Montana's DAR Markers . . . Honoring Where History Was Made

92. Her mother, Elizabeth Ford Parke, died in 1876 at the age of 95
years and was buried at DeKalb, Illinois.
Orpha Zilpha, born May 14, 1811, in Ovid Township, New York,
was the youngest of six children. She obtained a liberal education for
those times and taught school until she was married at the age of 22 to
Richard Bovee and moved with him to Indiana. Later Richard and
Orpha and their five little girls settled on 320 acres of land 50 miles
west of Chicago where he became well-to-do. He died at age 70 and is
buried in DeKalb, Illinois.
In 1911, Orpha Zilpha Parke Bovee moved to Montana to live with
her daughter, Emily West Bovee (Mrs. Sam) at their ranch home near
Cedar, Montana. She died there January 16, 1913, at the age of 101
years, 8 months and 2 days. Her funeral was January 20, 1913, at the
Glendive Methodist Episcopal Church, followed by burial in the
Dawson County Cemetery.
Mrs. Bovee was not a member of The Montana Society DAR. Her
membership was held in Downers Grove, Illinois (#87088). She was
accepted by the National Society DAR in June 1911 shortly after the
one hundredth anniversary of her birth. Orpha told Downers Grove
Chapter members that she remembered her uncle, Captain Almon
Ford, and her grandfather, Smith Parke, talking about the Battle of
Bunker Hill, in which they both participated.
On June 14, 1947, a bronze DAR insignia was placed on Mrs.
Bovee’s gravestone by the Yellowstone River Chapter, NSDAR (now
overseen by the Shining Mountain Chapter). During World War II,
Shining Mountain Chapter had begun the process of obtaining a Real
Daughter marker for Mrs. Bovee’s grave. But the Government Copper
Conservation Order, which prohibited the use of bronze and other
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