Newport Museum A Small Gem
Fascinating as the displays are in the Pend Oreille County Historical Society’s museum in Newport, most folks come to use its research materials, and some come from very far away. The day before I visited, somebody from Texas had signed the guest book.
Members of this modest, little society in the most-northeast corner of Washington, have done an outstanding job of collecting resource materials on their county.
In the ticket office of the 1908 depot, with its four large panel windows, is the museum’s research reading area. There’s a table and chairs, and a row of fat binders containing its obituary file and personal sketches.
These biographical sketches are wonderful. For instance, the one on Alexander Stuart Bradley Jr. (for whom the 1994 building was named) gives his birth and death dates (1868-1939), that he was born in Chicago, served in the Spanish-American War, homesteaded in the county in 1906, married Laura Bevan, and learned to keep a crock of sourdough going year after year.
There were also binders for the county’s six cemeteries and a lot of railroad history information.
The research library was in a locked room of the 1994 building housing huge books of the county’s newspapers: the Metaline Falls News, the Ione Gazette, and the Newport Miner, which started in 1904 as the official paper of Stevens County; its annual subscription was $1.50.
There’s a bulging four-drawer cabinet filled with biographical files, and another for places and events occurring in the county. A larger cabinet, stuffed even fuller, holds photographs that are mostly indexed. The society has its own darkroom to make copies upon request (a 5 inches by 7 inches for $5).
Another set of shelves was for scrapbooks; I counted about two dozen.
But there is more.
Every year since 1969 the society has published Big Smoke, with sketches of people, places and events in the county. Some back issues are still available for $7, plus postage. Evelyn Reed proudly said their 1998 issue was extremely popular and has been reprinted twice already because it was mostly about the earliest pioneer setters. There is a 1969-‘80 index for Big Smoke that’s available for $4, plus $2 postage.
The society has also published a dozen books of local interest, and the museum’s gift shop carries several more by area local authors.
If you have ancestors who might have gone north from the big town of Spokane between 1880 and 1920, they might have ended up in Pend Oreille County. And if they did, you are a lucky researcher.
Contact the Pend Oreille County Historical Society at P.O. Box 1409, Newport, WA 99156.
(P.S.: The museum is open only during the summer months.)
Today’s info: Ancestry.com is undertaking a historically significant project to reconstruct the data lost when the 1890 census was destroyed by fire and water in 1922. The genealogy company is working with the National Archives and other libraries to acquire any database around 1980. All this information will eventually be accessible via the Web site: www.Ancestry.com. Stay tuned.
Do you have ancestors from the Palatine Ducky of Zweibrucken? There’s a great article on this Germany city in the Winter 1999 issue of the German Genealogical Digest. For a reprint or to subscribe, write to the group at P.O. Box 112054, Salt Lake City, UT 84147.