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Skagit River Journal

of History & Folklore
Subscribers Edition Stories & Photos
The most in-depth, comprehensive site about the Skagit.
Covers from British Columbia to Puget sound. Counties covered: Skagit, Whatcom, Island, San Juan. An evolving history dedicated to the principle of committing random acts of historical kindness

Noel V. Bourasaw, editor (bullet)

810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, Washington, 98284
Home of the Tarheel Stomp (bullet)

Mortimer Cook slept here & named the town Bug

Rupert and Mary Hammer Gale
family of Sedro-Woolley

Rupert Gale

Nearly five years ago when we worked with the late Wyman Hammer to research the Hammer and Green families of Sedro-Woolley, we were stumped by the marriage of Emerson Hammer's daughter, Mary, to Rupert Gale. He seemed to have dropped off the edge of the earth. We posted an inquiry on a genealogy bulletin board and we were pleased when Mary's granddaughter Christy answered and helped us along the road to fleshing out the Gale family. Soon thereafter we were introduced by email to her cousin, Russ Gale.
Their marriage is a classic example of people from different social strata in a frontier town courting and then marrying without the wholehearted support of parents. As Christy Gale noted, Rupert "married up" and they definitely "made a go of it," as folks used to say. "My grandparents (Mary and Rupert) eloped and got married in Seattle, Christy explained. "My grandmother used to tell the story about when she went back home and her mother [Isabelle (also spelled Isabel) Hammer] said 'Mary, why didn't you tell me? I would have given you a nice wedding,' to which Mary replied 'How could you do that, mother, when you wouldn't let him in the house?' " We know that Rupert was soon accepted in the family with welcome arms and soon took over one of the Hammer family businesses.

Members of the Gale and Hammer clan gathered on the porch of the Emerson Hammer mansion in 1959. From l. to r.: William Gale, son of Rupert and Mary; Isabelle Hammer, Mary Hammer, and two of Mary's grandchildren, Christy and Glenda.

If you have read the story of the famous pioneers, Emerson and Isabelle Hammer, you will know that they migrated here from Kansas in 1889 on their honeymoon after marrying back there on February 13. They traveled by rail and steamboat from Lincoln Center, Kansas, via San Francisco and Seattle. Emerson stepped onto the steamboat dock at Sterling, and Mortimer Cook, the founder of old Sedro, soon hired him to be clerk of the general store at Sterling that Cook had just purchased. Within two years, Emerson started a store of his own in Burlington and Isabelle's father, George Green, moved out from Kansas and joined them there, building his own sawmill.
Green set up shop in old Woolley in 1897 with a business he called Green Shingle Co., while Emerson apparently looked after the family interests in Burlington. In 1900, Emerson and Isabelle and their three children moved permanently to Sedro-Woolley and in 1902, Emerson became a partner with Green and F.A. Hegg in the new Union Mercantile at the southwest corner of Ferry and Metcalf streets, the first department store in town. The men were also partners with others in timber businesses here and upriver and Emerson became a leading politician, as mayor of Sedro-Woolley and Washington state senator. Mary Elizabeth Hammer was born on Aug. 11, 1891, in Sterling, just before her parents and her maternal grandfather, George Green, set up business in Burlington. She was the second child after her brother, George Hammer, who later founded the Oliver-Hammer Clothes Shop. He was born in Clear Lake in June 1889.
Rupert Stanley Gale, Mary's eventual husband, was also born on Oct. 29, 1891, in Nooksack, north in Whatcom county, the son of William Henry and Annie Gale. William was born in England country and grew up in the Northumberland district of Ontario after his family emigrated to Canada. He apparently left home in 1881 at age 20 and worked west on the Canadian Pacific railroad crews. His wife was born in Wisconsin. They came to Whatcom county sometime circa 1890 for William to work for the Northern Pacific railroad. All three of their children were born while they lived in Nooksack and then they moved to Port Townsend briefly before they moved to Woolley by 1900. William continued working for Northern Pacific and they owned a chicken ranch on the Cook road.

