100 DAYS IN TEH SAN JUANS<TITLE> <style type="text/css"> BODY.Back {background: gainsboro;text-align: justify; FONT =BOLD; FONT SIZE=MEDIUM; FONT-FAMILY: TIMES NEW ROMAN} p {TEXT-ALIGN: JUSTIFY; font-family:TIMES NEW ROMAN;font-size:14px;color:#000000;line-height:normal; } H1 { font-style: italic; FONT SIZE=16PX; color: BLACK;FONT=BOLD;} H2 {TEXT-ALIGN=CENTER; FONT-FAMILY=ARIAL BLACK;FONT SIZE:LARGE;FONT=BOLD} H3 { TEXT-ALIGN=CENTER; FONT-FAMILY: TIMES NEW ROMAN; font-style: italic; FONT SIZE=12PX; color: BLACK;FONT=BOLD;} H4 { TEXT-ALIGN=CENTER; FONT-FAMILY: TIMES NEW ROMAN; font-style: italic; FONT SIZE=14PX; color: BLACK;FONT=BOLD;} </style>  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://images.rootsweb.com/css/h/h.css"> <script type="text/javascript"> function searchOnBlur1(){ var searchBox = document.getElementById('FirstSearchBox'); if(searchBox.value == "") { searchBox.style.fontStyle = "normal"; searchBox.style.color = "#999999"; searchBox.value = "First Name"; } } function searchOnFocus1(){ var searchBox = document.getElementById('FirstSearchBox'); if(searchBox.value == "First Name") { searchBox.style.fontStyle = "normal"; searchBox.style.color = "#000000"; searchBox.value = ""; } } function searchOnBlur2(){ var searchBox = document.getElementById('LastSearchBox'); if(searchBox.value == "") { searchBox.style.fontStyle = "normal"; searchBox.style.color = "#999999"; searchBox.value = "Last Name"; } } function searchOnFocus2(){ var searchBox = document.getElementById('LastSearchBox'); if(searchBox.value == "Last Name") { searchBox.style.fontStyle = "normal"; searchBox.style.color = "#000000"; searchBox.value = ""; } } </script> </hEAD> <body CLASS="Back"><div id="RootsBanner-SearchWrapper"> <a id="rweb-host" class="rweb-neutral" href="http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/" title="RootsWeb.com - Home Page and Index to Services"></a> <div id="RootsSearch-Wrapper" class="clearfix"> <a id="rweb-acom" class="acom-neutral" href="http://www.ancestry.com/s33216/t10989/grid1000/rd.ashx" title="Ancestry.com - Start your Family Tree or Search our Collections"></a> <div class="SearchForm-Container"> <span class="headerSearch">Search billions of records on Ancestry.com</span> <form action="http://www.ancestry.com/s33216/SEARCH/grid1043/rd.ashx" method="get" class="rootsForm"> <div> <input type="hidden" name="gss" value="rootsweb"> <input id="FirstSearchBox" name="gsfn" type="text" size="16" value="First Name" style="color:#999999;" onblur="searchOnBlur1()" onfocus="searchOnFocus1()"> <input id="LastSearchBox" name="gsln" type="text" size="16" value="Last Name" style="color:#999999;" onblur="searchOnBlur2()" onfocus="searchOnFocus2()"> <input id="SubmitButton" type="submit" value="Search" style="color:#ffffff; background: #afbc22;"> </div> </form> </div> </div> </div> <div id="userContentFP" style="padding: 8px;"> <h1>100 DAYS IN THE SAN JUANS<br> --A 1946 voyage through the San Juan Islands</h1> <h2>By June Burn 1946<br> Log House Printcrafters & Publishers, Friday Harbor, WA 98250</h2> <h2>"I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER!"</h2> <P>LOPEZ ISLAND. Down towards the southern end of Lopez Island live two old men, brothers and bachelors as so many of the elderly island men are. Their unmarried sister, now dead, lived with them for many years. <P> People keep saying, “You must see the Cousins-- they remember everything.” Down in Seattle the Norman Hayners said, “The Cousins have been there a long time, and they remember things.” <P> The island widens down here, the farms spread out over the 100-foot high plateau. Surely there isn’t a kitchen window on this island from which a woman can’t see out over water, out down to the pale blue rim of the Olympics across Juan de Fuca, out into the surrounding forest, too, to rest her eyes. Yellow fields and silver haycocks. Fireweed along the rail fences and goldenrod. Jersey cows and Guernsey cows, pale yellow like the grass, turned out for the night, the light still strong enough to reflect the shine of their coats. Gravel roads that run between the fences to this homestead and that one . . . then a gate. <P> This is a gate, now! It opens like any other gate, with a latch, and then it runs its arc on a wagon wheel. The never-sag gate, invented by Lee Wilson, a Lopez Island man. <P> Inside the gate there is a beautifully tended orchard and a bachelor-looking yard, wild with flowers and tall grass. The doorstep is all but hidden. <P> Inside the big house, the Cousins brothers give us a hearty welcome. They have a phonograph with cylinder records that play songs in the whangy voice of Ada Jones. “Ad-a Joones, Edddisonn rraycords,” the announcer says doubling all his vowels and trilling his d’s and r’s in a wonderful