“He can acclimate in Caldwell.” Argos heard my tone of voice and lifted his head from his paws. He had a way of cocking his handsome face, looking so engaged that I often thought he would start to talk. “I hope that young pastor is his own man. We’ll rehearse more for our welcoming concert.” I had to be careful with too much rehearsal, as my choir could get testy coming together as often as I wanted them to.
I nearly used my stage pass and rode to Boise to snatch the couple up, but Pard—the wise negotiator—said that would be a mistake and he was right, of course. “Let the man hear what he’s going to hear up front, and if he takes the position after Barton’s bantering us about”—I was pleased he said “us”—“then we’ll know he was following God’s lead and coming here as he should.” I’d brought the telegram and Argos to Robert’s office. “Let’s get a cup of coffee at the café. Calm you down.”
“Coffee won’t calm me down. Only seeing that young pastor in this town will do that. But I’ll take tea with you. And one of Delia’s croissants.” Food has always been my best medicine; music soothing the wild beast was second best. And I had need of both. We’d rehearsed for that concert and would have a large feast when they finally reached Caldwell.
It took two more days, but the telegram finally arrived saying young Boone and his bride would arrive on the afternoon train.
“It’ll be alright, Dell, it will. You’ve done all you could. It’s out of our hands now.”
Oh, such bustling then! This was the work to keep me from homesickness and lonesomeness. It was the work that I didn’t know I needed to do when riding those dusty stagecoach miles, crafting homes out of deserts, mining towns, flat plains, and mountains, saying no to generous mothers. Our building of little offsprings—Ontario, Mountain Home, Shoshone Falls, New Weizer—held nothing in my mind to that of building that church up. I’m still not sure why it meant so much. But I could say I was no longer suffering from spiritual drift. I knew exactly where I was headed.
Young Boone and his wife slipped into Caldwell on the 5:45 a.m. stage and went immediately to the Pacific Hotel. We learned of this later, knowing that he had likely seen our unpainted, window-boarded-up church without the benefit of our enthusiastic story-telling of its existence.
We first saw our hoped-for pastor when the three arrived at our little cottage in Sunnyside later that morning.
Yes, behind them, coming into our home, was Reverend Barton.
Mr. Boone was not the quavering leaf of a man I had come to expect of a pastor. No, he was over six feet tall with a boxer’s shoulders (it was said he boxed in college). Descended from the famous Daniel Boone, he had a rugged, western look, but when he lifted a violin to play it at our welcoming concert, his eyes softened like a baby’s. It was Annie Boone, married just a week, who was delicate as rice grass that flourished in the desert through its drought-resistant nature.
We did everything right, or so we thought. We told them of the little manse we’d chosen for them to live in and furnished it fully, including an entry hall tree with a mirror, marble-topped bench, and flowered carvings, as fine as any had ever seen.
Barton scoffed.
Pard suggested driving them around Caldwell, which we did. They saw the dam, the bridge across the Boise that Pard’s company had built. He spoke of how the irrigation company had allowed for farming, sheep, and cattle to bring more people west. He noted the advances of telephone lines, telegraph lines, the bustling business district. And of course, the railroad. Barton cleared his throat and mentioned the problems with the canals, including the “lack of oversight by the owner, Mr. Strahorn’s Land Development Company.” The man had an opinion on everything.
The committee met with him next. We served tea in the unfurnished building made festive nonetheless with colorful quilts tacked to the walls and a cross Hester’s husband had carved. They all loved the young couple.
Back at our home, Barton continued his harangue. “You women began an enterprise before having your faith tested by the male elders of a Session and you started this so-called church without benefit of Presbytery direction. Therefore, I have opposed it. It cannot flourish under these circumstances, and it’s why I have recommended to Pastor Boone that he turn aside this ridiculous example of a call.”
“It didn’t actually grow from a group of women,” I said. We were seated in our living room and I’d served a small dessert before Robert would drive them back to the hotel. “It grew from a community’s wish to have a Presbyterian church even without a missionary arriving first. It grew out of our faith.”
“Reverend Barton suggests that your Ladies Aid Society was formed out of your dismissal by another Presbyterian church, for ‘moral lapses,’ he said.” Reverend Boone posed that question.
“What? I never. We never.” Argos stood up and barked, causing my guests to blink. “Why would you say such a thing? That’s—that’s slanderous to suggest that we are anything other than the dedicated Ladies Aid Society that we are.” I lowered my voice.
“Yes,” I said, “some of us listened to an itinerant Presbyterian pastor and objected to his insistence that women must sit on one side while men sat on the other. But that’s hardly a ‘moral lapse.’ The Methodist minister has objected to our efforts, but I think mostly because his daughter and son have chosen us. We have listened to various voices in the Baptist church, but they never had a pastor, so I can’t imagine that they think we’ve had a moral lapse.” I stopped to take a drink of water. My heart pounded, preparing for yet another loss.
“Perhaps he was mistaken,” Annie Boone said. She was a soothing force to my outrage. Argos settled back down and sighed.
“It is true that if I accept this pastorate—or anyone does—that it will be the only Presbyterian church in the history of the church to be formed by women.”
