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IDAHO STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
REFERENCE SERIES
WILLIAM E. BORAH, BOISE ATTORNEY
(Advertiser Column By Judith Austin)
Number 715
1970
[This column was written in November, 1970.] Not very long
ago, Idaho’s newspapers and many of her political leaders paid
tribute to a lady whose life has been longer than this state’s by
twenty years. Mary Borah, whose husband served as a United
States Senator from Idaho during a time of great growth and
change in the state and in the country, celebrated her hundredth
birthday last month. That occasion, and the collection of
informal photographs of William E. Borah that is in the files of
the Idaho State Historical Society, suggest a look at the life
and work of Idaho’s most renowned political figure.
Borah was born in 1865 in Illinois. He spent one year in
college, at the University of Kansas, and then “read law”--
studied and worked with a practicing lawyer, and then took bar
exams. In 1890 he headed west, arriving in Boise at an ideal
time for a young lawyer because statehood had just been granted.
The young man soon became active in Republican politics. It
could be said that his first great success in this field was
becoming part-time secretary to Republican Governor William
McConnell. Two and a half years after he undertook that
“moonlighting,” Borah married the Governor’s pretty daughter
Mary! Borah also began to seek public office, even though his
law practice was growing rapidly. In 1896 he ran for Congress as
a Silver Republican, losing despite the fact that William
Jennings Bryan, presidential candidate on the same ticket,
carried Idaho. In that same year, Borah made his first big
splash as a trial lawyer when he was hired by Cassia County as a
special prosecutor to assist in the trial of Diamondfield Jack
Davis on charges of murdering two sheepherders. The trial was a
lively one, and Borah obtained a conviction although Davis was
later pardoned.
On December 30, 1905, former Governor Frank Steunenberg was