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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

Rare early Sedro-Woolley newspaper
Skagit County Times, Sedro, May 2, 1896

This was the Board of Trade building in new Sedro. New Sedro rose a half mile northwest of old Sedro by the Skagit river in the years 1888-89. New Sedro was centered on the block where the high school now stands. Businesses were clustered from the north-south Seattle Lake Shore & Eastern railroad tracks east to about Seventh street, and from Fidalgo street to Nelson street. There was still a dense forest between Nelson and the new town of Woolley to the north. All the newspapers before 1899 burned in various fires, so we have had to depend on the few rare copies like this one that surface. This drawing is from an 1890 issue of Washington magazine. We will soon be sharing a series of articles that the magazine featured about Sedro and Woolley in that year. You can find a bound volume of those magazine issues at the Allen wing of the Suzallo Library at the University of Washington campus.

May 2, 1896 We have transcribed notes from this issue, in toto for some entries, summarizing others. Historian Deanna Ammons has shared copies of newspapers found by an unnamed source when he was remodeling his house locally. We are transcribing many more issues that you can see as we add at least one per week at our website for newspapers logs. We have added parenthetical notes in [ ] to clarify, provide brief biographies or add emphasis. The masthead of this issue of the Skagit County Times lists the Gillis brothers as editors and publishers. Sometime in the mid-1890s, Junius B. Alexander — one of the promoters of the town of new Sedro in 1890, recruited two brothers, Walter and Albert Gillis, to run the day-to-day operations of the Times and they eventually bought into the company. The Gillis brothers were also known for their thespian roles in county plays, including productions at the Bowery Square or Opera House, which stood just across the alley from behind the present Jungquist Furniture. The Times was moved from an undisclosed location to the present location of the Mission Market building at the southeast corner of State and Third streets sometime in 1899. Walter and Albert Gillis were also partners with some of their other brothers in a local construction firm. This company built many local homes and businesses and the Presbyterian church, which stood in the 300 block of Talcott until it burned in the 1970s. They were also the prime contractors for William Murdock, who platted the Grand Junction addition east of the street that is now named for him. Sometime in the summer before Sedro and Woolley merged in December 1898, Walter and Albert opened a newspaper in Issaquah.
One of the brand new details we learned from this masthead is that there were two offices for the newspaper since the towns of Sedro and Woolley both still had separate municipal governments. The Sedro office was in the Pioneer block at the northeast corner of Third and Bennett streets, where the administrative offices of the high school now stand. The Woolley office was in an interesting location at the corner of Northern avenue and Murdock street. That general area was also occupied by the Skagit Steam Laundry and later by the Shrewsbury Mill and clothespin factory. The paper was still published each Saturday and we suspect that the Sedro location was the main office because it was mailed from the Sedro post office as second-class matter. Subscriptions cost $1 per year or 50¢ for six months.
Another tantalizing tidbit is the numbering of the issue as Volume 6, number 15. By counting back, we are able to peg the first issue as appearing on Saturday, Jan. 24, 1891. Up until now, we have all quoted the 1906 Illustrated History book, which stated that the Times began publication in February that year. The "flag" at the top of the first page lists both Sedro and Woolley as the place of publication, with Sedro listed first.

Local and personal, page 1

Attorney J. Henry Smith made a business trip to Mt. Vernon, Tuesday. Mrs. Thomas Smith, who has been visiting relatives at Cokedale for some time, returned to Mt. Vernon, Wednesday.
Editor [Al] Sebring of the [Mount Vernon] Record is in town today. [Sebring was another famous Skagit county editor. In the late 1880s and early '90s, he was assistant editor for the Skagit News in Mount Vernon. He then rode the Populist tide and on Nov. 2, 1893, he launched Record, initially used the plant and resources of the James Power's Avon Record, which had failed in the first days of "Hard Times." The nationwide Financial Panic of 1893 killed off many banks and newspapers. Sebring rode out hard times for almost exactly four years until he joined the Mount Vernon Argus organization in the fall of 1897.
Doing business: [Robert Bruce] in Mount Vernon. W.E. Hightower in Mount Vernon. B.M. Jarvis of Montborne is doing business with our banker on Tuesday.

