How Washington Place Names Came To Be: From The Untamed Olympics, by Ruby El Hult, 1954 

 (GV= George Vancouver)

Strait of Juan de Fuca – 1592, Portuguese captain/sailor first to sail into the Sound

Heceta Head – 1862, Bruno Heceta, Capt. of Spanish ship/exploration

Destruction Island – 1775, Spanish men went ashore for wood/water were killed

Mt. Olympus – for Greek god, Capt. John Meares, 1788

Port Discovery – Capt. George Vancouver, 1790

Dungeness Spit – Capt. GV, 1792, rem’d him of Dungeness on English Channel

Port Angeles – “Puerto de Neuestra Senorade Los Angeles” 1791 by Francisco de Eliza…. Officially changed 1862

Port Townsend – Capt. GV, 1792, “in honor of noble marquis of that name”

Mt Rainier – Capt. GV, for his old friend Capt. Peter Rainier

Hood Canal – Capt. GV, “Right Honorable Lord Hood” —- GV, thinking of his homeland, “named many places for friends and English noblemen of his acquaintance.”

Puget Sound – Lt. Peter Puget, with GV, 1792 by Capt. GV

Gray’s Harbor – Capt. Robert Gray, first to sail into Columbia River, 1792

Port Gamble – Wilkes Expedition, 1841, unsure if John or Robert Gamble, 1868 after founding of Pope/Talbot mill 1853

Renton – Capt. Wm Renton, pioneer of Seattle area, 1875

Camano Island –1847, in honor of Francisco de Eliza, 1790

O’Leary Creek, flows into Gray’s Harbor—1850, Irishman Wm O’Leary

Lake Crescent – 1890, crescent-shape

Crescent Beach – 1892, town laid out as deep water lumber shipping port; razed 1920s as part of coast defense system

Lake Sutherland – John Sutherland, 1865, Canadian fur trapper

Ebey – Col. Isaac N. Ebey, first permanent resident Whidbey Island, 1851

Seattle – Chief Sealth

Kingston – 1853, originally Apple Tree Cove

Mt Baker – 1792, Joseph Baker sailed with Capt. GV

Winthrop – Theodore Winthrop, 1853, traveling journalist

Denney – Arthur Denney, representative for WA Terr

Lauridsen – G.M. Lauridsen. Danish world traveler, bought lots in Port Angeles

Elliott Bay – Prof D B. Elliott, 1898, from Chicago Field Museum to study

Everett – John Everett, came with fur trappers, 1890

LaPush – French, la bouche, the mouth so said but WRONG

Fidalgo – Salvador Fidalgo early sailor 1790s

Forks – 1912, laid out by early homesteaders

McCleary – Henry McCleary, 1898

I gleaned these bits/answers from Ruth’s book; I did not fact-check them with Google. Begs a good point:  do we swallow so-called facts without checking their veracity???

On my recent cruise trip to the Canadian Maritimes, our Daily Post onboard always carried a very corny boat-joke-of-the-day. On a (hopefully) hot day before the July 4th weekend, I share these silly jokes with you:

*What’s a sailor’s favorite detergent?  Tide!

*What happens when a red sailboat hits a blue sailboat? They get marooned!

*Have you seen the movie where the Wizard sails his ship across an ocean of orange soda? It’s a Fanta Sea flick.

*Why do pirate have trouble remembering the alphabet? They always get lost at “C.”

*I went to a Black Friday sale at the boat store….. it was quite an oar deal.

*How do you know when a boat is feeling affectionate? When it hugs the shore.

*Where do sick ships go?  To the Dock.

*A dentist opened an office on a boat; what was the boat’s name? The Tooth Ferry.

*Why didn’t the sailors play cards? ‘Cuz the captain was standing on the deck.

*How to make a boat feel better?  Give it some Vitamin Sea.

*What do you call a boat full of buddies? A friend-ship.

*Making a boat out of stone would be a hardship.

*When do you know you’re getting a good deal on a boat? When there’s a sail on it.

*Where do zombies like to go sailing? The Dead Sea.

 Are you laughing or groaning????

