POLLY BEMIS was born as Lalu Nathoy in China in 1853 and was sold into slavery by her father when she was still a child so the family could survive.  As a teenager, she was smuggled into the United States on a ship and sold as a slave in San Francisco.  She ended up, happy and free, in Warren, Idaho.  After many hardships she bought herself out of slavery in 1894.  She married Charlie Bemis, a gambler and saloon keeper after nursing him back to health from a serious gun-shot wound in the face.  He bought an acreage along the Salmon River; they remained there for the rest of their lives.

MAUDE LARGENT COSHO had a wide variety of activities that made her a powerful Idaho State legislative leader as well as State Board of Education member and University of Idaho regent. During World War II, she served in the Civil Air Patrol and Women's Army Corps. Owner of Boise's Hotel Bristol, she gained recognition as Boise City treasurer, where she exposed over $100,000 of City Clerk Angela Hopper's thefts.

EVA HUNT DOCKERY, profiteering from her experience as Idaho Daily Statesman's society editor (1907-1937), belonged to a large number of Boise social organizations. In addition, she was a leader in creating an Idaho Congress of Mothers.

MARIE DORION, like SACAJAWEA, was an Indian wife of an early French trapper. In 1812, she had an unbelievably terrible Idaho misadventure when an Indian attack wiped out an entire trapping operation near later Hudson's Bay Company Fort Boise and left her stranded that winter with her two infant children. She managed to survive and to take the children to a western Columbia River meeting with Donald MacKenzie.

ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY, after a decade of traveling from Oregon to Idaho to promote women's suffrage, she was elected Vice President of the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1884. Beginning her career as an Idaho rancher in 1886 near Arco, she had an important impact upon the state as well as national women's rights.  She was the founder and publisher of the weekly women's rights paper "New Northwest," and traveled throughout Oregon, Washington and Idaho giving lectures.

CORNELIA HART FARRER, a native of Boise (1897), became a major developer of Idaho art history, commencing with Boise's Art Museum. Her significant achievements in historic preservation contribute still more to her Idaho importance.

PERMEAL J. FRENCH, during her long career (1869-1954), had many notable achievements. After teaching in Silver City and Hailey, she won election as State Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1898 as a Populist and Democrat. She prepared Idaho's public education code of 1901 and went on to a long term as University of Idaho Dean of Women.

ANNA HANSEN HAYES, one of Idaho's nationally prominent women, from Twin Falls, she graduated from Albion Normal School in 1904. By 1949-50, as National Congress of Parents and Teachers Association president, she went far beyond state and regional activity. As a poet and novelist about frontier life, she contributed significantly to Idaho traditions.

GERTRUDE LINDSAY HAYS, after moving to Soda Springs at age 18 in 1886, became important in many major Idaho women's organizations: Columbian Club President, Parent-Teacher's Association, Young Women's Christian Association, Saturday Fortnightly Club, Tuesday Musicale, and State Federations of Women's Clubs. Her government positions included State Board of Education, University of Idaho regent, and State Council of Defense (during two World Wars).

DR. MINNIE HOWARD, an early (1902) Pocatello physician, founded a Carnegie library in her community, organized major regional art and history programs for that area. She worked to preserve the history of Fort Hall and the Oregon Trail.

MAY ARKWRIGHT HUTTON, an Ohio proponent on mine workers' rights who settled in Wardner in 1883, where she became a wealthy investor during Idaho's Coeur d'Alene labor wars. She became a celebrity after publishing a volume in support of miners.

GRACE JORDAN, a journalism instructor in four different universities, whose 1954 volume Home Below Hell's Canyon became a classic in her six-volume series of significant books. She also gained importance as a leader in forming Idaho's Writers' League and as a publisher of state short stories and poetry. She was the wife of Idaho's United States Senator Len Jordan.