Consulting legalities: David Batey in Seattle. John Munro, Joseph Hart, Otto Klement and David Batey in Mount Vernon.
[Sometime earlier in 1896, the planing mill and sawmill that Batey and Hart built near the Skagit river in 1891 burned pretty much to the ground. Batey was stricken with sciatic rheumatism that year and he retired from mill work to open an apple cider vinegar works on his homestead near where the Goodyear Nelson mill later stood. From this item in the newspaper, we infer that these four men were meeting to plan another mill. We believe that the mill was located about where Art's Auto Wrecking was later built, just east of Third street and the old Clear Lake bridge.]
John was the oldest of five Munro brothers. John and at least two other brothers moved to Sedro in 1889 to aid P.A. Woolley in building his sawmill on his proposed townsite of Woolley. They may have been related to Woolley but we have not yet established that. John Munro eventually became the owner of the mill by the river. It was long known as the Grand Rapids Mill, named for the area they came from in Michigan. The mill burned in 1914, but was rebuilt. He still had a shingle company here in 1940 because it is mentioned in a newspaper article. James Cornelius Munro was the marshal in Sedro-Woolley in 1905 and the brothers also owned a shoe store in the 800 block of Metcalf street. Their building was purchased by publisher Frank Evans sometime after 1920 and that is now the location of the Courier-Times newspaper.]

This photo of the Hotel Sedro shows the most amazing building in the history of our town. Located west across Third street from where the present high school stands, it was the brainchild of Norman B. Kelley, Junius B. Alexander and other Seattle backers of the Seattle Lake Shore & Eastern railroad line. Three stories high, it unfortunately went bankrupt within a year of opening. It was planned before P.A. Woolley chose the better location for his town and the Union Depot and suffered even further as the region was devastated by the National Depression that began in late 1892 and 1893. It was finally torn down in 1897 after the last of many fires. We do not have an actual photo of the building, just as we do not have an actual photo of any of the main structures in new Sedro from 1888-99. We hope that a reader will someday have one.

Benjamin Donnelly of Wickersham has come down to take charge of the Baker & [David] Donnelly butcher shop at Woolley [Northern avenue].
James Wilson of Olympia Marsh visited his invalid brother at St. Elizabeth's hospital. [This was the first county hospital, located at the southwest corner of Fidalgo and Township streets in the former Sedro Hotel, not to be confused with the Hotel Sedro on Third street.
Thomas [Costello] of Lyman visited the county hub. [This brings an interesting question. Did the editor mean the county seat in Mount Vernon or "Woolley, the hub of Skagit county," as it was called.
A. Cone of Seattle, a fur trader, was in Sedro-Woolley on Friday. [Barber J.C. Ames was in the fur business and would eventually spend less time on tonsorial pursuits and more time on his furs after a stint in the Klondike during the gold rush in the late 1890s.
John Leballister of Edison is visiting Sedro relatives.
Mr. Nicholson is building a cottage on his property fronting on Murdock street.
The Metcalf and Wade shingle mill at Anacortes was entirely destroyed by fire on April 24.
Owing to chilly weather, the river is not as high as is [desirable] this season of the year.
[Rolland] Munro went to Avon Monday to run the double block machine in the Larson shingle mill [brother of John Munro above].
M.C. Cargile is selling fruits, candies and tobaccoes in one half of R.A. Hohensee's old stand.
Joseph Murdock returned Thursday from his trip to the Cariboo country [British Columbia gold rush country north of the Fraser and Thompson rivers. Joe says there is too many men there now and no work.
Visiting town: James Lemieus of Hamilton here for business. C.C. Korn of Sauk. Joseph Hattern of Hamilton. Mrs. Thomas Smith has been visiting relatives at Cokedale. F.A. Mitchell on mill business, up from Seattle. [This is the first time that we have heard millman Mitchell's name. The only reference we have had to him is from historian John Conrad, who mentioned the Mitchell mill that was located on Collins road west of Sterling in the 1890s.]
Mount Vernon. Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Frank L. Crampton marries Blanche Lorensey, both of Mount Vernon, at the Butler Hotel in Seattle. [Miss Lorensey's parents opened the Brooklyn Hotel in Mount Vernon in the 1880s. It burned in the famous 1891 fire that leveled the downtown and was rebuilt sometime thereafter.]
McMurray people. [Lake McMurray was very much considered part of the district then. A McMurray Murmurs column was on the front page, signed as Solitaire..] Chas Burgher of McMurray returned from Olympia marsh points on Wednesday. [Olympia Marsh was the swampy area west and east of the modern junction of Cook road and Hwy. 99 and the I-5 freeway, extending down towards Burlington.] Ed Byron is foreman of McCoy's logging camp at McMurray. Mrs. Kate Hall is back from California, looking after her numerous interests here. Rev. Mr. Palmer of the Episcopal mission for this county addressed large audience here.
McMurray mills. The shingle mill is idle, cedar seems to be scarce. The weather has been so inclement that our loggers have not been able to get material for the employment of the mill, but the company has procured a sufficient quantity of logs to come by rail to soon keep the mill in operation day and night. C.E. Patten, secretary of the Atlas Lumber company is spending considerable time in our city. Oscar Nelson, night single-block sawyer, has returned to Ballard.

