the rank of First Lieutenant...

Actress Marjorie Reynolds: From Silent Films to Made-For-TV

Long-time movie and TV star Marjorie (Goodspeed) Reynolds was born August 12, 1917 in Buhl, Idaho. Her parents were Harry W. and Grace Goodspeed, both from Maine. Her father received his M.D. degree from the Medical School of Maine (Bowdoin College) in 1897. Dr. Goodspeed practiced in Maine, New York City, and Chicago before settling in Buhl around 1909. 

Marjorie Reynolds.
Publicity Headshot.

In 1922, the family moved to Los Angeles. Later, studio publicists offered some fanciful stories about ho...

Idaho Physician-Surgeon Dr. A. Ayer Higgs … Camas Prairie, Gooding, and Boise [otd 08/04]

Dr. Alexander Ayer Higgs was born August 4, 1870 in Owensboro, Kentucky, about eighty miles southwest of Louisville. The Higgs family had been early pioneers in the colonies, arriving around 1650 from Gloucester, England. They settled in Maryland, with descendants proceeding to North Carolina and then, around 1850, to Kentucky. Ayer’s grandfather was a physician, as were several other paternal forebears.  DR. Ayer Higgs. [Hawley]


Thus, in early 1894, Higgs enrolled at the Eclectic Medical Institut...

Coeur d���Alene and Other Indian Reservations Opened to Homesteading [otd 05/22]

President Taft. Library of Congress.On May 22, 1909, President William Howard Taft issued a proclamation that opened "unreserved" agricultural, grazing, and timber lands on the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation to white settlement under the homestead laws. The order also opened lands on the Flathead Reservation in Montana and the Spokane in Washington.

The Coeur d'Alene Indians (variously, ���pointed hearts��� or ���hearts of awls���) were so named by early French-Canadian fur trappers. Pur...

Boise Founder, Idaho Legislator, and Rancher Henry��Riggs [otd 05/14]

Henry Chiles Riggs, one of the founders of Boise City, was born May 14, 1826 in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, about thirty miles due east of Lexington. At the age of twenty, he joined the First Missouri Mounted Volunteers and saw action during the Mexican War.
H. C. Riggs. J. H. Hawley photo.
In 1850, Riggs traveled by wagon train to California, where he operated a hotel. He returned to Missouri to get married in 1852, then brought his bride back to California two years later. From there, they m...

Boise Developer and Saloon Owner Madison Smith [otd 03/15]

Madison Smith. H. T. French photoBoise pioneer Madison C. Smith was born March 15, 1839 in Richmond, Missouri, about 35 miles northeast of Kansas City. The family moved West in 1851, crossing Idaho in a wagon train. Local Indian unrest was rising at that time, but the party had no trouble. They settled in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Unfortunately, Indians killed Madison’s father in 1856, so he had to work the family ranch until his mother remarried.

Madison was out on his own by 1860, and ha...

Fire at State Mental Hospital in Blackfoot, Joe Glidden Patents Barbed Wire [otd 11/24]

Early on November 24, 1889, a fire destroyed the state-run mental hospital located in Blackfoot, Idaho. The sanitarium, as it was then called, housed 47 male and 20 female patients at the time. Early accounts said 7 patients (5 men and 2 women) were missing afterwards, with two bodies found in the ruins. However, Hawley’s later History suggests that no one was killed in the fire.

South Idaho Sanitarium, now Idaho State Hospital South.
J. H. Hawley photo. Located a half mile or so north of Blackfo...

Jailbreak and Recapture in Murray [otd 11/17]

On November 17, 1890, the jailer for the Murray, Idaho jail, a man named Ives, brought a carrier loaded with evening meals into the jailhouse. The load was no doubt somewhat awkward since he had rations for all six inmates. Prisoner Nicholas Tully – being held for assault with intent to kill, but considered a “trustee” – offered his help.

Murray, Idaho ca. 1907.
Central Washington University Archives.When Ives entered the cell block, Tully and another prisoner jumped him. After a brief struggle, ...

Stockman, Banker, Merchant, and Legislator Thomas Stanford [otd 9/30]

Thomas Stanford.
H. T. French photo.
Idaho stockman, developer, and legislator Thomas Charles Stanford was born September 30, 1865, in Logan, Utah. The family moved to Salt Lake City four years later, and by 1880, Thomas was working in a grocery store there. Later, he attended Brigham Young Academy (now University). In about 1884, he sought employment near Albion, Idaho, and then along the Little Wood River.

The year before, his brother Cyrus had taken up a homestead in the Little Wood valley. Whe...