August and Anna Boos…From cow chips to microwaves

By Eva Hallam Solberg

Published in the PCN on Nov. 6, 1980

“We were glad to get together with people. We didn’t have horses, so we walked. One time I walked to Dodson to get groceries and the mail. It was eighteen miles, but I cut across, and that was a lot shorter.”

August Boos was recalling the “good ole days” back in homestead times in northern Phillips County. He and his wife Anna still live on the homestead and farm the land. She is 73 and he is 84 years old. Their original homestead shack was added onto, and still stands behind their modular home which their children helped them buy four years ago. “We use the old house for a motel when we have company.”

Anna was born in Wales, North Dakota, in 1907, the youngest girl in a family of ten, to Mr. and Mrs. George R. Young. Her family moved north of Dodson in 1917 to homestead when Anna was 10 years old.

August was born to Anton and Cathryn Boos, German settlers in southeastern Russia, who lived along the Volga River. He also came from a family of ten. “I’m the only one left,” he commented.

Read the rest of the story in "Looking Back Again: Life Stories from the Prairies of Montana"
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