Author Archives: Donna Phillips

Let’s Talk About: Farragut Naval Training Station

by Donna Phillips

At the south end of Lake Pend Oreille, where Farragut State Park is now near Athol, Idaho, was once nearly the biggest settlement in Idaho. Did your ancestor train at Farragut Naval Training Station?

December 7, 1941, slammed Americans wide awake. U.S. Naval ships in commission on 1 Jan 1942 was 913. By 1 Jan 1944 there were 4167 ships…. over three ships commissioned each day during those two years. Hence the demand for trained men to man this enormous number of vessels. Hence the establishment of the Farragut Naval Training Station on 22 April 1942. Ground was broken that day and a mere five months later recruits started boot camp training.

The logistics of establishing and running this camp were monumental and boggled the mind. A new highway east from Athol was needed; electrical and telephone lines were strung; water and sewer lines were dug. Some 98,000,000 board feet of lumber were used to build the enormous facility on some 4200 acres. 

Farragut was divided into six camps. Each camp accommodated 5000 recruits and was nearly self-sufficient with twenty barracks, mess hall, admin building, drill field, sick bay, rec hall, drill hall and swimming pool. (This was the Navy; the men HAD to swim….but why build pools when the lake was right there? Because it’s COLD.)

Procurement of fresh food was a continuing problem. The bakery produced 8000 loaves of bread A DAY and 700 pies AN HOUR. Milk was trucked in, sometimes from 100 miles away. 

Farragut soon became Idaho’s largest city with 9 ships’ stores, 8 barber shops, a cobbler shop, a tailor shop, a photo department, 9 cafes and soda fountains and a laundry which handled 225,000 items each week requiring 2500 pounds of soap! 

By September 1945, when Farragut was decommissioned, over 300,000 men had been trained there. 

Images of America  (www.imagesofamerica.com) offers a book; if your ancestor trained there, or worked there, this would be a wonderful read. 

Source: The Pacific Northwesterner, Vol. 27, Summer 1983, article by Everett A. Sandburg.”

Let’s Talk About: Spokane’s Bridge

by Donna Phillips

Likely when you think of “Spokane River bridges” your mind jumps to the iconic Monroe Street Bridge, first built in 1911.

But would you have guessed there are nearly 40 bridges spanning a river only 111 miles long? Originating in Lake Coeur d’Alene, the river meanders through the Spokane Valley to empty into the Columbia River. Those are current bridges and don’t count the many that were built and then washed away. 

It had been long realized and known that a bridge was needed to cross the Spokane River in the downtown area. Between 1890 and 1896 several bridges were constructed but all fell prey to The River. Finally in 1902, realizing that timber for such a bridge would not do, the bridge pretty much as we see it today was completed and dedicated on 21 Nov 1911 at a cost of $477,682.67.  (SUCH precise accounting!) 

The biggest problem facing construction of the Monroe Street Bridge was the south side where after the great fire of 1889 tons of the ash and debris were pushed over and deposited there…. making for a very unstable bridge footing. The ash and debris was dumped atop a small stream which continued to flow and be a continual problem. 

On May 4, 1892, Miss Mary Winitch gained fame by becoming the first pedestrian of record to cross the bridge. (I did several minutes of research on Miss Mary but found nothing.)

QUESTION: How many times would you guess you have walked over….. or driven over….. the Monroe Street Bridge?

SOURCE:  The Pacific Northwesterner, Vol. 28k Winter 1984, article by Byron Barber.

Let’s Talk About: Coffee, Elixir of Gods

by Donna Phillips

“Legend has it that coffee was discovered in Ethiopia by a goat herder in the 11th century. He noticed that his goats became energetic and unable to sleep after eating the berries from a certain bush. News of the “magical” plant soon spread and it wasn’t long before Arab traders were bringing the plants hoe and cultivating them, boiling the beans and drinking the resulting liquid. By the mid-15th century, the Ottoman Turks had brought coffee to Constantinople and before long, Italian traders had introduced it to the West. The first European coffee houses appeared around 1650.”

So I read in the Viking river cruises cookbook in spring of 2024.

The article in that big, heavy cookbook which I did not carry home, ran to three pages. Some twenty countries’ coffee culture were stated: 

Italians usually drink their coffee standing up. In Portugal, there is a coffee shop on every corner. In Sweden the word coffee is both an adjective and a noun…. it’s a coffee break where you sit down with friends. Coffee is the essentially national drink in Norway. Germany is known for its kaffee und kuchen, or coffee and cake. 

Did you know that Starbucks was founded in Seattle…… at the Pike Place Market? How many of us today can say they’ve never had a Starbucks (coffee, tea, chocolate)????