“Is that such a terrible distinction?” I hadn’t ever thought of it that way before.
“I note it for the record.” Boone had a baritone voice, deep and rich, with kind brown eyes and a workman’s hands.
I liked him very much. Everyone on the committee liked him and Annie; all the men felt he’d be a grand asset to Caldwell and surrounding areas where he’d also be asked to serve as an itinerant at times. I was certain he was our man so was incredibly disappointed by his next words.
“I—I must tell you, Mrs. Strahorn.”
“Call me Dell, please.”
“Dell. Mrs. Strahorn.” He took a deep breath. “I do not feel I have the courage nor will that I see in you pioneering women to undertake this cause. And it will take such effort to build resources to finish and sustain the church building, let alone form a congregation.” Annie smoothed her skirts over her slender knees. She didn’t look at us. “And it is of our opinion that this is not the place for us now. We’ve asked the Lord to make the way clear for us and God has not done so.”
Reverend Barton sighed deeply, a satisfactory grin upon his face.
You could have knocked me over with a fragile seed of rice grass. Our railroad pass to disappear to somewhere far away looked ever more inviting. But I could not run from this grave disappointment.
“Not made the way clear for you? But he’s done so for us.”
“I believe that. I truly do. And I find no fault with the efforts of women moving the faith forward, whether for commercial enterprise to help the community or to save men’s and women’s souls. It’s my lack that makes this decision.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure I’m up to the cause.”
For a moment I had a flash of understanding why some hardworking men and women find fault with those educated men who, like Boone, held advanced degrees in theology and botany but who had never lifted a board to build a thing.
Robert reached for my hand, patted it. I was never more grateful that he understood the great pain this loss pressed against my heart. Even greater than those twins no longer weighing in my arms.
But an inner voice pushed me past my grief, and I found words I hadn’t
rehearsed. This Boone was the perfect man for our Caldwell. I felt it to my bones. He would expand our minds as well as our church. As we’d interviewed him, he found no dissonance between Darwin and Deuteronomy, didn’t object to the advancement of women in the faith. Annie Boone already expressed interest in the Chautauqua courses to deepen our education. They had to be the right people.
“If that is your choice, Reverend Boone,” I said at last, “then I will simply state that the work we have done thus far stops here. We will have that building up for sale in the morning. It will be a sheep-shearing shed or perhaps a saloon, though windows will discourage that latter enterprise. We’ll return the money raised upon the sale and all the twenty-five-cent meals we’ve served, the quilts we’ve pieced, the reduced freight rates we negotiated with the railroad, all that will be for naught. It is ended with your no.” Then I added, this time with tears in my eyes, though they were of frustration as much as sorrow, “If you have not the moral courage to take up what a few women without missionary help have put together thus far, then we will surrender to Reverend Barton, who has ever discouraged this enterprise.” I nodded to the old pastor, conceding his win.
In truth, I suppose I wanted to give Boone a cause. Men need a cause for something and not just against. This was the strength of our argument that Reverend Barton could not compete with.
The spirit moved in that room. Quiet became a note before the symphony began. The swish-swish of the windmill filled the silence. A breeze drifted jasmine through the window. Then he glanced at his new wife, who nodded ever so slightly. Boone reached for my hand, putting both of his over mine, and said, “Mrs. Strahorn, I will remain and take up this work.”
“You . . . you will?”
“But—but—” Barton sputtered.
“I will. We will. I can see the way be clear.”
It turns out, Reverend Boone was his own man. But it also turns out we women had done a good thing in bringing a community along with us to have a church. We had not done it for our own aggrandizement but because we’d felt called to pursue a cause that truly mattered. How I’d needed that work and would always remember that moment as both the proudest and most humbling of my life.
There was still more work ahead, of course. To raise money to finish the building. Form an official congregation which, of course, did not have any women elders. But by February of 1888, Reverend Barton of Boise was named a founding elder—yes, the upsetting reverend was brought on to keep us from any moral lapse, I suppose, or to keep one’s enemies close. Robert Henderson, and George Little were ordained as elders as well with Robert and George Little as trustees for the First Presbyterian Church of Caldwell. To them we added charter members: Mrs. Steunneberg, Mrs. Mattie Meacham, George Little, Flora Little, Robert Henderson (who ran the ferry across the Snake), Hester and Peter Brown, and Annie J. Boone. The charter members and trustees met in the Baptist church on Chicago Street for the official votes and registrations. Reverend Boone preached his first sermon in the Baptists’ building—to a full house. They’d finish our church building in due time. I did not put my name in for consideration of a charter member. I could have. But by then, I knew: we’d not be long in Caldwell.
From Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage, vol. 2, by Carrie Adell Strahorn (page 162), from a letter to her mother
I do not think you will wonder any more why I do not get lonesome and homesick myself with three such very good reasons: first of all, my good husband; second, work without ceasing; and third, the annual pass in my pocket that will take me away whenever I want to go.
29
Lingering on the Dark Side
Robert has not shared all with me: complaints about maintenance of the canals, the lack of capital for the Hailey resort, cattle sales not going as well as before and his over-extension of those things that can make a man look prosperous while he sheds money like oaks their leaves in the fall.