way: No one is ever introduced so jubilantly nowadays! <P> Now it seems that Mrs. Lundy and her class in freshman English have been here before us gathering some of the Cousins’ recollections for this column. To Margaret Ann Hodgson, then, and Luverne Weeks, Jackie King, Mary Ann Schultz, Melba Fagerhoim, Bonnie Williamson, Gene Higgins, and Hazel Lundy, as well as to the brothers Cousins, we owe these facts from the old days. <P> Hiram F. Hutchinson was the first white man on Lopez Island at least the first one who stayed and settled here. He had the first store where the Lopez store is now located. He came in the 1850s, Sometime. Mr. Hutchinson’s sister, Mrs. Weeks, was the first postmistress. <P> Mrs. Davis was the first white woman on the island. She came in 1869, her son, Ernest, the first all-white child born on the island, in 1871. This was an aunt of the Mrs. Davis still living on San Juan Island. <P> The Charles Browns and the James Nelsons came in the 60s, the Nelsons in ‘62, the Browns in ‘69. Mrs. Mary Eaton, now 79, has lived on Lopez for 77 years. She is the oldest pioneer still living on the island. The Browns and Nelsons took claims together, seem to have farmed together. It is their farm which two servicemen just back from the war are now running. Of them later. <img src="images/100_days_mary_eaton.jpg" align=LEFT title="Mary Eaton"> <P> “I remember hearing that Joe Merrill came here after the Mexican war, hunting. That was in 1857. He hunted deer. He’d sell them to the soldier garrison in San Juan and in B.C. It was heaven here, then . <P> The minute one Cousins remembers a date, the other remembers another. <P> “I remember hearing that Arthur Barlow came here in 1858. Barlow Bay is named after him. You knew Sam Barlow, the ferry captain? You used to write about him, I remember.” <P> I did remember quiet, friendly Sam Barlow who is now dead. I miss him from the ferries. <P> “I remember hearing that Red Charlie came in the early 1860s ...““ I remember hearing that William Miller went to Orcas Island in 1852.” (If that is correct, then that is another very first settler to mark up for Orcas.) “Red Charlie had the reddest face I ever saw. He homesteaded the place where Mrs. Erisman lives now - . . on Fisherman Bay it was.” “I remember when your father came, Ray . it was in ‘86. I was 12 years old, then. We came in ‘83. From Iowa. There were 150 people here then. The Chadwicks came in ‘75.” <P> The older brother will say, “When we first came we lived on the hill but we couldn’t get water so we moved down here . <P> "I remember hearing that the Swifts came in 1862. Swifts Bay is named for him. He came up from the California gold rush. Jack Balaam, an Englishman, was here in 1870 but he later moved away.” (He moved to Stuart Island and Dad Chevalier now lives on his old place.) “Humphrey came in 1877. Humphrey Head is named for him.” <P> "I remember hearing that Sam Barlow was born here in 1871.” <P> (That was the year when Ernest Davis was born. The fact that Sam Barlow had an Indian mother does not make him any less of a child of a settler. Isn’t it equally important to know who was the very first child of any permanent settler? Especially one who himself became a settler? Might that have been the Hutchinson boy?) <P> The first school was held about the year 1872, taught by a Mrs. Thompson, an English lady whose pupils were Mary Brown (Mrs. Eaton) and her sisters, Maggie and Maria. Later other schools were taught by women of the neighborhoods and still later a schoolhouse was built by donations. <P> Before 1900 there were other stores on the island, notably the one at Richardson begun by R.C. Kinleyside and now run by the Lundys. There was a Richardson Hotel, also, in 1890, boom days on Lopez and for all the islands. Fish canneries were later built, still later burned or abandoned. Indians used to come in great numbers to Lopez, now hardly come at all . . . and so the old order changeth . . . but the Cousins still remember the days when. <P>?????????????????????????????<br> PAGE MISSING<br> ?????????????????????????????<br> <P>......that mile-long spit. Mr. and Mrs. Seafield, from Seattle and Mrs. Perkins’ resort; Mr. and Mrs. Jensen of the Lopez store; Mr. and Mrs. Todd of the Lopez light plant; Mr. and Mrs. Sutherland, retired, and a guest Miss Waite, from Seattle; the Spencers, retired; the Hughes, retired; Mrs. Plummer, living at the Spencers’ until her husband comes home from overseas; Mrs. Erisman of the fig trees and Mrs. Fagerholm of the old-time Fagerholm family, Lopez pioneers. Kate Spencer had homemade cookies, cream, and sugar, and dishes for all. We had coffee. Farrar played the guitar, and we got that Spencer story at last! <h2>ONE OLD-TIMER SPEAKS FOR HERSELF!