Snapshots: Before the Air Force…
Share ….there was the Army Air Service. The United States Army Air Service was the forerunner of the Air Force and established in May, 1918 after the United States entered World War I. The first U.S. aviation squadron to reach France was the 1st Aero Squadron, an observation unit, which arrived in France in September, […]
Snapshots: The Spanish Mason
Share Check out all the relief carvings behind the statue (ladder, shovel, compass, level, etc.). If this isn’t an example of a Mason, then I don’t know what is.
Snapshots: The mailman
Share Martin W. Hubbard was the first postmaster of Hubbard from 1850 – 1887. Hubbard started his work career as a logger before becoming the postmaster. Local mail was distributed from his home and any mail heading to Seattle, was rowed across Lake Washington. Interestingly enough, research has shown that most loggers at that […]
Illegible headstones? There’s an app for that
Share Popular consensus seems to be that cell phones are far too prevalent in daily life. Tweeting, texting, music, surfing, games – the list is endless. Some might even say phones have become more toy than tool. Aside from basic functions and some photo capabilities, it’s certainly not much help in old graveyards, right? Well, […]
Newcastle Coal Miners’ Cemetery, Part II
Share Part II: Stories, Stones, and Symbols Note: This article is the second half of Newcastle Coal Miner’s Cemetery. Newcastle Cemetery headstones bluntly attest to the difficult mining life and temporary respite offered by various brotherhood communities. Thanks to the ring of trees protecting the site, most of the carvings have escaped the inevitable Pacific Northwest erosion. William […]
Snapshots: Ada’s piano
Share Little is known about this marker raised… “…In sweet memory of Ada, beloved wife of W. H. Plachy. July 10, 1869 – July 22, 1895” Ada was 26 years old when she died. Her husband was a civil engineer and the first water pipeline surveyor for the Seattle area. Note: the piano shown is […]
Newcastle Coal Miners’ Cemetery
Share Part I: The Hidden History The next time you fly into Seattle at night, look east beyond the twinkling street lamps and Interstate 405’s golden traffic ribbon. Smack in the middle of evening suburbia is a vast, ragged expanse of pitch black. There are no lights here and if local legislators keep getting their […]
One for the genealogists
Share Halloween is fun. Between trick or treating, anticipating unique costumes (I once saw someone dressed as a flower pot), house decorations, long-suffering pets in cute getups and children double-whammied by excitement and sugar highs, what’s not to like? And while I don’t write about ghosts or vampires, this year will be a little different as […]
Mount Pleasant memories
Share Writers and artists have somehow always known cemeteries are a place of inspiration. Seattle-based writer Stacy Carlson, author of Among The Wonderful, shares her particular credo about Mount Pleasant. ——- There’s a blue-green house shaped like a barn on West Bothwell Street that’s half a block from a T-intersection. It’s a T because instead […]
Snapshots: Mysterious family crests
Share Below is an unfamiliar carving that looks very much like a Finnish family crest. It was found on a Woodmen of the World headstone dedicated to David Lunden, born 1875 in Finland. Lunden later emigrated to the US to find work in the Black Diamond coal mines. On November 6, 1910, an explosion rocked the Lawson Mine, […]
