Bet you’ve searched online newspapers at the several websites offering such. But did you know that there is a website devoted to our very own state newspapers?? Here’s the fine print in the image: Washington Digital Newspapers brings together over 600,000 pages from Washington’s earliest Territorial newspapers to the present day, freely accessible to the public. And this collection continues to expand! Clicking to the website, you can search by title, by date or by subject. When I first learned of this resource back in February 2025, I did a search for the surname PHILLIPS, 1900-1960, and got 43,186 hits! For the surname OSWALD, 3996 hits! For Fort George Wright, 12, 690 hits!
If you have ancestors, direct line or collateral, and they lived and worked in the Evergreen State, do check out this resource.
Remember I’ve taught you always: If it’s free, take two! 🙂
Vinegar Flats – The Keller-Lorenz Vinegar WorksJesse Tinsley crafts a Then And Now column in The Spokesman-Review daily newspaper in Spokane. This bit comes from one of his insightful columns:
In an area that was once a seasonal village of Spokane Indians along Latah Creek, a neighborhood was platted in 1888. It became known as Vinegar Flats because of the tangy aroma from a vinegar production plant that opened in 1889……. The Keller-Lorenz Vinegar Company made cider and vinegar and sold the product to stores in bottles or to wholesalers in barrels…. the company grew rapidly and in 1912 the company used 15,000 tons of apples from Spokane’s orchards to make 225,000 gallons of cider and 5,000 gallons of vinegar…. their two primary products were pickling vinegar, made from barley malt and molasses, and apple vinegar which starts as cider…… eight men worked full time at the plant with up to 14 more added seasonally…..
“When the factory began operations in 1890, vinegar was especially important for the preservation of a variety of foods. In an era before household refrigeration, pickling in vinegar was a common method of preserving fruits and vegetables. The Vinegar Works operated in the three-story building at 11th Avenue and Spruce Street until 1958 producing cider, malt, and white wine vinegar. It wasn’t until the 1930s that refrigerators became commonplace and the need for pickling foods became less important. This new era of both commercial and domestic refrigeration, coupled with better roads for transportation, meant that factories like the Keller -Lorenz Vinegar Works eventually went out of business.”
Next time you drive south to Pullman from Spokane on Hwy 195, sniff the air. It just might smell a bit tangy still.
Roxanne Lowe is a world traveler; here she is in Switzerland. I know she’s also been to Cuba and several other wonderful places. Roxanne lives in McCleary which is west of Olympia a tad bit. She’s been active with the WA State Gen Soc for nearly 20 years and continues to inspire, share and teach us. Short while ago she offered a multi-page handout of FREE GENEALOGY-RELATED INTERNET SITES. Now she offers it again to all of us; here’s the link:
If you’d like to refresh your memory or learn more about Roxanne, she offered a snippet-autobiography to the WSGS Blog on 21 June 2023…. complete with her 3-yr-old pix!
Summer suggestion: On a hot day when you’re already sunned-out, have this handout handy (with lemonade!) and have some researching fun!
This Washington-Pioneer-History-Tidbit comes from the Anacortes American, April 19, 1923. Titled “First Fidalgo Settler Buried,” I have excerpted portions from the long (and most interesting) obituary for you.
Charles W. Beale, the first white settler of Fidalgo Island was buried in the Fern Hill Cemetery where he had hunted deer over 65 years ago. Capt. Beale was the oldest living pioneer of the county and six past presidents of the Skagit County Pioneer Assn were pallbearers.
Mr. Beale is survived by four sons and three daughters; his home was in Anacortes. He was a Virginian and stricken with gold fever crossed the plans by ox team in 1851 landing in Sacramento. He drove a team there for five years and then in 1856 headed out overland to the Fraser River gold diggings. Instead of washing gold, he became a river steamboat captain. While making a trip to Whatcom in a flatboat, he was wrecked and forced some frightened Indians at gunpoint to paddle him to Fidalgo. In 1862 Beale went to the Cariboe (sic) and when he returned in 1866 he found that his claim had been sold. He took up another claim, built his cabin and stayed.