William and Mattie Gale, Rupert's parents

Mary Hammer's younger sister, Joyce, married James Ruel, the son of George and Florence Ruel. Florence was born in Galt, Canada, and married George Ruel in Michigan before they migrated to old Woolley in 1892. George owned the saloon where the B&A pool room and tavern was later located. After George died in 1904, Florence married Wilfrid R. Morgan, who started the power and water companies for Sedro-Woolley in 1902. The Morgans built the beautiful white house at the corner of Puget and Northern, north of the railroad tracks, where Mae Parker still lives. They built the house to the east as a honeymoon cottage for James and Joyce Ruel, and after James and Joyce moved to Forks, Willard and Harriet Eaton lived there.
We do not have school records for Mary and Rupert, but we know from a listing in the 1914 Oursel annual of Sedro-Woolley High School that Mary Hammer graduated with the class of 1912. In the 1909 Oursel, Mary and Rupert are both listed as sophomores. Rupert was the "class marshal." The one word description of Rupert is "smiling" and Mary is "romantic" In the "report card," Mary got a 99 for flirting; Rupert got a 15. Both received a 95 for ambition. Mary got a 99 for fussing. They would have attended elementary school together in what was called the Sedro Graded School at Talcott and Sixth streets until 1911 and then was renamed Franklin School. The high school was originally located north across Talcott where the tennis courts are today. It was renamed Irving School in 1911 when the present Union High School was being erected. Mary would have been in the first graduating class in the new high school. Rupert is never listed as graduating with any class of that period, so we assume that he dropped out of school to work.

Mary Hammer's birth certificate — the earliest one we have seen

Mary, on the other hand, lived out her ambition in the education department. She attended the exclusive Mills College in Oakland, California, through at least 1914 and then she is pictured in 1915 in the group of teacher candidates at the Bellingham Normal School, now Western Washington University. She apparently taught for one term after graduation in January 1917. Then they eloped to be married on July 20, 1917, in Seattle, and in those days, married female teachers were terminated. Rupert and Mary had three boys, all born in Sedro-Woolley: William Emerson Gale, born in 1918; Russ's father; Arthur Stanley Gale, born Dec. 3, 1920; and Christy's father, Jack A. Gale, born Aug. 24, 1924, the same day his aunt Joyce was married. An article in the Skagit County Times of Sedro-Woolley announced their marriage when they returned:

The big and gratifying surprise to our citizens since the last issue of the Times came last Friday morning when they read in the marriage license column of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that a marriage license had been issued to Rupert S. Gale and Miss Mary E. Hammer. The date of the marriage was not noted, but it is supposable that that the young folks did not unnecessarily delay the consummation of one of life's most delightful experiences.
The lives of both the contracting parties have been spent in this city and its immediate vicinity, and neither of them have anything but friends of the very best kind anywheres hereabouts. If good will and wishes will bring them success the best of fortune is assured them. The groom is the son of W.H. Gale whose home is just west of the city and the bride is the eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Emerson Hammer of this city.

Rupert's record in newspapers of the times is sketchy. A story in the June 3, 1920, Sedro-Woolley Courier-Times announced that his uncle, Hi Hammer sold the Central Grocery store — opened in 1917, to Rupert S. Gale. The story noted that Hammer and his wife, Catherine, were taking a long vacation to Yakima. Rupert's time at the store did not last long because a Dec. 29, 1921, Courier-Times story announced that Gale sold the grocery and that Rupert was now the manager of the Green and Hammer Ferry Street Garage. The buyer for the store was George White, who owned a variety store downtown in the Knights of Pythias building; he said he was representing an Everett man.

Above: This is the Emerson Hammer mansion in 1910, at the southwest corner of State and Puget streets. It was built as one of the most stylish homes in town in 1902, when Emerson and Isabelle Hammer moved here permanently from Burlington. Just behind their home, across the alley, was the home of Isabelle's parents, George and Mae Green. And across the street from them was the house built by Ben Vandeveer, which still stands and is now known as the Lisherness house. Below: a sad photo of the mansion being torn down in December 1966. A bank now stands in its place.

