On the back it reads "Mr. & Mrs. McFarland and Badger" (unknown handwriting) and beneath that, "Friends of Celestia Carlson" (in Bill's handwriting). -- Not much to go on.Listed in the 1900 census, Boise County, Horseshoe Bend Precinct, William (b. 1856, occupation farmer) and Rebecca McFarland (b. 1859) with four children. By the time of the 1910 census, Rebecca McFarland was a widow living in Boise and keeping a rooming house.
Nellie Ireton Mills. All Along the River/Territorial and Pioneer Days on the Payette. Privately printed for Payette Radio Limited, 1963:
p. 213 - " Billy McFarland, a nephew of A.J. of Falk's Store, filed on a homestead and brought his bride, Rebecca J. Bivens, daughter of D.M. Bivens, the first settler in the Lower Payette Valley, to live on his little farm by the river."
(GLO records place his homestead in Sec. 32, T7N, R2E,BM, north of the river, approx. four miles west of Horseshoe Bend. Rebecca homesteaded in the SW 1/4 Sec. 35, T8N,3W,BM, NE of Horseshoe Bend, north of Porter Creek, south of Brainard Crk., about a mile west of the divide between the Payette and Boise River drainages, described as "mountainous" and "pine and fir" on the
glo surveys, w. of Hawley Mtn.)
p. 259 - "Among well-remembered loggers or "river hogs" were Jim Wardwell and his son, Park; Joe, Charley, and Bud Reed; Ed Allan, Ed Stanley, George Boon, who had a way with oxen; William McMaster, Sadie (L.G.) Say, Jim Dempsey, Pete Rooney, Paddy Robison, Billy McFarland and Andrew McPherson."
William E. McFarland, b. 1856, d. 1909, buried in Morris Hill Cemetery; next to him, Rebecca Jane Bivens McFarland, b. 15 Sept. 1859, Kansas, d. 16 Jan 1933, Boise.
Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. - Thomas Jefferson
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