Government officials, page 2

Washington state: Governor John H. McGraw.
McGraw was a Republican who arrived in Seattle penniless from Maine in 1876 and took a job as a clerk at the Occidental Hotel. McGraw found himself in the middle of two of the most controversial mob riots during Seattle's early days. He was the Seattle chief of police on Jan. 17, 1882, when a businessman was fatally wounded during a robbery. He and King County sheriff Lewis Wykoff temporarily staved off the mob that soon formed but they were overwhelmed and the lynch mob strung up the robbers on two maple trees just yards from the Occidental. Not satisfied with hanging those two, the mob broke into the jail and lynched another prisoner. Wycoff had a heart attack and died two days later, and McGraw was soon elected to take his place.
While he was sheriff, an anti-Chinese committee rounded up Seattle's Chinese population on Feb. 7, 1886, and drove them to the dock to put them on steamers and deport them back to China. Even though McGraw rounded up a posse and Territory Governor Watson Squire called out the Home Guard, the mob managed to put 350 Chinese on two steamers. While serving three terms as sheriff, McGraw studied law and became an attorney in 1888. He became an ardent Republican and ran for governor in 1892 with the slogan, "Build the Lake Washington Canal and Build it for 1893." Washington voters marked their ballots for both McGraw and Republican Benjamin Harrison for president, but Grover Cleveland was elected president while McGraw became the state's second governor. The canal was not completed until the Ballard Locks opened in 1917.
McGraw became forever known as "a zealous friend of the [University of Washington] when he led the campaign to purchase of land south of 45th street where the cornerstone for the first building was laid on the Fourth of July, 1894. He also left quite a mark on the waterfront, signing the bill to authorize dredging and filling the Duwamish tideflats, which led to the creation of Harbor island. He is most remembered in Bellingham for signing the legislation that created the New Whatcom Normal School to replace the infant college formed out in Lynden. The normal school evolved over the years into what is now Western Washington University, the editor's alma mater and the state's third-largest college.
Like the first governor, Elisha P. Ferry, McGraw only served one term. He happened to take office at the beginning of Washington's worst Depression before the 1890s. Democrats made inroads into the suddenly unemployed and even though the Republicans had a majority in the state legislature, they were stymied by the Populists. There was such an impasse in the upper house that the warring parties could not agree on a U.S. Senator, so the seat remained vacant for two years.
By the time of this Times issue in May, McGraw could see that his chances for a second term was doomed. John Rogers, a populist from Spokane, had managed to shepherd a bill through the legislature that would become known as the Barefoot Schoolboy Law, under which the state paid school districts six dollars per year for every child enrolled in school. By the time of the 1896 election, McGraw's health had declined. He was bit by the gold bug the next year and spent three years in the Klondike gold rush, returning home no richer but much healthier. He became a leading Seattle businessman and died in 1910. Rogers was elected governor on the Populist ticket during that party's near-sweep in 1896 and was the first governor to win reelection, in the 1900 election, but died in office the day after Christmas 1901. The lieutenant governor was Mount Vernon's own Henry McBride and he served out the rest of Rogers's uncompleted term as governor. .
Other state officers included: Lieutenant Governor Frank H. Luce, Secretary of State James H. Price and Attorney General W.C. Jones.
Congress: W.C. Squire [served 1889-97] and John L. Wilson [1895-99], senators. [Ed. note: here's a whopper of a mistake in this issue. John L. Wilson is still also listed as Washington's sole member in the U.S. House of Representatives. We wonder how many weeks the Gillis brothers left Wilson's name on the list as representative after the state legislature elected him as U.S. Senator in 1895. He served as a representative for six years after Washington's statehood in 1889. He was replaced in that office by William H. Doolittle. This is one more example, students, why you should always seek a second opinion while researching.
County officers: State senator F.C. Harper; Superior Court Judge Henry McBride [will become governor in 1901]; county attorney [George] A. Joiner; county clerk F.B. Lippincott; State representatives Herbert S. Conner, A.M. Moore; auditor Hiram Hammer, treasurer James Dunlap; commissioners John Dale, J.P. Flick, L. Andrews; Sheriff William E. Parkinson, assessor H.C. Hoard, surveyor John H. Meehan, superintendent of schools W.B. Davis.
[Re: Mr. Joiner, we quote from H. James Boswell's 1922 book, American Blue Book Western Washington,"In 1901 he went on the superior bench of Skagit and San Juan counties and served in that capacity for twelve years."
City officers, Sedro: Mayor [Menzo] B. Mattice; councilmen C.E. Bingham, H.H. Green, M. Helmick, William Woods, F.M. West; treasurer William T. Odlin, clerk Harry L. Devin, city attorney J.J. Gallagher, marshal J.J. Reuter.
City officers, Woolley: Mayor P.A. Woolley; councilmen Philip L. "Bert" Woolley [son of founder P.A.], Ira J. Stiles [first master of Masons Lodge and future postmaster], W.H. Cook, Norris Ormsby, George W. Ruel; treasurer William Doherty, clerk J.E. Kulp, city attorney A.W. Salisbury, marshal John Barney. [Salisbury was the first city attorney in 1891 and wrote the legal opinion that December that advised of the illegal aspects of consolidation of the young towns of Sedro and Woolley.]

