Robert and Ellie Boast

Robert and Ellie Boast were close friends of the Ingalls family in De Smet, South Dakota. Pa met Mr. Boast in the fall of 1879, while working on the railroad. When Mr. Boast heard of the Ingalls' plans to spend the winter in the Surveyors House, he decided to go back to Iowa for his wife Ellie and bring her out to stay in a shanty nearby.

Robert Boast was born in Richmond, Quebec, in 1848, but moved to Iowa in 1867. In 1869, he married Ella Peck, and the couple farmed in Iowa until Robert began working for the railroad, and decided to file on a homestead in the Dakotas.

Mrs. Boast later suffered from rheumatism, and by the 1890s, she was no longer able to walk. Although the couple had no children of their own, Mrs. Boast befriended all the youngsters of De Smet, often holding parties at her home for them. Ella Boast died in 1918, and Robert died in 1921. They are buried in the De Smet cemetery.