Such is the power and reach of this history column (zero and zero) that nobody bothered to inform me, after my little July 28 observation on long-ago furniture names, that the word davenport, as applied to what’s more commonly known as a couch or sofa, is indeed still in popular use on the Peninsula today.
Our last question of local history concerned one of the several Peninsula logging railroads of the early 20th century. With the continuing development of the Peninsula, more of the old logging railroad grades are being destroyed nearly every year, leaving the remaining ones harder to find. But we know they crossed a number of state
There is a certain allure concerning the long-ago logging railroads on the Greater Peninsula. The very idea of slow, geared-down steam locomotives chugging through the local old-growth forests over a hundred years ago spurs the imagination. But where were the roads? With ever-increasing development on the peninsulas, fewer and fewer sections of railroad grades remain.
As we noted in our previous column, the Key Peninsula was named in 1931 through a contest organized by several local businessmen. The winner, Edward M. Stone of Lakebay, submitted the name “Key.” That, added to “peninsula,” of course resulted in “Key Peninsula.” Our new question has to do with the runners-up: What were the
E. E. may not have had all his Marbles, given his curious reaction to finding a shark on a beach near Rosedale in 1907.
The post office was in a well-known building at the corner of Harborview and Pioneer — for most of 1951, anyway.
Merriam-Webster defines human connection as the state of being linked to another person or people through kinship or common interest. For me, human connection is the reason behind most of my writing.
One thing I’ve always said about my motivations for tracking down the names, dates, correct spellings, missing incident reports and the essential stories behind who these guys were is because I felt it was important to get the lives of these young men in front of people again. To put their stories, acts and sacrifices on the modern day record and not stuffed away in a printed-paper archive somewhere. And, with any luck, perhaps even attract the attention of their descendants who, in all likelihood, never found out the specifics of how their dad’s brother or their grandmother’s cousin fought and died in WWII.
Cpl. Arnold “Arn” Joseph Boers was born June 19, 1921, in Wapato, Washington, to Anna Henrica (Schoenmakers) Boers and Arnold Francis Boers Sr. In the 1930 U.S. Census, he had eight siblings: Margaret, Elizabeth, John, Cornelius, Johanna, Jack, Nellie and Robert Boers. At the time, the family lived in Seattle.
Before addressing the answer to the question from our last column, it’s worth mentioning that if you haven’t seen Tonya Strickland’s 14 Names to Remember project, a tribute to the Peninsula’s WW2 dead, there’s plenty of time left to do so. It’s well worth seeing. Unlike the granite monument in Kenneth Leo Marvin
Gig Harbor Now and Then’s previous question concerns a specific piece of land inside the Gig Harbor city limits, granted by the federal government over 150 years ago for the exclusive benefit of education. The question is: What was the name of the government entity in possession of the land in 1872? Answer: The state of
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