Government officials, page 2

Regular sessions of superior court at Mount Vernon on the second Monday in February, the first Monday in June, fourth Monday in September, first Monday in December.
Board of teachers examination meets at Mount Vernon [also spelled Mt. Vernon at times] on the second Thursdays in February, May, August and November.
Commissioners meet at Mount Vernon on the first Monday of every month.
Quoted from Washington Immigrant: The motto adopted by the Skagit County Immigration Association is a good one and might be followed by every portion of the state. It is: "Every thrifty immigrant added to our population is a direct benefit to every taxpayer, every business man and every resident of the county."

Fritsch Bros Hardware, Woolley, circa 1892

Advertisements

J. Henry Smith, Attorney at Law, office in Cole building, Sedro-Woolley. [That's right, he included the hyphenated town name in his ad. This is the earliest mention we have found. We know from other research that Junius B. Alexander was pushing that year for the merger of the towns through his development company, Sedro Land & Improvement Co. The actual merger, however, with the hyphenated name was still 31 months away.]
M. Helmick's: Yes very cheap, but still a profit. Best canned corn, 10¢ per can; Best canned salmon 10¢ per can; table fruit 15¢ per can; string beans 10¢ per can or 3 for 25¢; chocolate 25¢ per pound. We have 8 tons of No. 1 seed oats, $20 per ton. Field peas 3¢ per pound. Sedro. [Mr. Helmick wagon of meat & provisions for Cokedale left 9 Pm. [suspect because train under high water] [Cokedale column: arrived 1 a.m. next morning].
H.L. Devin: For sale. 10 acre tracts of choice fruit and farming land within one to two miles of Sedro at $15 per acre. Sedro.
Fritsch Bros. Hardware: Headquarters for hardware, tinware, stoves, sash, doors, paints, emery wheels and ammunition. Woolley.
Sedro Land & Improvement Co. [Junius B. Alexander, Winfield Scott Jameson]: No cash to secure homes. Residence lots sold at low prices. Special inducements to businesses desiring to locate here. Sedro. [Read more about Alexander.]
Hotel Sedro. The only first-class hotel in the Skagit valley. Tables always supplied with the best in the market, rooms for commercial travelers. Rates $5 a week, board and room. Meals 25¢. C.D. Smith, Proprietor. [This hotel was located on the west side of Third street between Nelson and Bennett streets in new Sedro, where the high school gymnasium stands today.
[William] T. Odlin: notary public and conveyancer. Office, Bingham & Holbrook bank, Sedro. [Conveyancer in this context means that he was an early title officer, aiding in the transfer of title to property from one person to another.]

