Kitty Wilkins - Later Life

Later Life

Kitty Wilkins remained single her whole life. There are some reports that she was engaged to marry her foreman, Joseph Pellessier, when he was killed in a range dispute in 1909. Historian Hawes, noted above, makes no mention of such an arrangement. Kitty would have been 52 years old at the time; Pellessier was 45 when he was killed.

Kitty remained actively engaged with friends and family. According to Hawes, she “was extremely charitable toward the poor and unfortunate, though little of her charity is known to the world.” Philip Holman, who has studied Kitty’s life extensively, said that, at her death, her papers contained “a number of unpaid bills and applications for public assistance.”

Kitty’s last appeared in public for the 1934 Fort Boise Centennial Celebration, which commemorated the founding of the old Hudson’s Bay Company station at the mouth of the Boise River. She died two years later in Glenns Ferry, and was buried in Mountain Home.