Capt. Beale sometimes told of an experience in the winter of 1859 when the snow was deep and food was scarce and the six settlers on the bay had little to eat save what their rifles brought them. Beale had shot a deep on the slopes of Mt. Erie and packed it on his back out through deep snow and the jungles (sic) to what is now Weaverling’s Spit where his fellow settlers were to meet him with a canoe and take him and any possible game across the bay to the cabins. But the canoe was not there. Night came on and wolves, great gaunt grey fellows, followed his trail through the snow by drops of blood. Beale was compelled to wade out into the water to get away from the wolves bearing the deer carcass with him. In deadly cold water he stood until finally a canoe appeared.
The Beale children were: Capt. Charles, Jr., John R., George C., Frank D., Mrs. A.O. Clem, Mrs. Lacretia Monroe, Mrs. Emma Laborte. I wonder if any descendants of this Fidalgo Island pioneer are still in the area????
Buffalo or Bison? Which do we have in the American West?
I recently taught a lesson to my 11yo and 7yo great-grandkids on this subject. We have BISON in America. Bison have humps, shorter horns, live on the prairies and are ill-tempered. BUFFALO live in the wetlands of Asia and Africa, have long broad horns and are more mild-mannered, and so in Asia have been domesticated by man.
Did you know: Male bison an weight up to 2000 pounds and stand 6′ tall. (And we see videos posted on YouTube of stupid tourists in Yellowstone trying to pet a bison and getting gored.) Females are slightly smaller. Bison calves weigh 30-70 pounds at birth.
American bison are a keystone species that provide many benefits to other animals and the land. Their manure and grazing patterns increase the amount of nitrogen to prairie plants which facilitates plant growth giving habitat to nesting birds. Thick bison fur catches and disperses native seeds. Bison wallows, where the animals roll and scuffle, create specialized habitats for plants and capture moisture. Using their big heads as plows, bison push through deep snow creating paths for other animals such as elk and antelope.
Bison are the official mammal of America and also the states of Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma. But the history of the American bison is full of a lack of appreciation. Long ago, the continent held an estimated 40,000,000 bison. Then came hunting and by 1884 the official estimate of remaining wild bison was a mere 325.
There are volumes more to the full story and there are many books written on the subject of the history of the American bison. Want a good read?
P.S. Did you catch the phrase “keystone species?” Google that phrase for some really interesting knowledge.
(Thanks to the North Columbia Monthly, Dec 2024, for this story.)
If you were living in Washington on Sunday, May 18, 1980, do you remember what you were doing? I was walking to church on that sunny day and remember hearing what I thought was a sonic boom. (Fairchild AFB is just west of town.) An hour later, I fled home and was among thousands of Washingtonians wondering WHAT IN THE WORLD IS HAPPENING?
At 8:32 that morning, Mt. St. Helens erupted as the result of an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale. Here’s what happened:
Eruption lasted 9 hours
Nearly 230 square miles of forest were destroyed
The explosion blew a crater 1968.5 feet deep and almost 1 1/2 miles wide from rim to rim on the mountain’s face
The speed of the subsequent landslide was estimated to be between 70 and 150 mph
As much as 600 feet of debris were deposited in the nearby North Fork Toutle River
An estimated 7000 big game animals were killed in the blast
An estimated 12 million chinook and coho fingerlings and 40,000 young salmon were destroyed
60 people living near the mountain were killed
I remember gathering my family close, including my future son-in-law. I remember them playing RISK for hours. I remember waking up Monday and Tuesday morning to everything coated with white ash….. and nobody knew how dangerous it might be to breathe or to our cars. Spokane, among many eastern Washington cities, stood in shocked stillness.
Now, 45 years later, we still see white streaks in the banks along I-90 when we head west. And I wonder how many baby girls born that day were named Helen or Ashley??? Will Mt. St. Helens blow again? She is considered the volcano in the Cascades most likely to erupt again in our lifetimes, and scientists expect it to erupt again though the timing and magnitude are uncertain. (So says Google.)
Strollers along a particular stretch of Oregon beach sometimes are lucky enough to see the fading remnants of a shipwreck. I’d bet that when they do, they wonder “what happened?”