</h2> <P>LOPEZ ISLAND. Last winter when I sent out appeals for help with the story of the islands, I had an interesting letter from Annie Warner Eaves, now living in Seattle. Poet, woman with a good memory, these recollections are highlighted with bits that will take you back! <P> “My parents, Wesley and Mary Warner, were among the first settlers at Lopez. <P> “My early recollections of it date from 1879 when as a child of some years, my mother, older sister Mary and myself landed at Lopez from New York State. Father and two brothers had preceded us by some time. <P> “It was a long, hard journey by rail to San Francisco, then by small steamship to Port Townsend where we waited several days for a boat to Lopez, which came once a week. At the small landing we were met by father and brothers Joe and Dell. <P> “We rode about three miles on a homemade sled drawn by a horse, through a deep forest which had been blackened over by many fires, as land must be cleared. Our home was a log cabin for a number of years. Work was done in the hardest way as there were no conveniences. <P> “Water was drawn from the well by a long rope <P> land was very productive. Our nearest neighbor was a half mile away and there were a few others farther away. They always welcomed newcomers and helped each other whenever needed. <P> “At first there were only three months of school during the year, but conditions gradually improved. They held dances to raise more money for school funds. We were not scolded if late as we walked about three miles, sometimes in the rain, beating down the wet ferns along the way; and when we arrived at the small schoolhouse, sat around the stove and dried our shoes. In summer at the noon hour we picked wild strawberries and crab-apples and enjoyed them, too. <P> “Within the first few years, two more sisters were born, namely: Minnie Rutledge and Frances Johnson, now of Seattle. <P> “A Presbyterian minister, Mr. Weeks, held services in the schoolhouse once in two weeks and at other times my father conducted Sunday school and officiated at funerals and as justice of the peace performed marriage ceremonies. <P> “We did not live on the main road through the island and seldom saw a team pass. Once a week we went to the landing to get the mail and hear the general news. <P> “If it was stormy, the boat could not get through so it meant another trip down through the woods. But gradually conditions improved, more settlers moved in and more seaworthy ships were put upon the route and ran oftener. <P> “We looked forward to Sundays as It brought the neighbors together and the Fourth of July was always a pleasant occasion as the neighbors all met together for a celebration and picnic. <P> “There was no doctor nearer than Port Townsend in those years, though at times medical aid was badly needed. <P> “Soil was very productive and we raised lots of berries and vegetables and planted an apple orchard that later bore fine fruit. Wild geese and ducks were plentiful, also deer. <P> “Of the latter, we had several around as pets at different times. One, especially, was very tame and upon one occasion came in the open door unnoticed and curled up on the bed, which startled mother to see a full-grown deer making himself so much at home. <P> “It was rather dreary in winter for women and children, as the mud was deep and we did not get out much. <P> “Although I have been in Seattle for many years, I enjoy going back to renew old acquaintances. But the simple life we led is gone; many improvements have come to the islands. <P> "I heard one of the neighbors say, ‘Children, you must get up earlier tomorrow and not miss the school bus.’ <P> “There have been airplane landings established recently, the phone is ringing, turn off the radio, someone just drove up in an auto. Verily, times have changed. <P> “But through it all, I am glad to have been a pioneer.” <P> Thank you, Annie Warner Eaves, for a grand letter! The Weeks, Mrs. Eaton, Miss Chadwick, the Spencers, Fagerhoims, Gallangers, Cousins and other old-timers will get a thrill out of hearing from you. <h2>A SAWMILL AND A FLOCK OF SPENCERS</h2> <P>LOPEZ ISLAND. There was a man named Spencer who came to Lopez Island in 1886. He homesteaded 160 acres on the eastern side of the island, including a long sandspit that all but stretched across to Frost Island. On all the charts that spit now bears his name. <P> There was also an island. A wild, big, heavily wooded island where the trees grew tall, where the bluffs were steep, where two big lakes hung high up between the hills, where a cranberry bog yielded fruit and one single solitary shallow harbor made a safe anchorage for a dock and boats. It was Blakely (or Blakeley) Island, named by Wilkes in 1841 for Johnston Blakely (he also