J.C. Ames: The Tonsorial Artist, has pleasnt parlors at the Metcalf street Railway Crossing. Living rates: haircut 25¢, Shave 15¢, Singeing 15¢, Sea foam 10¢

This is very blurred drawing of Morris Schneider's mercantile store at the southwest corner of Metcalf and Northern. It shows what this building looked like as the traveler arrived at the Union Depot, a little bit west, down the block.

[Morris] Schneider: New goods arriving every week. New line of spring novelties, fancy goods, dry goods, shoes and hats. I invite your inspection of goods. My prices are as low as the lowest for first-class goods. Opposite Depot, Woolley. [This dry goods store was located exactly where the former bowling-alley building is today. The present building was rebuilt by Schneider in 1914 after a fire leveled it. We have no reference for him before this year.]
C.N. Willey [Barber]: The Little Shaver is located in George Ruel's old stand, where he is prepared to do barber work in the latest style. You're next. [We have always wondered when George Ruel started his saloon that later became Van's Place and then evolved into the B&A Saloon, then Pool Room, then Tavern, at the south end of Metcalf. State street was then the southern border of Metcalf until 1965 when the street cut through clear to the high school football field on Nelson.]
Dr. C.E. Fowler, Surgeon dentist. Permanently located in the Washington block, Sedro. All work guaranteed. No charges for consultation.
Mesdames Ames and Beebe's Millinery store, Woolley. Ladies' and children's trimmed hats from 50 cents and up.
Niles & Rundles, Clear Lake. We sell Seal of North Carolina smoking tobacco at 55 cents per pound.
[Harvey Brainard Niles was the maternal grandfather of Sonny Jordan of Sedro-Woolley. A native of Halifax, Vermont, Niles came to Bellingham bay in 1885 and acquired the Terminus hotel in the town of Whatcom and a meat market and operated them for about a year and a half before selling out to become a post trader on the Lummi Indian reservation. He moved to Clear Lake in 1892 and operated a market there for seven years before moving to Deming where he founded a general store. He died there on July 8, 1941 at age 80 years of age. Information from his obituary in the July 10, 1941, Bellingham Herald.]

Burlington Babble

Mr. Green has recently added a stock of hardware to his merchandise. [This was George Green, who would move his business to Woolley from Burlington in 1897 and set up his Green Shingle Co. here at the southwest corner of Ferry and Metcalf streets. You can read about him and his sons-in-law, Emerson Hammer and Dave Parker, in our separate Subscribers Edition online in Issue 16. Green and Parker moved to Burlington in 1891 from Lincoln, Kansas, the town that Green founded, following Hammer who moved here with his bride, Isabel, in February 1889. Read the full story of the Green, Hammer and Parker families and Lincoln, Kansas.]
Social and dance given by the LOTM [Ladies of the Maccabees].
A.W. Hight of Sedro passed through Burlington on his way to the county hub last Tuesday.
[Ed. note: Famed Woolley realtor Charles Wicker married Martha Asenith Hight on March 11, 1896. Her father was Albert Watson Hight, who settled in Portland and Ballard sometime after the Civil War. Her mother was Clara Elizabeth Blackiston Hight. In a Dec. 22, 1938, Courier-Times article, Martha recalled: "We came to Sedro in April 1894. My father was a mill man and came here to install machinery in the Hart Batey mill." In a 1939 article, she noted that the family settled in Ballard when she eight, in 1886, when Ballard was on its way to becoming the "shingle capital of the world."]
Mr. [Dave] Parker has sold his residence here to George Green and will soon move to the ranch which he recently purchased near Clear Lake.

