From the desk of Marlys Rudeen. While looking through issues of the Newport Miner for 1907, I came across the following quote – “Poor old Spokane has had to bow to the inevitable, and beginning next Sunday the lid will be jammed down so hard that visitors will hardly recognize the town. Mayor Moore has issued an order calling for the closing of all saloons on Sunday and abolishing the notorious cribs and concert halls.” Jan. 9, 1908, p. 5…
From the desk of Marlys Rudeen One of the most notorious citizens of Aberdeen in the early 20th century was William Gohl. While he might have listed his occupation as agent for the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, his real job included such duties as graft, theft, extortion, arson, and murder. The local paper, the Aberdeen Herald, documents some of Gohl’s history through his trial and conviction for two murders in 1910. You can follow the story through the newspaper…
From the desk of Marlys Rudeen The year is 1889 and Washington Territory is on its way to becoming Washington State. There’s a great deal of enthusiasm for the process, and a great deal of regional competition as a constitutional convention is held along with fierce debate about which city should be the capital of the new state. While all this is going on the residents of Yakima are also devouring news from back East, local comings and goings and,…
From the desk of Marlys Rudeen, Deputy State Librarian A recent addition to the State Library’s digital collections is the lavishly illustrated West Shore. This literary and general interest magazine was published from Aug. 1875-Mar. 1891. The Washington State Library owns some of the issues from 1880-1890, and has digitized the issues and made them available online. (Warning – some of the PDFs are large and do take some time to load.) According to its tagline from the 1885 issues,…
From the desk of Marlys Rudeen: A sampling of the local news from the Colville Examiner from Oct. 31, 1907-Jan. 1908 provides a vivid view of life in the north half of Stevens County. One thing that stands out is that the Colvillians were a traveling bunch. They visited and were visited on a regular basis, travelling to family and friends in other small towns, the big city of Spokane, and relatives in the Midwest or eastern states. Departures and…
“Judy is my bulldog. She’ll sink her teeth into a project and finish it!” These are the words of Judy’s supervisor Marlys Rudeen, Deputy State Librarian. What a great picture this paints of a woman with a long and varied career with the Washington State Library. Judy started in 1998 at WSL as a prison librarian working at Washington Corrections in Shelton. She loved this job because she felt that it was like all libraries rolled into one. Depending on…
From the desk of Evan Robb Since 1969, residents of the Central Washington towns of Roslyn and Cle Elum have named an annual Pioneer Queen–a woman whose life and contributions to the community embody the history of Upper Kittitas County. Erin Krake, librarian at the Roslyn Public Library, wanted to shine a light of the story of these women, “who built [our] town from the grown up, just as their men did so from the coal mines beneath it.” Beginning…
Ever since the advent of Web 2.0 people are finding creative ways to harness the power of the web to learn about and share their passions. Resources are shared and discovered; connections are made between people. Here at the Washington State Library we have a mission to collect, preserve and make accessible materials about the history and culture of Washington State. This task is accomplished in a variety of ways, from scanning newspapers, or entire books, to helping communities scan,…
From the desk of Judy Pitchford Another treasure for Women’s History in the Manuscript Collection of the State Library is the newspaper clipping scrapbook of Josephine Corliss Preston, which has been digitized and added to our Classics in Washington History. Mrs. Preston was the first woman elected to statewide office in Washington state government after women were granted the right to vote in 1910, defeating another female candidate, Mary Monroe. Elected as the 6th State Superintendent of Public Instruction, she…
From the Desk of Marlys Rudeen The Manuscript Collection of the State Library holds a treasure for Women’s History —the Emma Smith DeVoe Papers. This collection consists of 6 archival boxes of correspondence and several scrapbooks chronicling the activities of Washington State’s most famous suffragist. Mrs. DeVoe was an impassioned organizer, leader, and lecturer for the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She eventually became president of the Washington Equal Suffrage Association. These letters and manuscripts came into the possession of…