Evan E. Filby's Blog: South Fork and More, page 46

Dr. Edward E. Maxey and Research on Spotted Fever [otd 8/21]

Dr. Maxey. H. T. French photo.Prominent Boise physician Edward E. Maxey, M.D, was born August 21, 1867, in Irvington, Illinois, about sixty miles east of St. Louis, Missouri. His father, also a physician, served in the Civil War and then moved the family to Caldwell, Idaho in 1887.

In 1891, Edward graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago, and followed up with post-graduate work.

After his studies, he returned to Caldwell to join his father’s practice. For some reason, h...

Cassia County Attorney and Idaho Chief Justice T. Bailey Lee [otd 8/10]

Thomas Bailey Lee, Chief Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, was born about twenty miles southwest of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on August 10, 1873. He attended law school after graduating from the University of North Carolina but chose not to practice at that time. Instead, he found a position as a prep school Latin teacher in Asheville. In 1898, he took up the practice of law in Butte, Montana.
Burley, ca 1918. J. H. Hawley photo.
In 1905, Lee moved to the new town of Burley [blog, July 1...

Gold Prospectors Found Elk City Deep in the Idaho Mountains [otd 08/06]

On August 6, 1861, a band of miners founded the mining town of Elk City, Idaho, about 35 miles east of the present town of Grangeville. Prospectors had first entered the area in the latter part of May. A large party left the Orofino area earlier in the month. Somewhat less than half penetrated the region, having ignored protests from a Nez Perce Indian chief because they had intruded onto reservation land.
Riffle Box for Placer Mining. Library of Congress.
They found gold near the confluence of...

Second Idaho Regiment Brought into Federal Service for World War I [otd 8/05]

On August 5, 1917, the War Department drafted the Second Idaho Regiment (National Guard) into the U.S. Army for duty in World War I, part of perhaps 300,000 guardsmen taken into Federal service at that time.

A year earlier, the government had directed the state to mobilize the Second Idaho to patrol the Mexican border [blog, June 18]. Under that call-up, the troops could not be sent outside the country. The troops had been demobilized when that duty was over.
Idaho Guard troops headed for trai...

Shoemaker, Contractor, and Probate Judge Thomas A. Johnston [otd 07/19]

Versatile pioneer and Probate Judge Thomas A. Johnston was born July 19, 1848 in Ontario, Canada. At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed to a shoemaker. Around 1868, he crossed over into the U. S. to work in a shoe store in northern New York. He was then briefly attracted to the oil boom in western Pennsylvania, but moved on to Nebraska in the summer of 1869.
Thomas A. Johnston. [French]
Besides operating a shoe shop, he tried his hand at farming near a small town about 23 miles northeast of...

General Edward McConville: Civil War Veteran, Indian Fighter, and Philippines Casualty [otd 06/25]

General McConville.
Illustrated History.General Edward McConville was born June 25, 1846 in Jefferson County, New York, about seventy miles north of Syracuse. Histories of the day noted that he came from a "martial family," whose members saw action in the Battle of Hastings in England, and later in the American Civil war. Moreover, a cousin died in the Spanish-American War during “the glorious assault on San Juan hill."

Edward himself enlisted for the Civil War as an under-age private in the 1...

Weiser and Boise Physician Joseph R. Numbers, M.D. [otd 05/30]

Weiser mayor and southwest Idaho physician Joseph Reno Numbers was born May 30, 1864 on a farm near Lexington, Ohio, about 50 miles northeast of Columbus. Besides the common schools, Numbers attended prep school at the Ohio Central College (he would have been a classmate of future President Warren G. Harding). He then attended the Eclectic Medical Institute in Cincinnati, and graduated with his M.D. in 1885.  [See blog, February 12, for a discussion of Eclectic Medicine.]
Dr. Joseph R. Nu...

State Senator, Stockman, Mayor, and Special Agent George A. Day [otd 05/23]

State Senator George Addison Day was born May 23, 1867 in Draper, Utah, about sixteen miles south of Salt Lake City. After an early education in the “common schools,” he spent 1886 to 1889 at the Brigham Young Academy. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, he was then sent to open the Stake Academy of Cassia County, Idaho. They began in a log cabin, but finer buildings were built as the enrollment grew.
Stake Academy Building. Vintage Postcard.
Day settled in Oakley an...

Historic True Crime

For those of you who enjoy both history and "true crime" stories, check out my newly-revised post on the South Fork Revue: Murder on the Olympic Peninsula.

This is one of the cases handled by pioneer criminologist Luke S. May in 1922. As mentioned on the other blog, I could not include all of his cases in my book about him ... so I plan to post some of those "extra" online.

Idaho Woolgrower, Businessman, and Legislator Fred W. Gooding [otd 05/08]

Fred Gooding. H. T. French photo.On May 8, 1856, woolgrower and state legislator Fred W. Gooding was born in Devonshire, England. Fred began work in a factory there at the age of eight, laboring in the morning and attending school in the afternoon.

The family emigrated to the U.S. in 1867 and settled in Michigan. As a young man, Fred worked on a farm in California before returning to the Midwest. There, he took business classes at what later became Valparaiso University in Indiana.

In 1882, he...