Let’s Talk About: Colonial School Rooms

by Donna Phillips

What was the colonial schoolroom like? Google gives this answer: “Colonial schoolrooms were single-room buildings where all students were taught together. These sparse rooms utilized shared resources and focused largely on reading, writing and arithmetic, often through religious texts. Most teachers were men and members of the local church.”
For children living in the 13 colonies, the availability of schools varied greatly by region and race. Most schools of the day catered to children of European settlers who could afford to contribute a fee to educate their children. Massachusetts  towns had “publik” schools in the sense that anyone who could afford the modest fee could attend. Massachusetts passed a law in 1642 that required all children to be educated (either in school or at home). This education included reading, religion and the law. 
For the Puritans, reading was a religious duty. They believed that the faithful could commune directly with God by reading the Bible. Hence, the building of schools outpaced all other types of buildings.
Reading, writing and basic arithmetic teachings were infused with a healthy dose of religious and moral instruction. The textbook of the day was The New England Primer, a pocket-sized volume with drawings and a rhyming alphabet of Puritan couplets:  “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” “Heaven to find the Bible to mind.” 


QUESTION: How many ways were colonial schools like today’s schools and how vastly do they differ???


(Source: www.history.com, “What School Was Like in the 13 Colonies,” by Dave Roos, 3 September 2024)  

Let’s Talk About: SUOENALLECSIM! Spell it backwards!

by Donna Phillips

I was so happy to learn that I was not the only one crazy for Rubber Duckies! I just learned that in Point Roberts, Washington, is the world’s first Rubber Duck History Museum!!!!!! Krystal and Neil King opened the museum in 2024 and have had many visitors so far. Krystal reported that her favorite comment from a visitor so far was “Oh My G(osh). Why?” The Kings say they won’t charge admission; they just want people to come in and leave happier. (This is part of my collection.)

Polish Pickle Soup: Just what you want for dinner!  Known as Zupa Ogorkowa, or Sour Cucumber Soup, here’s the recipe:

In large soup pot, add broth, celery, parsley, carrot, onion into 5 cups of water. Add bay leaf, dab of allspice, peppercorns and salt. When boiling, add 3 medium chopped potatoes or pasta or rice, 2 cups of chopped dill pickles and 1/3 cup cream. Simmer 2 hours and enjoy. I’d love to hear from you how you liked it……… IF you make it. 

History of Envelopes:  In 1952, the Envelope Manufacturers Assn of America published a little 5×8, 80 page book titled The History of Envelopes. The book opens with this quote from the Cosmopolitan Art Journal, 1860: “The little paper enclosure which we term “envelope” sustains such an important relation to our social, commercial political, and moral world as to render it eminently worthy of notice as our hands. It has now become the vade mecum of thought transportation….. crossing seas, threading rivers, chasing up railways, exploring the solitary paths of the forest and plains, pursuing expresses and telegraphic messengers; it is almost everywhere doing, for rich and poor alike, its good offices and trusty services.” I rescued this little book from a Goodwill bin and found it a really fun read. Wanna borrow it? Be happy to loan it. But it is available as a used book on various websites. 

Let’s Talk About: Ships They Came On

by Donna Phillips

ShipIndex.org is a website like no other. Last post I highlighted the emigrant port of Antwerp; for this post I’ll tell you where to learn about the ships on which the immigrants sailed to America.
Peter McCracken is a librarian by profession and founder of www.ShipIndex.org. This is a free database “of any named vessel mentioned in an English speaking source.” The database can include vessels to/from other countries IF the source is in English. Currently, there are nearly 1300 resources in the database, with over 600,000 named vessels there. 


McCracken (through the website) recently offered a free webinar. He opened the lesson with “How to do maritime history research?” He then explained that most Americans have immigrant ancestors and he rightly guessed that most would love to find information on the ship that carried their ancestor to America. “ShipIndex offers that sort of help,” he proudly explained.


Folks might use the database for other than immigrant research. “Wouldn’t you like a picture of the ship your parents honeymooned on? Or vacationed on? Or did military service on? Or was transported to war on? Or maybe took a ferry ride on? 


You must know the NAME of the ship in order to find information. 

My husband served on the nuclear submarine SSBN Alexander Hamilton, 617. Cool, eh???  Thank you, ShipIndex and Peter McCracken!!

Let’s Talk About: Red Star Line, 60 Years of Immigration

by Donna Phillips

In spring of 2024, on my Viking trip to The Netherlands, we did visit Antwerp in Belgium. Our riverboat was moored steps away from the Red Star Line Museum and I could NOT wait to walk through those doors! 

The several floors and rooms of the museum were so well done and informative; I realized that the emigrant experience explained there could be considered parallel to many such immigration ports in Europe. 

Of course I visited the gift shop and of course I purchased the above 240-page book and happily hauled all three pounds of it home. The opening sentence speaks:

“On 1 December 1934, the ships of the Red Star Line were making their last voyage. Over the previous seventy years, they had transported an estimated 2.5 million passengers, both rich and poor alike. They had enticed emigrants from all over Europe to come to Antwerp and take a boat to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.”