I just finished a great read: Unwelcome Americans: Living on the Margin in Early New England, by Ruth Wallis Herndon, 2001. I had no clue about this part of Colonial history!  Here’s what I learned:

In 18^th century America, there was no Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance or old age pensions, no welfare of any sort…… “no colony or state created and maintained a safety net for those unable to support themselves.” Thousands of our ancestors living on the margins due to injury, health, discrimination, or poor choices had an extremely rough time just staying alive.” Each local government administered “poor relief” to its own inhabitants and almshouses or poorhouses were constructed so that needy people could be grouped together and helped.

In New England, town officials met regularly to raise taxes due to the high cost of poor relief. This was especially true when the Revolutionary War, with tremendous expenses, loomed.  One method sought to resolve this tension was the “warning-out” system. This was the way town authorities sent away from their towns those people who had no legal claim on the town treasury. Through warnings-out, towns avoided the greater costs of supporting frail, ill, or injured people long term.

One facet of this system was that such needy people were shunted back to the town of their birth; being born in XX town, it was XX town’s responsibility to care for them. Sometimes this meant dividing up families! If a family of five were all needy and candidates for being sent elsewhere, they could be sent to five different towns, regardless of the children’s ages.

The book is 200 pages of carefully researched case studies that really brought this situation, this problem, to life for me. Cost for the paperback was under $7 via Amazon books. If you have New England ancestry who were not among the well-off, this might be good history for you.

June is my only daughter’s birthday month. She was born in June and I remember well her naming story. Looking through a women’s magazine, I spotted an ad for Ivory Soap. It was not this exact one (below) but I could not find “the real” one. It showed a baby in a bubbly bath and the words were something like “Jane Elizabeth enjoys her Ivory soap bath.”  Well!  Husbnd’s mother was Esther Mary, so we quickly fell in love with Jane Esther and that’s what she became. And that’s how we found her name.

My name is Donna Ruth; I was named after my Aunt Ruth. Four years earlier, Aunt Ruth had a daughter she named June Ellen, after my mother, June.  And the Donna part? From a 1942 novel by Daphne du Maurier, Frenchman’s Creek. How do I know? I asked mom!

My dentist used to be Frank Vedelago. His partner dentist in the same building was Stephen Carnell. They were brothers! Deciding to go into dental practice together but with separate practices in the same building, they realized that with two Dr. Vedelagos there would be confusion. So they tossed a coin and Stephen took their mother’s maiden name, Carnell. And his children all went by that surname too. 

Years ago, in one of my classes, a young woman had a seriously difficult family history problem. The family looked every bit Italian, dark hair and eyes and beautiful olive skin. But the great-grandfather’s name was Lars Swenson. What? (This was obviously before DNA.) On his deathbed, Grandpa Lars told the truth: When he was a newly arrived immigrant, he got drunk, was rolled and his money and papers stolen. Realizing the situation, and seeing another fellow drunk in the corner, “Lars” took that fellow’s papers and became in name, if not in fact, Lars Swenson. And on the point of death, he could not remember his real, Italian, surname. True story.

How did your parents pick your name? If you have folks to ask, ASK! And realize, when researching your family tree and come up against a seemingly impossible brick wall, remember that our ancestors were survivors……..and that’s why we’re here today.

Picture this scenario, if you will please.  James Brown is 55 years old and a Methodist circuit rider in very rural Wisconsin in about 1870. He felt “called” and loaded up his saddle bags on Old Nellie and set off to preach the gospel.  When Grandpa James was 75, and was a widower and getting somewhat feeble, he went to live with his daughter in St. Louis, Missouri. He had kept all his saddle-bag-books of his sermon notes and the baptisms and marriages he performed.  When he died, Daughter gathered up all his stuff (at his insistence) and carted them off, along with him, to her home in St.Louis. Years pass, James’ books and papers get “lost” in a box somewhere. Finally in about 1995, a granddaughter, who is very interested in her family history, stumbled upon the box and is delighted beyond words! Records written in her gggg-grandfather’s own hand! 