sometimes spelled his name with a second e), who once commanded the Wasp for which a whole group of islands was named. <img src="images/100_days_ray_spencer.jpg" align=LEFT title="Ray Spencer"> <P> Blakely Island is over half again as large as Waldron. It displaces seven square miles of water, covers 4,436 acres, is more than a thousand feet high, once had a population of 16 or 17 families, was for 34 years mainly owned by one family. Blakely is about a mile and a half across the water from Lopez Island. <P> In the old days the formidable shores of Blakely made the island seem safe to lawbreakers. During the years of “the occupation” it became the refuge of smugglers and other petty criminals. When the Spencer children began to roam those hills they often found cases of smuggled goods, rotting or rusting. Some of the people were “nice” people, though. At one time there were as many as 12 chIldren in the school on Blakely. <P> In the 90s this first Spencer took his family over to Blakely. The people there were making shingles by hand, burning charcoal to sell in Victoria and scratching around in a few spots for gardens. William Viereck started the first sawmill there and Mr. Spencer later took it over, settled at what is now Thatcher. <P> The sawmill grew. The trees were all but inexhaustible and many of them were so flawless that fine boat lumber was sawn from them. The Spencers went into boat-building. <P> When they outgrew the school on the island, the Spencer children went In to Bellingham. When the second generation of children outgrew that little school, they went to Bellingham and on to the University of Washington, living on a boat of their own building while they were in Seattle. <P> The first Spencers lived and died. Two of the Sons stayed on Blakely, one of them became a doctor in Tacoma, I think it was. Of the two who stayed on Blakely, Ross ran the sawmill end of things and Ray ran the business end, meeting the people. <P> Ray Spencer married Kate Hipkoe, sister of the University’s purchasing agent, sister of Bellingham’s Hipkoe a regally tall, beautiful girl who still looks that way. Ray and Kate have become a sort of legend, what with their endless hospitality to people from all over the world. I don’t know how many people I have met whose first question would be: <P> “Do you know the Spencers of Blakely Island?” <P> It was the first thing Jamie Jamison asked us, I think. <P> Kate and Ray adopted Kate’s sister’s two children when they were babies, brought them up on Blakely. Ross Spencer’s son, Jim, was like a brother to these two. And Dr. Spencer’s two sons spent all their summers on Blakely. So the third generation of Spencers is made up of four boys and one girl (or they are the ones I have so far met. There may be more.) <P> Ross Spencer’s son, Jim, and Dr. Spencer’s son, John, are the boys who have bought the farm. Ray and Kate’s adopted son, Paul, also plans to <P>???????????????????????<br> PAGE MISSING<br> ??????????????????????? <h2>FOUR PEOPLE TIME FORGOT</h2> <P> LOPEZ ISLAND. This is living, though! To be sure of it, to feel it boiling all around us! Does it take a bout with the elements to make you know you’re alive? <P> The wind blows some. The surf rolls some. A bell buoy rings. Ding-dong. If we camp on this’ side, how can we push the boat off far enough, tonight, that it won’t pound on the rocks? We’ll have to keep going till we find a sheltered harbor. <P> Yonder come the Humes! Up on the bluff above us a car stops. People set out. They come down a little switch-back sheep trail to the beach. We draw in to shore. As I jump off the boat, I pick up an agate. This is the most colorful beach we’ve seen on this trip, the pebbles jade green mostly, every one a collector’s item! <P> Sure enough, it is the Humes and their aunt, Miss Chadwick. Two Hume brothers, one Hume sister all of them unmarried, living together. We soon discover that they live in some kind of lost world of Atlantis, these four. Or maybe it is a Paul and Virginia world. Anyway, there is profound security <P> but I’m getting ahead of myself. <P> We sit on beach logs and talk awhile. “We can stay at home for a month and nobody comes. But as sure as we go anywhere there’ll be company,” they said. <P> The wind sharpens. I’m cold, but nobody else seems to be. We talk some more. This large, mild-faced woman is the last of the Chadwicks who homesteaded this very land on which three generations have lived and, if the Humes had married, a fourth could be well on its way. Addie Chadwick was born here in the 80s of a man from one of the fine families of England and Canada and a half-Indian woman, daughter of Judge Bradshaw of Port Townsend. Het Grandmother was a full Indian. Addie is a quarter. She comes, on both