James William Foley was born on February 4th, 1874, in St. Louis, Mo. He moved to Fort Abraham Lincoln in North Dakota in the late 1870s, following his father's career as a military man. There, James attended school until the family moved to Bismark, where he eventually graduated from high school in 1888.
He then moved to Medora for a year to attend the University of South Dakota before spending several years in the Badlands.
In later years, Foley worked as a writer and editor for the Bismarck Tribune. He also became interested in state politics and for many years served as a stringer for several national newspapers.
In 1902, Foley published Prairie Breezes, his first book and the namesake for the Bismark High School Yearbook.
When Roosevelt traveled through North Dakota in 1903, Foley wrote a poem celebrating his return. He also wrote a poem entitled “Theodore & Joe,” about the friendship between Roosevelt and his first hunting guide Joe Ferris.
Later, in 1906, Roosevelt spoke highly of Foley in the introduction to Foley's book, Voices of Song. In it, he called Foley "one of the comparatively few men of that time and region who was devoted to reading and to books." He also claimed that "Now and then, after six or eight weeks on the range with valued friends who were of distinctly non-literary type, I would come in to spend an evening with Mr. Foley for the especial purpose of again listening to speech about books."
Foley wrote prose for the New York Times and the Saturday Evening Post. He also produced more than a dozen books of poetry and was regarded as the unofficial Poet Laureate of North Dakota. In 1926 the Superintendent of Public Instruction for North Dakota, Minnie J. Nielson, invited Foley to write lyrics for a song about North Dakota. Foley’s song, “North Dakota Hymn,” was officially adopted as the North Dakota State Song in 1947.
Sadly, he wouldn't live to see it become Dakota's state song because James William Foley passed away on May 19, 1939, at 65.
He is buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park of Glendale, California, where he and his wife lived at the time.
We are reading from Boys and Girls, a poetry collection published in 1905.