The Ferry Street Garage announced its grand opening in the Courier-Times on March 13, 1917, with a half-page advertisement about a free St. Patrick's Day dance featuring Nell Quackenbush Wheelock's orchestra from Birdsview. The garage was an agent for Overland, Willys-Knight and Nash autos and trucks, including the Willys Six and Nash Six. From talking to old timers, we are pretty certain that the garage was located in the building that then stood in what is alley on the south side of Ferry street across from Domino's Pizza and Hammer Heritage Square. Somewhere in this mix of the times is a mysterious business under the Gale name. The Courier-Times reported in August 1921 that the Gale Shingle Company in Sedro burned to the ground. Jack Gale thinks that William may have owned it.
In 1924, Rupert moved his young family south to work for Northern Pacific as a bridge inspector, just before their third son, Jack, was born. Their new home was on Mercer island, now a fashionable, luxurious suburb, but it was then a remote outpost where land was inexpensive because there was no bridge connecting it with Seattle to the west, and there was no Bellevue yet to the east. Rupert probably rode one of the hourly ferries back and forth to work and the kids were free to roam the island, which was still partly wooded at that time. Indians called it a foggy place, and it was named for Seattle pioneer Thomas Mercer. When the Gales moved there, the town was a small, unincorporated farming community surrounded by summer homes along the shoreline for the upper middle class of rapidly growing Seattle.
Their oldest son, William E. Gale, worked in Seattle through the 1950s and died there in 1959. In 1931, as the nationwide Depression set in, Rupert was laid off by the railroad and he went to Alaska for six years where he worked in fish processing plants and kept books for them. When they moved back down to Seattle, Rupert was rehired by the Northern Pacific engineering department. He worked near King street depot in Seattle and he and Mary moved lived in Seattle with son Bill. Arthur S. Gale, the middle son, worked with Bill in Seattle until he enlisted in the Navy during World War II and married Mary Jane Reed while serving at Everett. While a teenager, he spent several summers with his aunt and uncle, the Ruels, in Forks and even went to school there part-time. In 1953 he moved to Forks and managed their hardware store and later owned it. After Mary died, he moved to Shelton and still lives there. He had six boys and a girl. Their youngest son, Jack A. Gale, also worked in Seattle and married in 1927 and he and Virginia had two boys and a girl, including Christy. He was later transferred to Walnut Creek, California, by Continental Can after serving in World War II. After Virginia died, he married his present wife, Natalie. Jack still fondly remembers visiting his grandparents, the Hammers, when he was a child, living on Mercer Island. Senator Hammer died on March 6, 1940, at age 83, and Isabel lived at the mansion on the southwest corner of Fourth and State streets as a widow for 26 more years, dying on Sept. 24, 1966, just a month shy of her 98th birthday. She loved hosting the grandkids and then great-grandchildren during their summer vacations and Christy especially remembers the charm of the mansion and her great-grandmother:
"She died when I was about 12, shortly after my family moved to California," Christy calls. "Her house was always a mystery to me. By then, she lived only on the first floor and the upper floors were pretty dilapidated. I would ask my father to take me upstairs to explore, because I found it too scary to go alone."
Rupert Gale died in Seattle in 1960, just six weeks after his son Bill died. Mary moved down to Walnut Creek, California, to live with her son Jack and remained a widow until she died in 1977. Rupert's mother, Annie, died in Sedro-Woolley in 1915. William remarried to a woman named Mattie but she also passed away before he died in 1938 in Seattle.

More Hammer stories

The story of the Hammer, Green and Parker families who made such an impact on Sedro-Woolley and Lincoln, Kansas, and who were honored with the dedication of Hammer Heritage Square in Sedro-Woolley on July 3 during Loggerodeo.
Hammer Heritage Square.
George Hammer's Oliver Hammer Clothes Shop in Sedro-Woolley.

Story posted on August 18, 2005
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Rupert and Mary Hammer Gale family of Sedro-Woolley

Rupert and Mary Hammer Gale
family of Sedro-Woolley