Becky Calderone, Sharlene Delaney. and Kelly Jelinek are the proud new owners of the county's second oldest business, Boundary Abstract.

She was, and now, nearly 29 years later, Sharlene has purchased the business, along with two of the people who’ve helped her for the past several years, Becky Calderone and Kelly Jelinek.

According to Sharlene, it’s an event that has been long in the making.

But a little history is in order.

The first president of Boundary Abstract was Charles O’Callaghan, who sold it to Pete’s dad, O.C. Wilson, who owned it for many years before selling it to M.D. Pace while Pete was still in school.

After high school, Pete enlisted in the Army to serve in World War II, and he came back to follow in his father’s footsteps, going to college and earning a law degree. After practicing his trade for a few years in California and Washington, he returned to his home town, and went into practice with Watt Prather. When Prather was elevated to what would become a distinguished career as First District Judge, Pete brought Boundary Abstract back to the sole ownership of the Wilson family.

When Blanche Studer, then manager of Boundary Abstract left Bonners Ferry for Lewiston, Pete asked his law clerk, Sharlene, who had attended vocational school in Montana and learned the highly innovative “mag card typewriter,” a precursor to the modern computer, if she’d be willing to step into Blanche’s position.

Just over 28 years ago, 29 years in June, in fact, Sharlene did.

While she had unsurpassed clerical skills back then, to include a new technology not many at the time were familiar with, she had to learn the intricacies of real estate, land use, metes and bounds, plats, property lines and property law.

She was taught, she said, by an extraordinary teacher, Pete Wilson, who taught her not only what she needed to know to do her job, but the legal precepts, case histories and why the work she did was so important.

Property ownership is a serious matter, and disputes between neighbors over a matter of inches between lines can be subject to argument, feud and outright hatred … even murder. To those who avail themselves of the services a title company offers, such painful headaches can be avoided … even though it might be suggested that the services of a surveyor might be recommended so as to define old property descriptions.

There are still, believe it or not, binding legal descriptions in Boundary County, Idaho, that specify that a binding property line extends “from this rock to the fencepost I planted over there.”

If you made that agreement with grandpa, and you and he get along, all is well and good. But grandpa doesn’t live forever, and his heirs who inherit the property might go back through the old records and find out that “your” fence, even thought it’s been there 50 years, “is on “my” property,” contention might arise.

Or that the road you’ve been using to get to your house since 1966 isn’t a road at all, but a right of way or an ill-defined easement. Up until now, there haven’t been problems, but the old fart died and this new family moved in from out of state … and they want to move the road and put up a gate because they don’t like what you’re doing on your land, and they are willing to do something that never crossed your mind … they’re going to sue.

You can’t talk to them as neighbors anymore, as you’re now adversaries. And while the case is embroiled, you can’t be neighbors. What would have once been the neighborly thing to do, to talk over the fence and hash it out, is now impossible.

The surest protection any property buyer can have, and a condition most all reputable lenders make, is title insurance … and by duration and experience, Sharlene said, no one has been providing that service longer or better than the business she now owns, Boundary Abstract.

“We have the best and most complete land records in the county,” she said. “We’ve been keeping track of land transactions in this county since 1915, and all records go back to the original recorded patent.”

She has no intention, she said, of changing anything, but to continue to grow and adapt so as to continue providing the unparalleled service Boundary Abstract is known for.

Pete and his wife Rhoda’s son, Tim, who, like his father, left Bonners Ferry to serve his country as a United States Marine, and who was a top-gun pilot who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan before he retired and returned home to earn his law degree, are enthusiastic in giving over control of a family business built over decades to the law clerk who for decades served the family so well.

“Tim said he’s happy that he’ll be able to dedicate more time to his law practice, his clients and his community,” Sharlene said.

While they didn’t go on record, Rhoda (Pete’s wife and Tim’s mother), is grateful both that Tim will be better able to continue the legacy of service to community set by his great grandfather, O.C., and his father, Pete, and that Sharlene, Becky and Kelly will continue to build on the reputation and trust they’ve established for more than a century.

“This business is in the best of hands,” Tim said. “The trust my grandparents and parents earned is going to be carried down to the next generation. They will never lose sight of doing their best for the people of this community.”

Boundary Abstract is located in the same place it’s been for nearly a century, 6430 Kootenai St., Bonners Ferry, Idaho, 83805.  Sharlene said she’s going to work to keep it there for another 100 years.

To find out more, visit their website, http://www.boundaryabstract.com, write them at PO Box 749, Bonners Ferry, ID, 83805, call (208) 267-3129 or email Sharlene at sdelaney@boundaryabstract.com.