AUBURN – In old black-and-white photographs, Helen M. Bouley is a neat and orderly woman, her hair carefully pressed, her dark clothes simple.

She looks every bit the diligent, frugal woman friends and family describe. When her nephew Winston Greaton’s wife, Mary, brings a small, worn wooden box from their basement Monday afternoon, just hours after the Bouley’s funeral service, she shows how their aunt organized her household bills years ago. Taped to the front is a neat card with each expense written out and a figure beside it, including, “Ed – 40.” It was her second husband’s monthly allowance, most likely.

“She made her own soap,” Mary Greaton said. She recalled Bouley giving her tips on how to replace the elastic in clothing.

Her frugality, Winston Greaton said, may be one thing that led to her long life.

Bouley died Nov. 2 at the age of 106, succumbing to pneumonia at Clover Manor Health Care Facility.

It’s not known whether she was the oldest woman in Maine. The state Office of Vital Statistics said the agency keeps death certificates but does not track the age of living residents.

There’s a good chance she was, though.

Born June 20, 1900, in South Portland, Bouley was the daughter of Charles and Annie (Yeaton) Wheeler. Her father was a Civil War veteran.

She was a child when the Wright Brothers first flew and Ford saw its first Model T roll off the assembly line in 1908.

She lived through the Roaring ’20s and the Great Depression. She witnessed the development and mass production of technology long since taken for granted, like radio and television.

She married Everett C. Whittemore in 1927. Five years after his death, in 1960, she married Edward J. Bouley, whom she’d met at a dance.

The Greatons remembered her second husband as her soul mate. Even in their 90s, the couple would round up friends for trips to Cole Farms, or travel as far as Canada to visit family.

Bouley drove until she was 103, Mary Greaton said. That was the year – 2003 – Edward Bouley died.

Helen Bouley also, along with years spent putting herself through college, teaching and working at area businesses, donated countless volunteer hours to places including the Webster School, United Way and Central Maine Medical Center.

She volunteered at the hospital until 2003, where she was honored for having given more than 10,000 hours of service.

“She was a one of a kind,” said Susan Bowie, director of volunteers at the hospital. “I have never even had anybody who was in their 90s.”

In the end, Bouley expressed some frustration as she lost her mobility. “God forgot about me,” she would tell people.

But she was strong and very aware until just weeks before she died, the Greatons said.

Sorting through her things after her death, Winston Greaton found another small testament to both her careful ways and her spirit. Tucked in a drawer was a stack of small envelopes in which she’d been tucking away weekly donations to the United Methodist Church of Auburn, which she’d been unable to attend for years.

The envelopes were neatly held together with a rubber band.