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Archives Spotlight: How April 25 has become meaningful for the Washington State Archives

Archives Spotlight: How April 25 has become meaningful for the Washington State Archives

Over the years, April 25th has grown into a date circled on the calendar by our team at the Washington State Archives. On April 25, 1963, the Olympia Archives Building opened up “in the shadow of the Capitol Dome,” ready to take records into what was seen at the time as a technologically-advanced facility.  That archives building started to show its age as the decades progressed. On April 25, 2014, the building amplified the need for a new, modern repository….

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Franklin Kennedy family, c., 100, via Washington State Archives
Archives Spotlight: Find your Washington ancestors in the Digital Archives census collection

Archives Spotlight: Find your Washington ancestors in the Digital Archives census collection

The Washington State Archives’ Digital Archives has an extensive collection of census records from across the state, dating back to 1847 — 42 years before Washington became a state. The Digital Archives’ mission is to make public records easily and freely accessible to the people. To date, well over 200 million records have been digitized. Census records are popular among researchers, especially genealogists. If you have ancestors who lived in Washington, there is a good chance you can find them…

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Archives Spotlight: The wager that started the Well Fed, Well Read food and book drive

Archives Spotlight: The wager that started the Well Fed, Well Read food and book drive

The Well Fed, Well Read campaign is an annual food and book drive put on by the Combined Fund Drive, Thurston County Food Bank, and South Sound Reading Foundation. It brings in thousands of food items, books, and monetary donations from state agencies across Washington. The drive officially launched 19 years ago, when the food bank and reading foundation took control. According to Thurston County Food Bank Executive Director Robert Coit, its origins are rooted in the early 1990s, when…

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Archives spotlight: Historical weather

Archives spotlight: Historical weather

Even if you do enjoy the occasional snow, we can probably all agree that it creates headaches for driving, scheduling, dealing with kids who stay home from school, keeping the driveway shoveled, and so forth. Perhaps this look at a few historical weather storms will help remind us that the current weather isn’t that bad. Walla Walla flood, 1931 Floodwaters overcame the streets of Walla Walla during a storm in 1931. According to a State Archives researcher, this house is located…

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Archives spotlight: The Mary Mahoney Registered Nurses Club

Archives spotlight: The Mary Mahoney Registered Nurses Club

2019 brings the 70th anniversary of the Mary Mahoney Professional Nurses Association, which was founded as the Mary Mahoney Registered Nurses Club of Seattle. Mary Mahoney was one of the first African-American nurses in the United States. In recognition of Black History Month, Washington State Archives researcher Dr. Jewell Lorenz Dunn researched the historical records held at the Archives to show some history behind the trailblazers who founded the club. Mary Mahoney, was born in 1845 in Boston, Massachusetts, to…

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History mystery: Do you know this man?

History mystery: Do you know this man?

A few months ago, a Digital Archives user wrote in to the Washington State Archives to ask about the identity of the man in the photo on the right. We still can’t answer the question. Perhaps you can help. The photo was taken by Vibert Jeffers in 1939. It comes from the Susan Parish Photograph Collection and it was given the title “Unidentified Representative.” The record further describes him as a former member of the Washington State House of Representatives….

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