February 1, 1888
Pard, while excellent at building things up, was not grand at keeping things going—maintenance, I called it; and I suppose I discovered that about myself as well. For example, the College of Idaho was only an idea when we left Caldwell, one that Reverend Boone took hold of after a few years while building up the Presbyterian congregation. But Boone soon became the president of that institution and carried it forth for all these many years since. We, however, were leaving our investments in Caldwell behind.
“It’s business.” Pard snapped the newspaper he read. “The railroads have overbuilt, banks overlent. We’re overextended.” He put the paper down. “That’s why we’re leaving. We’re broke, Dell. That’s the truth of it.”
“Broke?” It was not long after Boone had preached his first sermon. We were at home, Argos lying at my feet. I knitted, the yarn itchy that day. “How can we be broke?”
“After we sell everything, we’ll meet our debts, but we’ll have to start over. It’s business.”
Pard’s big ideas, his promotions, all his grandstanding, days and nights on the road, gaining investors, and now we were penniless? I lay awake that night feeling humiliated and embarrassed too that Pard didn’t seem to have regrets. Could the financial fortunes of people not be related to choices made but only to the vagaries of markets?
It was beyond me. I didn’t know what I’d say to our friends. Maybe they were in the same boat.
We came back for the dedication of that little church in 1889, a glorious day and one where I felt that for all the work I’d put into taking an idea and making it real, I understood I no longer belonged to it. It was a child of mine that I had to let go. I looked for the Buntings that day but didn’t see a one of them and learned that they’d moved on to different climes too. Those twins . . . how I missed them.
True pioneering requires staying through the hard times, not just flourishing through the joy of new beginnings. It’s thriving during the muddle in the middle that marks a strong character. And we had stepped away.
Pard sold the canal company to others more adept at maintaining the waterways and the roads and bridges that crossed them. He took a loss, as cities and counties had little tax money with which to buy up public workings when the national economy slowed. That was the word they used, slowed. Private buyers urged a harder bargain. Pard dissolved the partnership of the Oregon Land Development Company, which at the time I thought was because he was tired of the effort of town building but later learned it was because we needed the money. Doing anything solely for money has its dark side.
We headed to Hailey first, where at the behest of the railroad, it was suggested we develop the area’s hot springs into a resort. I never did find out if Pard suggested the idea or if Jay Gould, head of the Union Pacific, thought it a grand idea. But Pard formed another partnership to do it.
We kept the shorthorn herd at Hailey and sold bulls and had breeding fees and lived the summer in our little Hailey house. At least I had a horse close by to ride. We left before the snows fell, spending happy months at my parents’ home, never mentioning our financial affairs.
The next summer, we built up a grand Hot Springs Resort outside of Hailey that was a huge success. Robert’s health improved from use of the hot springs too. I’d had a fair amount of fun as we bought all the furnishings in Chicago for the new hotel (with the railroad’s money), and I had the joy of creating designs and using paint and wallpaper to form a festive retreat. But it wasn’t long before Pard dissolved that company too, and I learned that our indebtedness had increased. Then the hotel burned down.
To make ends meet, Pard took on a huge writing task for money, from the railroad, creating six one-hundred-page pamphlets on Oregon, Washington, Idaho Territory, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. They were all due in ninety days. I told him it was a crazy contract, which was when he reminded me of how very desperate we were for money.
“But the sale from the canal company, the Caldwell house, from the cattle, from dissolving the Hailey partnership. I . . . I don’t understand—”
&nb
sp; “Putting it into pretty words won’t change the fact, Dell.” We were staying at a small hotel down the street from the Brown Palace in Denver, compliments of the railroad, while Pard worked on this writing project. “We invested our own money and it didn’t always have the return I hoped for.”
“I should sell my little real estate at Crested Butte.”
He snorted. “A real estate company has moved onto your property like it’s theirs. They’re squatting and they don’t want to buy it. Crested Butte isn’t exactly booming.”
“You’ve been in touch with them? You offered to sell it without talking to me about it?”
He looked like a lost sheep. Argos came over to him and put his head on Robert’s thigh.
“Well. I won’t pay the taxes anymore then. Let those squatters.”
I was too tired and chagrined and could see Robert’s dismay about the entire situation so chose not to get into an argument with him about my being blocked out of my own transactions. I was angry with myself that I hadn’t engaged more in our financial affairs. I’d let him who was wiser do that, but I was beginning to see there were problems in that kind of arrangement.
“Then I guess the writing project is our saving grace,” I said cheerily. That’s what I’m known for, being cheery in times of trial. Looking back, I wonder if the railroad had taken pity on us for all Pard’s years of service and that was why they gave him the contract for the six books.
Robert had all the materials to write the pamphlets, most of it in his head. I couldn’t help much, just edit as he finished sections. While he wrote, I submitted a few stories to newspapers back east as “Emerald Green” (in honor of my maiden name) that were light and funny. My mother kept all my letters and I got a few back from her and used them to trigger memories I thought others might enjoy reading about. It was the only way I could see to contribute except to sell some of the jewelry—which I did, quietly in Denver without Robert having to know.