Troy resident passionate about saving town's antiquity

Dorothy Anderson has been a resident of Troy for nearly 70 years, attending high school in the area, working at her family-run local newspaper, the Latah County Press, and teaching at the school for 26 years.

With most of her life spent in the quaint town, it only makes sense that for more than 20 years she has been a dominating force behind interpreting and preserving the history of Troy.

"So much of what I have done is oral history," Anderson said.

In 1992, Anderson agreed to serve on the town's centennial committee, which highlighted the history of many of the town's buildings. It was a school project with each class researching a building and locating materials such as newspaper files and pictures to use for a poster of their building as a way to get students interested in history.

She knows many facts about Troy structures, 13 of which are located in two blocks of downtown Troy and are now listed in the historic district.

The committee focused its research on the time period of 1898-1953 for 15 buildings in the town.

"It was to show the evolution of the business community from the very old to what was pretty modern in those days in 1953," Anderson said.

The Latah County Historic Preservation Commission is working on creating signs for each of the centennial buildings. Anderson said the signs, which are about a foot tall, will be placed on the outside of each building and will signify the historic property along with the name and date of the building.

They will also have a QR code, or a quick response code, which is a type of bar code. Visitors can scan the QR code with their smartphones and a variety of background information Anderson has compiled about the building will pop up. She said she is including some architectural information about each building that outlines what is left from the original structure, which is what makes it eligible to be listed as part of the historical district.

Anderson said she does not have a personal favorite building, but the most significant building is the hotel at the southern block of Main Street, now the liquor store. She said the building was listed on the registry in 1982 and is the closest to its original structure.

After the centennial celebration, the town held an all-school reunion in 1995. A group of about 20 got together before the reunion to gather a history of each of the schools.

"Most country schools did not have reunions or yearbooks and things like that so we did a lot of oral history. It was a get-together, we called it, and we made a book," Anderson said.

She was in charge of typing and editing the book because of her background and skills in the newspaper business. The book was a collection of stories from the people who had attended schools in the area.

Anderson recalled one story of a girl who had attended a country school where everyone had flour sack underwear, but she had silk underwear.

"She was embarrassed to be that fancy so she would hide her underwear in the bushes on her way to school and put them on again when she got out. It was a fun story - we got a lot of things like that, they had a lot of funny stories to tell," she said.

The group published the book, "School Daze," including 14 schools in Latah County. They had chosen to focus on stories from the 1920s and '30s, contacting students and teachers who had attended the school during that era.

She said around 1942 many of the country schools got to a point where they could not afford to keep them up so students started coming into Troy to attend school.

At the time of the school reunion, Anderson had been writing about the Burnt Ridge School. Her husband had an interest in creating doll houses and built a 1/12 scale replica of the Burnt Ridge schoolhouse where he had attended school. The doll house now sits at her home in Troy.

Anderson was one of the founders of the Troy Historical Society, now a group of 12 members who are or have been residents of Troy. They are in charge of preserving photographs and have a display each year encompassing a unique part of the town. Anderson said last year they created a display of the businesses in the area and have previously made walls of honor for the people who have served. They also had a big display for the 100th birthday of the old school building in Troy.

The Troy Historical Society has put together a few CDs with stories about the history of Troy. One discusses dramatic events that have occurred in the town, such as bank robberies and several big fires that have scorched the landscape, while the other talks about school customs.

Before becoming a teacher Anderson took over as the Linotype operator for the family newspaper and married a farmer with a family farm. Together they had four children, who also started working at an early age.

"We were big on families working together," she said.

Anderson will be receiving the prestigious "Esto Perpetua" award from the Idaho State Historical Society for her accomplishment in preserving and promoting Idaho's heritage.

The award, named for the state motto translating to "let it be perpetual," began in 1999 to honor those who have achieved public service, volunteerism and philanthropy related to maintaining Idaho's past.

The annul celebration will be 5:30 p.m. June 12 at the Old Idaho Penitentiary, 2445 Old Penitentiary Road in Boise.

Sunny Browning can be reached at (208) 883-4639, or by email to sbrowning@dnews.com.