Articles written by Jan Parker
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Third-grade class learns traditional skills
In January 1973, the students in Virginia Pill's third-grade class at Hood Canal School, who had recently studied early Indians and pioneers, had a visit from two women who demonstrated how the early...
Emma M. takes to the sea
The idea for this story came from Jerry Sheldon, who as a boy, watched a boat being built in a shed near his home on Hillcrest. The details are from issues of the Shelton-Mason County Journal. Over a...
December 1967
At the Dec. 5 meeting of the Shelton City Council, Mayor Frank Travis Jr. announced the city had decided not to award a franchise for cable television within the city limits. He told applicant Thomas...
Attack on Pearl Harbor felt in Shelton
The Shelton-Mason County Journal of Dec. 4, 1941, was focused on the upcoming Christmas holiday. The front page included a schedule of where and when Santa Claus would be appearing, and shoppers were...
Growing up at Simpson's Camp 3
This is the conclusion of Jim Howell's memoirs of growing up at Simpson's Camp 3 between 1934 and 1946. We were poor and so were most others. I got two pairs of shoes each year. Ninety-eight-cent...
Growing up at Simpson's Camp 3
This two-part story is from a memoir written by Jim Howell in the late 1990s. Jim was born in Hoquiam in 1929 and lived with his parents and two sisters at Simpson Logging Company's Camp 3 in the...
Halloween 1949
On Oct. 27, 1949, a Shelton-Mason County Journal feature story began, "Imaginations of children run rampant on Hallowe'en night, Oct. 31. The evening is a combination of symbolic knick-knacks drawn...
Joseph Sherwood
In 1854, Joseph Sherwood and his brother Warren traveled from their home in Vermont to Sawamish County (name changed to Mason County 10 years later) in the Washington Territory, bringing with them...
Early Grapeview schools
When Fred Curl gave up on transporting children to the Detroit school, the school board bought a secondhand Model T Ford and one of the teachers took on the additional job of driving. There was a...
Early Grapeview schools - Part 1
Much of the information in this story is from the book "Grapeview, Detroit of the West," by Mary Sagerson and Duane Robinson....
Skokomish potlatch celebrations
The following story is adapted from "A Brief Historical Sketch of Shelton, Washington" written by Grant Angle in 1940, and Jean Bearden's "History of Hoodsport," first published in 1987. In 1886, the...
Items from The Mason County Journal, August 1919
At about 3 on the morning of Aug. 1, 1919, "neighbors gradually awoke to the fact that the old Willey residence on the northwest corner of Cota and Seventh was on fire. By the time the alarm was...
Skokomish horses carry off honors on the prairie
This story is from the June 17, 1921, edition of the Journal. Shelton Prairie included what is now the Mountain View area. The racetrack was about where the Barkley Square mini mall is situated. A...
Ida's story: Kept busy in Hoodsport, buried in Shelton
In 1913, Ida Finch had only her youngest son to care for and was beginning to feel lonely and unneeded. For most of her life, activities in Hoodsport had rotated around Ida and her family. She had...
Ida's story: Coming to the canal, meeting Vincent Finch
In 1872, 9-year-old Ida Robbins traveled by ship with her parents from Maine to California to reunite with family members. Her father was ship Captain George Robbins, who hauled cargo up and down the...
The 1915 wedding of Humphrey and Doris Nelson
Humphrey "Hump" Nelson was one of the premier oyster growers in early Mason County. His family moved from Michigan to Tacoma in 1888, when he was about 2 years old. Not long after they arrived, Hump's...
Captain Ed Miller
In 1892, a journalist for the Seattle Press Times wrote, "Captain Miller of the tug Biz and owner of that antediluvian ark the Ajax, is one of the old landmarks on the waterfront, weighs something...
From March to May 1959 in the Journal
The feature story March 5 included a photo of a car that had been blown apart on a county road when dynamite in the trunk exploded. The driver, who was killed, had been transporting the dynamite to...
Mary M. Knight - pioneering educator
This Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m., the Mason County League of Women Voters is sponsoring an open house at the Mason County Historical Museum (427 West Railroad Ave.) to showcase seven women, past and...
Launching the S.G. Simpson
This story is taken from the Aug. 23, 1907, edition of the Mason County Journal. On Aug. 19, 1907, about 40 people from Shelton, hosted by Mark E. Reed, Arthur Govey and Thomas O'Neill, traveled to...
The first edition of the Mason County Journal
On Dec. 31, 1886, at the age of 18, Grant C. Angle published the first edition of his Mason County Journal. (Some years later, he changed the name to the Shelton-Mason County Journal.) A one-year...
A story of early Tahuya
The first settler of record in the Tahuya area was Enoch Willey, who acquired a claim in 1865. Willey sold his claim in 1875 and eventually settled at Oakland. Among the homesteaders who followed him...
Roberta Wilcox Welch's story
This is part two of a two-part story on the recollections of Shelton-area resident Roberta Wilcox Welch. The first installment ran in the Shelton-Mason County Journal on Jan. 20. At Christmas season,...