EDITH MILLER KLEIN, a prominent member of Idaho's legislature, handled women's issues effectively during her long public career. Her contributions extended to other governmental programs as well. Because of her influence, Governor Robert E. Smylie founded the Idaho Women's Commission in 1965.

GRACIE BOWERS PFOST, represented Idaho in the United States Congress from 1953-62, noted for her activity on wilderness issues and other matters of consequence to her state.  She was the first congresswoman from Idaho.  Her winning campaign slogan in 1952 was "Tie Your Vote to a Solid Post - Gracie Pfost for Congress."  She was elected as a Democrat for five terms.  She was the driving force behind building a high, multipurpose dam on the Snake River in Hells Canyon.  She lost the fight and Idaho Power Co. ended up putting in three smaller hydroelectric dams.

AGNES JUST REID, a native (1886) of Preston (near Firth), published five volumes of poetry and a book, Letters of Long Ago, that sheds light on the hardships of early life in southeast Idaho. For 45 years, she wrote a very popular column for the local newspaper in Blackfoot. Her writings attracted much attention.

MARY BLACK RIDENBAUGH, a Boise area resident (1857-1926), organized a Council of Mothers and remained involved in a large number of organizations that contributed to her importance. A confederate refugee from Missouri, she was an active Columbian Club founder and University of Idaho regent. She resided in one of Boise's most elaborate mansions.

MARGARET ROBERTS, a Boise social leader who came from Philadelphia, became Idaho's most prominent proponent of national women's suffrage. In 1922 she started a free public kindergarten, and later became Idaho's State Historical Society administrator. She also developed an agency that emerged as Idaho's state library.

SACAJAWEA, a member of Idaho's Lemhi Shoshoni band, kidnapped as a child, and carried by her captors to present-day North Dakota, she became the teenaged wife of French fur-trapper, Touissant Charboneau, a guide for Lewis and Clark. Sacajawea's skills as an interpreter, keen memory, and native instincts helped her to guide the explorers back to the land of their birth where her brother, then chief of his band, sold horses and furnished a guide to the explorers, thereby saving the expedition from almost certain failure. Based on promises made to her, Sacajawea acted in good faith believing that because of the help rendered the expedition the "Great White Father" would bless her and her people. According to most historians, Sacajawea died at Fort Manuel in South Dakota, December 20, 1812, of "putrid fever" following the birth of "a fine infant girl." This record states that she was "a good and best woman in the fort, age about 25."  2007 is exactly one hundred years since Sacajawea's people the Lemhi-Shoshone were stripped of federal recognition and moved 200 miles south to the home of a much larger band of Shoshone.  They are trying to gain back the land they occupied for over 10,000 years so they can return home to continue the traditions and customs of their forefathers.

ELIZA SPALDING, a Presbyterian missionary who, along with her husband, Henry Harmon Spalding, established an Idaho Nez Perce mission at Lapwai in 1836. Her teaching activities there were the beginning of formal education in Idaho. The Whitman's and Spalding's are credited with having been the first white travelers along the Oregon Trail. They managed to bring a wagon as far west as Fort Boise.

LAURA STARCHER of Parma became the first woman mayor in the United States.  She and her council of mostly women were determined and ready to take on their duties.  She believed that women were just as capable as men to lead in government.

BETTY PENSON WARD, reporter for Boise Capitol News and Idaho Daily Statesman during the 1930s, published an excellent history of Idaho women, served as President of the Idaho Press Club, her long career in the field of journalism in noteworthy.

NARCISSA WHITMAN, a teacher and Presbyterian missionary, she and her husband, Marcus, and the Reverend and Mrs. Spalding were guided westward in 1836 by native Americans who came to Saint Louis in search of someone to teach them to read the "white man's Book to Heaven." Narcissa and Eliza Spalding were the first white women to see the part of the west that would become the State of Idaho. She brought with her a burning desire to teach the Native Americans to read the Bible. In 1847, she was massacred by a band of Indians who seemed to blame the Whitman's for an outbreak of measles and resultant Indian deaths.