Ships, and everything about ships, is vital to our collective family history. Our ancestors traveled in ships, fished from small ships, explored in ships, fought battles in ships, migrated in ships ………. and often died in ships.
The Peter Iredale is rather famous. She was a four-masted steel bark built in Maryport, England, in 1890. In September, 1906, she sailed north from Mexico bound for Portland where she was to pick up a cargo of wheat to return to England. From the Oregon History Project website we learn:
“Despite encountering heavy fog, she managed to safely reach the mouth of the Columbia River in the early morning of October 25. The captain of the ship later recalled that as they waited for a pilot ‘a heavy southeast wind blew and a strong current prevailed. Before the vessel could be veered around, she was in the breakers and all efforts to keep her off were unavailing.’ She ran aground at Clatsop Beach, hitting so hard that three of her masts snapped from the impact. Fortunately, none of the crew were seriously injured.”
Our Washington coast, particularly around the Columbia River mouth, is known as the “Graveyard of the Pacific,” and has seen approximately 2000 wrecks since 1792 with about 700 lives lost. The sandbar at Columbia’s mouth is three miles wide and reaches seven miles into the open ocean, and being sand, is constantly shifting, making it a navigational nightmare.
Do you have ships mentioned in your family history? If you do, and would enjoy learning more, click to www.ShipIndex.org. This is a fabulous database all about ships………sailing, steam, fighting or sunken ships.
I confess: I cannot help myself from browsing through the boxes of old postcards that I may encounter at a thrift shop.
Case in point, the two above. Both had writing on the reverse side……….. old German. Which of course I could not read. So I took them with me to RootsTech in March and requested help on B-1 in the FamilySearch Library.
The card at the top was addressed to “Fraulein Luise Koller, Frankfurt a Main, Niederrad.” It was from “Heinrich.” Was Heinrich the handsome suitor of Luise? Or was that a commercial photo?
The lower one REALLY intrigued me. Was this a real person in real clothes or a costumed funny? This card, dated 1919, was from Erik Lund to “the family Moller in Vestergade.” Erik says he is “sending to you my picture.” Wonder what they thought!
So teaches Wikipedia: “A postcard is a rectangular piece of thick paper, sent without an envelope and for a lower fee. Production of postcards blossomed in the late 19th and each 20th centuries and an easy and quick way for individuals to communicate. The study and collecting of postcards is termed deltiology. (Remember that when you’re invited to be on Jeopardy.)
Do you have any old postcards in your collected personal family history archive?
Disclaimer: This is not my office but it surely could be. Is this your office? Kitchen? Pantry? Spare room? Closet? Storage drawers?
While back, I came upon this little book: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, by Margareta Magnusson. While the title sounds a tad foreboding, the premise is simple and profound: Rid your world of stuff…. stuff you don’t want, don’t need, never used and never liked and do it now!
My favorite presentation to give to fellow genealogists is “Leave A Legacy and NOT A Mess.” I teach that YOU collected all that stuff, and while it means the world to you, it may well not mean a sniff to your descendants (immediate descendants anyway). It is imperative that YOU do something with all that stuff. No excuses.
This premise 100% applies to your clothes-shoes-Tshirts, your kitchen gadgets, your shelves of unfinished projects, your unused collection of clipped recipes, your 200 books, your dozens of different baking pans that you never use anymore. You get the idea.
At my age, and facing a domicile move, this is rather uppermost in my mind. And I assert that it might should be in yours too. Be nice to your descendants. Consider it a Pre-Death House Cleaning For the Benefit of Your Children.
And know what? You’ll be FREE! No more looking around and being dismayed at all the stuff that’s cluttering your life. Free!
P.S. Does any library or genealogy society want all your genealogy? Those books, binder and boxes of research notes. NO WAY, JOSE. You collected it; it’s up to YOU to dispose of it all. And this is 100% true: If you want your family to value your life’s work, leave it to them in an organized fashion…. preferably online.
You are free to copy articles to any non-commercial web site or message board or printed publication you wish. Don’t bother to ask permission, just do it.
