The Annual Snohomish Historical Society Home Tour will be held Sunday, September 17th from noon to 5pm. General admission tickets cost $15.00. Adults over 62 and children under 12 receive a discounted rate of $12.00.
Eleanor Leight with the second Chinese Dragon puppet head
The first puppet head wore out. So Bill Jack built another one, now on exhibit at the Blackman House Museum’s Gallery — along with costumes, props and photos galore!
Besides, the first one was to big. Eleanor tells the hysterical story of her oldest son, Steven, who was wearing the puppet head in one of the early shows and couldn’t get through a door. The dragon puppet glows wen lit with only black-light and is an audience favorite.
Eleanor led the Leight Fantastics dance troupe along with a variety of talent through 34 years of shows that came to end this past Mother’s Day weekend.
It all began when the first president of the Society, Everett Olsen asked Eleanor if she might put a show together as a fundraiser for the new historical society — never thinking it would turn into an annual event.
(Scroll down for a documentary excerpt of Everett.)
But Eleanor, who celebrated her nineth birthday this year, will continue on with rehearsals for smaller shows at the Evergreen Fair and other venues. So, it’s still not too late to learn tap.
You can join Eleanor and the gang on Monday evening’s at St Michael’s Hall, and on Thursdays at the Snohomish Center Center; which is a good place to contact Eleanor for more information. “No one is turned away,” she emphasized.
The Blackman House is open Saturday and Sunday afternoons from noon until 3 o’clock, and by appointment — call 425.315.2256 to make arrangements.
For the past week the interior of our house museum has been cast in the role of a brothel.
The independent feature, “You Can’t Win” is based on the book of the same name published in 1926. Black’s autobiographical novel tracks his life on the road freight-hopping across the western United States and Canada, and his experiences with the Yegg Brotherhood of hobos, bums, tramps and criminals who rode the rails in turn-of-the-century America. In the movie treatment, Jack finds redemption from his wild ways in the love of a prostitue — hence a brothel.
Staring in and producing is Michael Pitt, recently appearing in “Boardwalk” an HBO production. He is pictured here with Mayor Karen Guzak (and a Society super supporter), with an unidentified cast member.
Mayor Karen was invited to join the cast and crew for their “lunch” break. The Waltz Building played the role of lunch room for the cast and crew of close to 100 people.
The first show in the new Snohomish High Performing Arts Center for Eleanor and her troupe of tap dancers, comedians, even one opera singer, will be her last.
The Snohomish Historical Society’s 34th annual variety show, “Memories,” is scheduled for 7 p.m., May 10, 11 and 12, with an additional 2 p.m. presentation set for May 12 and 13, at the Snohomish High School Performing Arts Center, 1316 Fifth St.
Tickets cost $7.25 for seniors and students, and $9.75 for adults.
The annual Snohomish Historical Society Parlour Tour will be held Sunday, December 11th from noon to 4pm. General admission tickets cost $15.00. Adults over 62 and children under 12 receive a discounted rate of $12.00.
Ed Anderson, left, with David DilgardED ANDERSON, GREAT GRANDSON OF WALTER P. BELL — SNOHOMISH CITY’S FIRST ATTORNEY — DONATES PAPERS AND PHOTOGRAPHS TO THE SNOHOMISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
As Ed tells the story, it was a rainy evening, when he received five dirty dusty cardboard boxes, from his mother. She had been storing them in the crawl space of the family home — an inheritance from her Mother’s sister — the family pack-rat.
That was nearly ten years ago. It has taken Ed this long to sort through all 5 boxes with the discipline of his training as a civil engineer, currently employed with Boeing.
Walter P. Bell, c.1888His great-grandfather, Walter P. Bell was born in Iowa in 1856. He came to Washington 23 years later, working as a cowboy by day and reading law in the evening.
He began practicing law in Port Townsend, was engaged in the mail service on the steamships, and finally opening a law office on the second floor of Wilbur’s Drug Store on First Street, downtown Snohomish. Attorney Bell was instrumental in forming the articles of city’s first incorporation in 1888, and was elected to serve as the city’s first attorney.
It was around this time that Walter met and eventually married Lillian Blackman who had followed her father Almon to Snohomish from Maine. They were cousins to the well known Blackman Brothers who settle here in 1872.
The couple gave birth to four children, Harold, Mary, Doris and Winifred. Mary was Ed’s grandmother and Doris is the heroine of this story for saving everything — papers, letters, photographs, even diaries kept by her great grandmother back in Maine who never made the journey west, yet recorded the ups and downs of the clan so far away.
Doris with her father Walter, 1923Walter P. Bell moved his office to Everett after Snohomish lost the county seat in 1897. He was elected attorney general of Washington in 1908, serving for three years, when he was appointed judge of the superior court.
Included in this generous and significant donation is a statement from the Claim Department of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, dated July 9, 1934, notifying Mrs. Lillian Bell of a $2,000 payment upon the death of her husband, (in the same year).
All materials donated to the Historical Society are processed under the supervision of Kathleen Lince, the Society’s paid archivist. Your membership makes this vital community service available — please consider joining today.
This meeting is for You!  Please join fellow Snohomish Historical Society members for a presentation on the historic Carnegie Library project.  Come hear about the current plans and future use of Snohomish’s own gem presented by Melody Clemons, president of the Snohomish Carnegie Education Center.  You won’t want to miss this one!
ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Alberta and Richard (pictured above) visited the Blackman House Museum carrying a large box. Inside was a well-used Victorian album, covered in faded rose velvet, with thick pages trimmed in gold. “It was my grandmother’s album,” explained Richard Guttormsen. She was Edith Blackman, daughter of Elhanan and Francis, born in 1872, the same year that the Blackman brothers left Maine for the Pacific Northwest.