After the gggg-daughter enjoys and extracts information from Grandpa Brown’s records, she realizes the importance of them. They must be preserved and made available, she reasons. Ans she’s right. So she gives them to her local genealogical society and they publish abstracts from the records in their (Missouri) periodical. Obviously, far from Wisconsin! 

Why am I sharing this scenario/story? Because if James Brown was YOUR ancestor and you never knew where he died, and, more importantly, what happened to his religious records, you would be so happy to find out, wouldn’t you? 

The above image is from a family surname periodical, the Adams Agenda, this issue published in 1979. This publication contained mostly Adams-surname information but there were other goodies. I know you cannot read it, but catch this: “Genealogy of Capt. John Johnson,” or “Norris, Hackett, Prescott & Allied Families.” Or “Some Descendants of Philip Sherman.”

While a surname-oriented periodical might not be your best “bingo,” I know there is a St. Louis Genealogical Society which has a periodic publication. Might/could have James Brown’s Wisconsin records be published there, in St.Louis, Missouri? And, most importantly, would you think to look there for that information?

I really urge you to learn about PERSI (Periodical Source Index) and use it. This is where you’ll find indexed all the genealogy-related periodicals that the Allen County Public Library (aka Fort Wayne) could/can locate. Click to the FamilySearch.org/WIKI and ask for PERSI. Self-education will bring great rewards, I guarantee. 

Some time back, Joan Mamanakis of the Cheney Historical Society gave me a box of papers. Seems these had just been left on the Society’s doorstep and so Joan had no idea where/who they came from. They were all sorts of business and personal papers of a family that had lived in Cheney. I tracked down a descendant and passed most of the box full on to them. One letter I just had to share, the letter to new-father Frank Parker from most likely his father. Since Father’s Day is  upon us, I thought it was a timely piece. 

This was a hand-written letter to “Frankie” (Frank Parker) and unsigned and undated.

Dear Frankie,

Being as how we fathers has been through the mill and you ain’t, here’s some powerful good advice that’s been writ and prepared for an expectant father or papa.

1.     Never take the little chap and whirl him around by the heels until he’s a month or 6 weeks old, cause you might hit his head against a chair and break up the furniture.

2.    Never hold him up high and let him look down on your cause he might lose is lunch and you’d gain one.

3.    When you put the three corners on him be careful you don’t stick your fingers. If you stick him, he’ll let you know about it, if you stick yourself he won’t need to.

4.    When he gets colic use a board and not your hand. You won’t have to get up so often.

5.    If you want the baby to suck its  thumb just help a little by putting its thumb in your mouth and it will soon learn.

6.    Don’t let them kid you it’s a He for it might be a She.

7.    When you have to get up in the middle of the night to fix the baby’s bottle then you’ll begin to wonder.

 If it’s true that one picture tells the tale, this postcard image most surely does!!

I well remember Saturday afternoons when I was about ten years old, watching cowboy movies on our tiny little black-and-white-screen TV. To enhance the experience, I would sneak several pieces of white Wonder bread and smash them into a “golf ball” and gnaw on that as I watched my horsey-heroes. (Have you any parallel memories?)

In an old scrapbook, my friend’s mom had clipped and glued in this bit titled “Raising A Few Questions About Those Old Cowboy Movies.”  Hope they give you a laugh as they did me! 

 
** How come the people helped by the Lone Ranger never realized who he was until he handed them a silver bullet, hollered at his horse, and rode off?  (Jay Silverheels was a full-blooded Mohawk.)
**When some guy got killed in the bar whatever happened to the horse he left tied to the post outside?
**Why did everybody pay for their drink and never wait for the change?

**When out in the sandy desert for days, what did the horses eat?
**How did the heroine manage to ride across the plains for a week and still have beautiful clean hair and a low-cut blouse and not ever get sunburned?
**How did the cavalry scout always know which Indian tribe made which arrows?
**How come when they hung bad guys at the rate of several every week, they still had to build the scaffold the day before?

My first favorite TV show was Flash Gordon…..anybody remember? And Ming, ruler of the Evil Empire?  So what were YOUR first favorite TV shows or movies?