sides, from people fashioned for the old days of leisurely living, Indian and white aristocrats alike giving her their generous temperaments. <P> The three Humes are children of Addie’s sister. Their father died when they were very small. They also grew up here on this wild, free point, with their mother and grandparents and aunt. They love this place as if it were a person. They love it as few people in this world ever do love the place of their birth. <P> Pretty, gentle Louella says they never married probably because they loved this place so much. <P> “We went away to school over on Mud Bay, two and a half miles away, and we couldn’t come home until Friday night. We were so glad to get home every week we couldn’t bear to leave on Monday oh yes, our mother was with us. She was homesick too . . . then we went up to Lopez school, still further, and then to Friday Harbor High School. I guess we were always so glad to get back home we were afraid to marry for fear we’d have to go away.” <P> “You better come back around to our beach, so your boat won’t be a trouble all night,” Kenneth said. But this beach was too, too beautiful. Let us stay here this night. We’ll come over to see you tomorrow. <P> The Chadwick-Humes return to their car, drive on around to the white house on the point. We find a space among the massive piles of driftwood on the beach, clear it for our sleeping bags, push the boat off the beach and have supper. <P> All night long the surf pounded the beach. The big ebb would come in the night. Would the boat find itself on top of a boulder when the water went away? Would it get a hole in it from pounding? We couldn’t sleep. At three, at four, at five, Farrar got up to see about it, At last he dressed and rowed it back around the point to the first beach leaving all our camp things on this side, a mile from base! Now we were in a fix, sure enough. But we weren’t reckoning on the Humes. They came over with the car, gathered us up and there we were. <P> We had said we’d like to do a washing next day. They had plenty of water and a washing machine, they said. And next morning when we went over, the boiler stood on the stove, full and hot, the tubs were full of water the boys had brought from the pump down in the garden, the washing machine stood open, ready. <P> We didn’t know just how to manipulate that washer, Louella and Addie thought. They did the washing. Anyway, I wanted to see the old records and letters. I must get at that, they said. They brought out the trunk full of papers, turned it over to me and I began to go through letters dating from 1871. Letters from many of the old-timers in the islands and from Mr. Chadwick’s sisters and uncle in Toronto. Never have I seen such a drift of history in one pile! <P> Suddenly, dinner was ready. Dinner of all the good farm things with homemade bread and vashed sweet butter. The washing was done. Farrar and I hung it on the line, returned to the papers. <P> “Dear Nephew, I am glad to hear that you like the islands. When the matter of their ownership is settled, I suppose you will take up a claim there. I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to who will actually get them . <P> “Dear Brother, We are glad to hear that you found our father in the Fraser country. We hear that he has a rich claim there . <P> “Dear Sampson,” ... from Sperry, whose peninsula International Camp is now on. “Dear Sir from County Treasurer Sherer with thanks for his “school and penitentiary” taxes for 1873. </HTML> </div> <table id="fp_ftr" class="fp_neutral" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"> <tr> <td id="fp_logo"> <a class="anc_logo" href="http://www.ancestry.com/s33216/t11564/grid1003/rd.ashx" title="Ancestry.com - Learning Center, Getting Started and Tutorials"></a> </td> <td> <div id="anc_lnks"> <a href="http://www.ancestry.com/s33216/t11565/grid1003/rd.ashx">Census Records</a> | <a href="http://www.ancestry.com/s33216/t11566/grid1003/rd.ashx">Vital Records</a> | <a href="http://www.ancestry.com/s33216/t11567/grid1003/rd.ashx">Family Trees & Communities</a> | <a href="http://www.ancestry.com/s33216/t11568/grid1003/rd.ashx">Immigration Records</a> | <a href="http://www.ancestry.com/s33216/t11569/grid1003/rd.ashx">Military Records</a> <span id="br"> </span> <a href="http://www.ancestry.com/s33216/t11570/grid1003/rd.ashx">Directories & Member Lists</a> | <a href="http://www.ancestry.com/s33216/t11571/grid1003/rd.ashx">Family & Local Histories</a> | <a href="http://www.ancestry.com/s33216/t11572/grid1003/rd.ashx">Newspapers & Periodicals</a> | <a href="http://www.ancestry.com/s33216/t11573/grid1003/rd.ashx">Court, Land & Probate</a> | <a href="http://www.ancestry.com/s33216/t11574/grid1003/rd.ashx">Finding Aids</a> </div> <span id="min