Sterling Nuggets

David Batey, A.W. Hight and Robert Bruce Batey passed through town enroute home from the county seat on foot. [The county seat was Mount Vernon. They probably followed an old wagon road that was pretty much the route that Lafayette road follows today.]
Random names mentioned: Miss Susie Collins. [Susie Collins later married James Blackburn, partner in the B&A Buffet in Woolley after meeting him at the Mitchell mill. The mill was located on the road named for her father. She cooked there, James was a millworker.] A.S. [Alonzo Salathial] Collins attended Odd Fellows meeting in Mount Vernon.
Mill hands [at the old Sterling mill near the river] had a layoff for about two hours one day this week because they ran out of timber. George Clifford works there this week.
Geore Jones of Woolley got some blacksmithing done at [Henry] Holtkamp's place. [William Metcalf, Henry's grandson, and his wife Mildred were honored at the 2002 Founder's Day ceremonies at the Sedro-Woolley museum.
Mrs. Spencer and two children arrived from Minnesota on Tuesday, the guests of E.A.T. McRae.
The old cook house, owned by J.T. Lohr [or Loir], was burned to the ground on Wednesday. Loss $200, no insurance.

Churches

First Presbyterian church. Rev. F.J. Edmunds, B.A., pastor. Preaching every Sabbath at 11 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.; Sunday school at 10 a.m.; prayer meeting, Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; YPSCE at 6:30 p.m. every Sabbath. Rev. J.W. Dorance of Snohomish preached at the First Presbyterian church [in Sedro] Sunday morning and evening. [We discovered that YPSCE meant Young Peoples Society of Christian Endeavor.]
[Ed. note: Nan Cook (Mrs. Mortimer) wrote a letter to Mrs. Lenore (Harry) Devin in the early 1900s and told her the history of the Presbyterian. Very briefly, there were originally two churches for the two towns. Mrs. Woolley hosted the "House of Hope" in her parlors on Gibson street, north of the railroad tracks, in 1890-1. The first church services in Sedro were conducted in a tent in 1888 and then in a building being constructed for a saloon. Mrs. Cook and others organized the church construction program and in November 1890 a church opened on Township street near the St. Elizabeth's hospital (corner of Fidalgo). The church was moved to the south side of the 300 block of Talcott street in 1894 and the two churches combined. and a manse was constructed in 1902. That became known as the First Presbyterian church.] Central M.E. [Methodist Episcopal] Church. Rev. G.L. Cuddy, pastor. Preaching every sabbath at 11 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., Sunday school 10 a.m.; Epworth League at 6:45 p.m.; social and literary meeting of the League every Tuesday evening at 8 p.m.
[Ed. note: Three branches of various Methodist branches, including Methodist Episcopal, unified in 1939 to form the modern Methodist Church. The M.E. church was the first to form in the Sterling-Sedro area, originally a small meeting of 16 charter members in 1884 at the home of pioneer David Batey and his wife Georgianna near the Skagit on his homestead, southwest of present Sedro-Woolley. The Van Fleets were Methodists from Pennsylvania and they soon became leaders of the church, hosting services in the schoolhouse on their Skiyou homestead in the mid-to-late 1880s. When the old Sedro Hotel, southwest corner of Township and Fidalgo, was nearly abandoned in 1890-92 after the railroad crews moved on, the M.E. congregation held services there. Then, in 1892, they built their permanent church at the corner of Fifth and Nelson streets. This was a special project of George L. Cuddy, who was sent to Sedro by the Baltimore Conference in 1891. Banker C.E. Bingham and his wife Julia were also key early members. Charlie was inveigled to go from saloon to saloon in old Sedro by the river to collect donations for a permanent building.]