The E. Blackman Album is now under the care of Kathleen Lince, the Society’s first paid archivist who has been creating accession records of our papers and memorabilia since the spring of 2008 with a generous grant from the Stack Family Foundation.
The album will be on display at our Annual Meeting on Monday evening, November 16, at the Waltz Building, 116 Avenue B. A business meeting begins at 7pm with the election of Directors and Officers and other business, which will adjourn to enjoy the Director’s (Home Made) Desert Buffet at 8pm, along with a champagne toast to the 150th Anniversary of the City’s founding.
The Founders Award for Historic Preservation, 2009 will be presented to Zouhair Mardini and Mosaic Architecture for their outstanding collaboration on the 901 First Street Building project. Joshua Scott and members of the Mosaic team will give a show and tell presentation of the two-year long project.
And my two-year term as President ends with 2009, so this letter is the last opportunity I will have to gently remind you how important your financial support is to the survival of the Society’s mission. The dues have not been raised for 2010; instead, I am asking you to consider raising your level of commitment to the Society by renewing at the Sustaining Member, or even the Archivist level of membership of $150, for which I will gratefully sign and deliver a copy of my book “Early Snohomish.â€
I couldn’t help wonder while turning the thick pages of the recently acquired Blackman Album — what would have happened to this priceless treasure of local history if our Society and its archives did not exist?
And the same question can be asked of our entire collection that began 40 years ago – from one of the smallest artifacts: Mrs. E. C. Ferguson’s calling card that she left while visiting the Blackmans – to the largest: the historic home itself!
Your continuing commitment is our main source of revenue; without it, the Society will fade away, and future donors will have only the likes of eBay … or the dumpster!
Please join us for the Annual Meeting on November 16th at 7p.
Joan Curtis, historian and author of “Town on the Sound” the history of Steilacoom, traveled to Snohomish on Sunday, October 11th, to participate in a discussion about the founding of Snohomish.
The event was held in conjunction with an exhibition titled, “E. C. Ferguson in Steilacoom, 1858-59,” which is on view during Museum hours, weekends from 1 to 4pm.
Joining Joan was David Dilgard, well known to Society members as the History Specialist in the Northwest Room of the Everett Public Library who has adopted the history of Snohomish to the benefit of us all.
Moderating the discussion was Warner Blake who first introduced David as one who introduced him to the history of Snohomish. “And David’s accounts always began with Steilacoom,” Warner said, “so finally, early this year I visited the Steilacoom Historical Society and was lucky enough to show up on a day when Joan was at work in the archives.”
Immediately, she found a reference in the history of Pierce County referring to E. C. Ferguson and some 95 other bachelors calling for a meeting to ” devise ways to secure the emigration of the fair sex from the Atlantic States to our shores.” At the discussion on Sunday, Joan reported that no other account of the meeting has been found, and David felt it was most likely a fraternal activity without serious intentions of taking further steps. In fact, the meeting was called for a day in February 1860, three months before Ferguson took up residence on the Snohomish River.
Four years later, Asa Mercer acted on the idea when he brought 11 women to Seattle from the east coast who became known as the Mercer Girls.
The account that Ferguson had a child with a native woman in Snohomish before his marriage in 1868 to Lucetta Morgan was brought up. David reminded us that it was common for the white settlers of Snohomish to take an Indian wife and that in fact, the first school in 1865 was attended by the children of these mixed marriages. Joan reported that this was not common in the early years of Steilacoom, perhaps due to the transit nature of Steilacoom’s population — most were on their way to somewhere else — as was the case with our Mr. Ferguson.
Following the discussion, guests visited the exhibition in the Gallery of the Blackman House that features images and text of life in Steilacoom when Ferguson lived there, along with portraits of his business partners in the plan to establish a ferry across the Snohomish River for the military road proposed to connect Steilacoom with Bellingham.
Only Ferguson took up residence here when financing for the road fell through. David reminded us that it’s very unusual for a founding settler to actually settle-in as Ferguson did in the town that he named after the river and where he lived until his death in 1911.
Our dear friend, and Life Member, Bill Blake was sent off in proper style on his new adventure with a packed memorial service on Thursday, July 16, 2009, at Snohomish’s Presbyterian Church.
Bill was born in the family home on Avenue H in 1921, and where he was living with his daughter Bonnie when he died in the hospital on July 8th. He had been in and out of the hospital for the past couple of years, so it was always a treat when I would run into him shopping at Top Foods. He would apologize that he wasn’t quite ready yet to take the tour of First Street that he promised for an oral history project that I was hoping to do with him. That’s how I met Bill, as the to-go-guy with a question of what business preceded the current one in such and such building on First.
Once, I found Bill in the flower section at the store and asked him what he was up to. It was Memorial Day weekend and he was picking out flowers for his wife’s grave, “I don’t want Georgia upset with me,” he said. No chance of the now.
Bill would have enjoyed the exhibition now on view in our Waltz Building, titled, “Treasurers from the Attic.” Charter member, Middy Ruthruff led a committee responsible for selecting, installing and now attending the extensive exhibition of a wide variety of objects and memorabilia. And it’s FREE! Open from 11 to 3p. everyday until July 25th.
Finally, a heads-up that my monthly column in the Tribune, “Snohomish: Then and Now” is also available on it’s own website: Snohomish Then And Now — and it has just been updated with a story about Bickford Motors, a generous supporter of the Society.