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Skagit River JournalFree Home Page 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, Snohomish & BC. An evolving history dedicated to committing random acts of historical kindness |
Home of the Tarheel Stomp Mortimer Cook slept here & named the town Bug |
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The Van Fleet family from 1895, courtesy of LaRayne Van Fleet Jeffries. Daughter Eva upper left and daughter Ethel and son Earl in front. |
Emmett Van Fleet on his buckboard. All these photos are from various scrapbooks and collections of the Van Fleet descendants and we are very grateful that the family retained them. We hope that descendants of other families that we mention will also share copies or scans of documents or photos. We never ask for your originals. |
"Dec. 2, 1884They did the first work on that section of the road after the surveying was done by Mr. [George] Savage. In 1883 a school district was established at Sterling, which included the new Sedro-Woolley and Wilson districts. Mr. Batey, Mr. D. [Steamboat Dan] Benson and Mr. Van Fleet were appointed directors, and Mr. Smithson, clerk. Miss Eva Wallace [from Fir Island] began the first school, which was finished by Miss Turner. In 1886 the district was divided and the Sedro district formed, which included the Wilson district. Mrs. Ira Brown went around with a subscription paper and received one hundred and fifty dollars in a day and a half to furnish material for the new school-house. The work on the building was also donated, and Miss Fairy [Fairie] Cook employed as teacher. Rev. McMillan delivered the first sermon in Sterling, Rev. Dobbs in Sedro.
"We, the undersigned, do agree to give two days' work on the road between Batey's homestead house [at the present bend of Rhodes Road, west of Sedro-Woolley] and the Van Fleet bridge in road district No. 29. Emmett Van Fleet, Charles Wicker, Will Mitchell, George Benson, [George] O. Wicker, William Woods, David Batey, W. A. Dunlap, A. Johnson, B.M. Barnes, J. Greenhagen. August Polte [namesake of Polte Road], G.W. Wiseman [family was namesake of Wiseman Creek in Utopia]."
And so methought 'twill quickly be— Sedro-Woolley, Dec. 10, 1900.
With every mark on earth of me;
A wave of dark oblivion's sea
Will sweep across the place
Where I have trod the sandy shore
Of time, and been to be no more —
Of me, my day, the name I bore.
And leave no track or trace.
You can find copies of this photo in many pioneer-family collections. It was taken by Asahel Curtis, who was standing near Yesler's sawmill on the waterfront of Seattle, looking east to the original woodframe Occidental Hotel, which appeared exactly as when Eliza described it, with the Trinity Church in the background. This gathering dates from early October 1881, when townspeople congregated for a memorial of assassinated U.S. President James Garfield. |
This color photo of the Van Fleet home was taken sometime in the 1960s and shows an exterior chimney that was not there earlier when Eliza was photographed there with her bicycle. |
This photo of the Van Fleet barn was taken in the early 1990s when members of the Historical Society and Sedro-Woolley Museum gathered at the homestead. It has deteriorated markedly in the ensuing decades. |
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