Women have started businesses for centuries both in order to earn money to support their families and to satisfy their own economic objectives. This month we profile two entrepreneurs: Polly Bemis and Linda Alvarado.
Polly Bemis’s resilience and unquenchable spirit led her to become the foremost pioneer on central Idaho’s Salmon River. Born in China, Bemis in 1872 was sold by her family for bags of seed during a famine. She ended up in Warrens (today Warren), Idaho as either a prostitute, concubine, or in some other form of sexual slavery. There she worked in a saloon, learned English and somehow managed to maintain her self-respect and dignity. After she obtained her freedom, she married Charlie Bemis, who ran the saloon next to a dance hall, and ran a boarding house in Warrens.