Lodge meetings

United Lodge AF&AM [Free and Accepted Masons] meets the first and third Mondays of each month at 7:30 p.m. in Pythian Hall, Woolley. Ad W. Davison, Worshipful Master. Homer H. Shrewsbury, Secretary. [This Washington state United Lodge No. 93, Woolley, Washington, was granted a charter on June 1, 1893. Ira J. Stiles was installed as the first Worshipful Master. We are posting later this week a brief history of the early days of the Masons in Woolley.]
Knights of Pythias Mount Baker Lodge, No. 73, meets every Wednesday evening at 7:30 p.m. at Pythian Hall on Reed street. William Morrow, C.C., Ira J. Stiles, KofR&S. [On May 18, 1891, 38 charter members were issued a warrant to establish a Knights of Pythias lodge in the town of Woolley. In 1910, they built their own hall on the west side of Metcalf street, now the site of Paul Kelly's Cascade Fabrics, and they added the top two stories in 1922 for their own club meetings. The downstairs was the site from 1910-18 for the Princess Theatre, the last theatre in town that competed with the Dream Theater.]
IOOF [International Order of Odd Fellows], Truth Lodge No. 147. Meets every Tuesday evening at the IOOF Hall on Reed street. Chester J. Ames, noble grand; F.F. Willard, recording secretary. [On Feb. 19, 1895, 13 charter members of the Odd Fellows held their first meeting in Woolley. Sometime soon after 1896, the lodge built its own hall on the east side of the alley behind what is now the American Legion and the Sedro-Woolley Museum. The building was still there on 1903 fire insurance maps, but it was soon moved to the lot that the Legion Club room now stands on. The Odd Fellows opened a new hall on Jan. 12, 1924, in the second story of the building they constructed at the southeast corner of Woodworth and Metcalf streets. The ground floor was long the home of Rexall drug store and most recently has been a video rental store. Marlin Miller, the last lodge leader before it disbanded in 1992, recalls stories from old timers that there were even earlier lodge meetings in the early 1890s in new Sedro in a building at the southeast corner of Bennett and Third streets, but we cannot confirm that this was a chartered lodge.]

Legal notices

Notices for publication. these were advertised in the local newspaper by individuals who were proving up on land claims. The intention to prove up was filed at the federal government land office at Seattle, and the final proof would be made as indicated in the notice. In addition, they listed the witnesses who could prove the applicant's continuous residence upon and cultivation of said land. The notices are signed by William D. O'Toole, Register.

Notice of Final Proof

Robert Roughton, Homestead No. 15537, for the lots 5, 9 and 10, n 1/2, se 1/4, section 12, Township 36n, range 8 east. Witnesses Henry S. Edgar, John P. Flick, Cassius M. Cupples, Jerome P. Richards, all of Baker, Washington. Filed May 14, 1896. to K.O. Waldders, Commissioner U.S. Circuit court at Baker, Washington.
George Iversen, Homestead No. 16,813 for s 1/2, n 1/4, ne 1/4, section 31, township 36, range 8 east. Witnesses are illegible.

Separate sites for stories from this issue There were three short features in this issue that we are sharing at other sites, in our Odds and Ends section and our Obituaries section. These stories will be posted later this week:

The first Cheese Factory is proposed by Mark Leslie from Minnesota.
Sedro campaigns for the Skagit County Fair
Obituary of Gustav Pidde, early businessman and saloon owner.
Early days of the Masons in Woolley. Will be posted January 7.

Historian Deanna Ammons has shared these copies of newspapers found by an unnamed source when he was remodeling his house locally. You can see a list at this website. Each of these newspapers has supplied information about people, places and events that we did not know before and details that had not been noted in earlier histories. Well over half of the local newspapers published before 1915 were either burned in fires or lost long ago. This is why it is so important for our readers to share photo copies of any old newspapers that they have in their family collections, especially those before 1920. Please email if you can help.

Story posted on Jan. 4, 2004
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Skagit River Journal

Rare early Sedro-Woolley newspaper Skagit County Times, Sedro, May 2, 1896

Rare early Sedro-Woolley newspaper
Skagit County Times, Sedro, May 2, 1896