Artifacts, Displays Depict Earlier Life

(Today’s column continues the theme of researching in Pend Oreille County)

The Settler’s Cabin, a genuine log cabin furnished with authentic items from the past, is part of the Pend Oreille County Historical Society museum complex in Newport, Wash.

Close by is the Claire Howe Schoolhouse, its one room furnished as it was when the building was new. Each year during Pioneer School Days, students in honors English at Newport High School meet for classes in a manner their ancestors might have experienced.

Adjacent to the cabin and schoolhouse is a large, newly-built open shed containing farm and mining displays, and machinery. The mining exhibit, displaying a miner’s bunkhouse, has a stack of folded blankets, still partially wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, just as they were received from the laundry, way back when. A very real Red Caboose, open to walk-throughs and containing railroad displays, completes the museum complex.

The Milwaukee Railroad bought the small, local Idaho and Washington Northern Railroad with plans to expand north, near the Canadian border. However, construction in this mountainous region was much more expensive than anticipated. So when a cement business failed in Metaline Falls, where the railroad line ended, railroad officials scaled back on their plans.

The Pend Oreille County Historical Society bought the building in 1978 and officially reopened it in 1979.

A bit of history here: Pend Oreille County was established on June 15, 1911, with Newport as the county seat. Before 1911, a trip from Newport, in the Pend Oreille Valley, to the county seat of then Stevens County, was a two-day trip each way. Colville lies to the west of Newport, over two mountain-valley ridges. No wonder these ancestors petitioned the Washington state government to become a separate county.

Evelyn Reed, president of the Pend Oreille County Historical Museum, showed us around on a warm June day last year. The museum contained the usual assortment of wonderful old-timey artifacts and displays. One item catching my eye was a metal compartmented bin holding different sizes of shoelaces. “Natural Tip shoelaces, 50% stronger than ordinary shoe laces,” read the printing on the case. Evelyn said when that item was donated, the donor cautioned not to mess with any of the laces, “because some are as old as my grandfather.”

The old vacuum cleaners were fascinating. The oldest was a nonelectric model, working from a bellows arrangement that sucked up dust and dirt in gulps.

There were many early business items, including cash registers, a huge, heavy jug-shaped safe, … Society members have made a great effort to complete the displays, so when an artifact from a business is donated, they try to include a photograph or newspaper clipping about the business.

Upstairs in the museum was a framed wall display of the original charters for many of the county’s fraternal organizations. As these groups died out or were disbanded, their books and artifacts were turned over to the historical society. I saw charters for the Knights of Pythias, the Pythian Sisters, the International Order of Odd Fellows, the Loyal Order of Moose, the American Legion Auxiliary, the Royal Neighbors of America (an auxiliary of the Modern Woodsmen of America).

There was a charter dated October 1916, for the Betsey Wright Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, with 19 members listed.

(To be continued next week)