These are the chapters in the book:

  • Millions of people, one dream
  • Story of a shipping company
  • Story of a place (Antwerp)
  • A Belgian story
  • A European story
  • An American story
  • A universal story (“migration, the great human story”)

I’d be happy to loan you my book or Amazon and other used book websites offer copies. If you want to better understand European emigration and immigration, this book is your read. 

Let’s Talk About: Quaker Records & Research

by Donna Phillips


At a fall 2024 meeting of EWGS, Lori Lee Sauber taught us the basics of “Finding Friends in Early American Quaker (Records).”  Explaining we first should understand Quaker beliefs, she cited the website www.Quaker.org from which the following quote comes: 


What Do Quakers Believe? There are two fundamental aspects to Quaker faith. First, Friends believe that all people are capable of directly experiencing the divine nature of the universe—which is known by many names, God or the Holy Spirit or simply Spirit being among the most common. You don’t need a priest or any other kind of spiritual intercessor; you don’t need to perform any kind of ritual. When you need to hear from God, you will. When Spirit has a message for you to share, you should share it.
That leads us to the second key principle, our belief in continued revelation. In the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, we read many stories of God communicating directly with people. Friends believe God’s revelations have never stopped, and that God might reach out to any one of us at any time. When Quakers come together to meet for silent worship, we participate in a shared space in which we strive to become better able, and help each other become better able, to recognize such divine messages.


The best resource for doing Quaker genealogy is the 15 volumes of Encyclopedia of Early American Quaker Genealogy, 1607-1953. All are digitized and available online. Each volume points to a specific group of “meetings” (congregations) in various states. She told us that FamilySearch and Ancestry offer these digitized books. 


Her handout also listed many books with the topic of Quaker records, history and research. Today, 1 Nov 2024, I Googled “Books on Quaker records history” and had a dozen good hits. Another good resource is the FamilySearch WIKI: Quaker. 


If you have Quaker ancestry, you have hit the jackpot for there is a plethora of teaching aids and resources right at your finger tips. 

Let’s Talk About: Better Baby Contests

by Donna Phillips

 In Jim Kershner’s column, 100 Years Ago Today, 5 Sep 1923, had this bit:  “Carol Mahoney, age 20 months, was declared “Grand Champion Baby of the Inland Empire” at the Interstate Fair. Judges gave little Carol a score of 99.875%…..yes, babies were judged…. while her closest competitor scored only 99.75%. She won $120 in gold after “four days of grueling examination by the corps of doctors and nurses.” 

I did some follow-up research on “little Carol Mahoney.” Born on Christmas Day in 1922, Carol Arleigh Mahoney was born to William and Ruth (Hoffman) Mahoney. She married Robert Hepker; she died on 22 Dec 2010. No children were listed. (Information from Find A Grave.)

If you find the idea of judging babies to be wild and weird, Google this article and read on: 

‘Better Babies’ Contests Pushed for Much-Needed Infant Health but Also Played Into the Eugenics Movement

Contests around the country judged infants like they would livestock as a motivator for parents to take better care of their children

Francine Uenuma

History Correspondent, Smithsonian Magazine, January 17, 2019

Better Babies gathering Minnesota

Let’s Talk About: Geiger Field—now GEG

by Donna Phillips

Spokane played a unique part in the history of aerial warfare in the World War II days and afterwards. Called Sunset Airport, the facility was taken over in 1939 by the Army Air Corps for a training base. Eleven of the twenty groups of B-17 bombers stationed in England during World War II were trained in part at Geiger Field.

The history of aviation in Spokane began in 1911when a daredevil pilot flew across the country from Ohio to win a bet. In 1912, aviators were flying in and out of Glover Field (below Monroe Street bridge). After World War I, a Flying Circus staged stunts and took customers up for $5 ($81 today). Another new landing strip was created in the near valley and dubbed Parkwater Field (now Felts Field since 1927). 

Geiger Field was named in honor of Maj. Harold Geiger, an aviation pioneer and war veteran who, incidentally, never was in Spokane. 

After the war, personal air travel burst upon Spokane. Commercial airlines used Felts Field but soon found that was an inadequate location. In 1938 the city purchased 1280 acres of land west of town for a new airport to be named Sunset Airport (soon Spokane International Airport). Sunset Airport was renamed Geiger Field in 1939. 

So why is the Spokane airport designated GEG?  Easy answer. There are dozens of airport designations beginning with “S” and very darn few beginning with “G.”  So Spokane became GEG. 

(If you’d enjoy reading more on this history topic, read “From Geiger To Glory,” by Marshall B. Shore, in the 1996 Vol. 40, No. 4, The Pacific Northwesterner….. can be accessed at the Eastern Washington Historical Society archives at the MAC.)