Choosing photos for the exhibit, circa 1980-1981. Property of WWU, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies.
WHC Oral Histories Collection
Western Washington University
Center for Pacific Northwest Studies
The Washington Women's Heritage Project was a statewide grant project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1980 to 1984. The project’s goal was to "stimulate public awareness and interest in the lives of women in Washington State, as well as to involve them in their respective communities, discovering and documenting their diverse heritage." The project originated in the late 1970s and early 1980s when women’s history and women’s studies emerged as legitimate areas of study at many United States colleges and universities. The idea for this project originated with a graduate student in the history department at Western Washington University and was endorsed by Kathryn Anderson, a women’s studies professor in Western’s Fairhaven College. The collection at the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies contains a variety of records generated by the Northwest center of the project, located at Western Washington University. Records include grant administration records, the final report of the project, exhibit planning materials, photographs and oral history interviews. View the full finding aid for further description and a complete inventory of the Washington Women’s Heritage Project records.
The Women in the Commercial Fishing Industry Research Collection comprises materials gathered and generated by Carole Teshima Morris for a senior thesis project at Western Washington University. In addition to newspaper clippings, articles, and a copy of Morris’ final paper, "Permission to Come Aboard? Right to Come Aboard? Women in the Pacific Northwest Fishing Fleet, 1945-1993," the collection includes five oral history interviews conducted with women active in the commercial fishing industry. View the full finding aid for further description and a complete inventory in the Women in the Commercial Fishing Industry Research Collection.
The Bellingham Centennial Oral History Project began in 2003 as a part of the Bellingham Centennial celebration from September 2003 to December 2004. The Bellingham Centennial Oral History Project Records documents the personal responses to significant experiences and events by long-time residents of Bellingham as a part of the city's centennial celebration. Both the audio and video interviews of Bellingham residents represent an economic, ethnic, and physical cross section of the Bellingham community and cover a broad range of topics including local environmental issues, healthcare, entertainment, Native American issues and other ethnic and race relations, industry and businesses, transportation, and education. The digital collection presented on the Women’s History Consortium website includes an interview with Betty Russell, one of the first women machinists at Boeing. View the full finding aid for further description and a complete inventory to the Bellingham Centennial Oral History Project records.
Interviewees List
Alberta Clancy Interview
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Family history, Irish Catholics, peasants, pregnancy, Ku Klux Klan activity, mentorship of nuns, women's liberation, women’s clothing, occupations: housekeeping, store clerks, working at Boeing during WWII, education, teaching, rural life, attitudes towards teaching as a career, Fairhaven College, and religion.
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Alice Bloedel Interview
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Early memories of World War Two, tensions between her parents about whether or not to become Nazi supporters, Gestapo, controversial marriages, work on Nazi farms in rural Germany, foster families, school memories, family relations and estrangement, and life in war torn Germany, immigration, the U.S. Air Force, women’s independence, Bloedel mill relatives, women’s occupations such as: Tupperware sales, woman insurance agents, childbirth conditions, birth control, raising a family, women's liberation, racial incidents, divorce, and thoughts on being a grandmother.
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Ann H____ Interview
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Immigrant woman's life experiences in the United States. Earliest memories of Austria-Hungary to the age of 84 in Bellingham, WA, Her life illustrates the burden of loneliness of an immigrant woman without sufficient language skills to develop a support system in a foreign and changing environment, isolation and loneliness, marital struggles, feelings of estrangement, The Great Depression, fears of removal of her eight children by the state, lack of faith in her husband for financial support should she leave him, and an inability to substantiate whether her life experiences were common to other women of her age and class. Her contact with other women was limited by her fears of state reprisals should the authorities become informed of the family conditions.
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Anne Mosness Interview
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Mosness discusses the challenges involved with life on a boat. She compares the responsibilities and attitudes she had toward her work on boats where she worked for others as compared to the responsibilities of owning and working her own fishing boat. She describes the great sense of accomplishment she had working her own boat and some of the challenges that came with that as compared to more traditional women's roles such as housework. Mosness also discussed the preparations that were necessary for the start of the fishing season such as mechanical repair work, hanging the nets, and planning for meals.
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Arta Lawrence Interview
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Interview begins with memories of Lawrence's teacher and pioneer parents who migrated to Washington Territory in 1888 from Ohio. Interview continues with family history in Davenport, WA., school, family finances, Normal School, University of Washington, teaching degree, library science degree, women in advanced education, educational theory, Progressive Education Movement, influenced by Horace Mann, John Dewey. Intuitive teaching (not from books) including more of the arts, teaching in rural areas. Standardized testing member of the 20th Century Club in Bellingham, mentions Helen Keller guest lecturer at Beck's Theater. Women's Suffrage, Tuskegee Singers, Booker T. Washington's visits, racial issues, Judge Lindsey's visit, gangs, lecture by Senator LaFollettes, relations between WWU and the Bellingham community, YWCA and affiliations with WWU, Seabeck summer camp/YWCA, Easter Seal Society member and fundraiser, Senior Activities Program formed from ESS, grant agencies, Senior Citizen's Center, other services for the elderly…White House Conference on Aging, reports on nursing homes in Whatcom County, social services in Whatcom County, philanthropic activities in Bellingham, development of the orthopedic wing of St. Joseph's Hospital.
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Aurellia Celestine Interview
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Indian villages, local Native American history, the Indian Relocation Act, Elwha Indians, and Indian mill workers in Marietta, forced religion: Catholics, Shakers; childrearing, education, mission schools: Tulalip Mission School, Cushmen School, Nooksack Stickney Island school, Chemawa, and St. George School, Franciscan nuns, Sawnee tribe in Victoria, BC, Lummi Nation, wedding ceremonies, midwifery and childbirth, measles outbreaks, transportation, animal husbandry, house and farm work, Puyallup hop picking, fish and other food preparation, cooking, canning, household chores, sewing children's clothing; recreation: Native crafts, basket making, Indian Pow-wows, fourth of July events, visiting at Neah Bay, dances, Lummi, Stomish, Joe Hillaire teaches children how to dance, learning and teaching traditional Indian songs and art forms, dances, “Warm Springs Indians”; Indian languages: Clallum, Semiahmoo, and Lummi; land claims at Tulalip Indian Agency, receiving Indian names, and gambling.
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Bertha Dan Interview
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Life in rural La Connor, Washington, Swinomish Indian Reservation, homesteading, farming, trading, wool-trading, water conditions, land, childhood games, fruit trees, fishing, "Ashes" bread making, and other food preparation, memories of grandparents, school memories, punishment for speaking Indian language at school, interrelatedness of Salish Indian languages, canoe transportation, poor medical conditions, recreation, canoe races, basketball; crafts: basket making; sex education, chores, family punishments, learning to drive automobiles, employment history: hospital work, retirement home, cannery and farm work, fishing laws and shortages, traditions of sharing fish with Indian Elders, relations between Native American Elders and youth.
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Bessie Williams Interview
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Factory work, mental illness, chores, child labor, domestic work, farming in Canada, cheese making, Catholics, religion, religious difference, close women friendships, minorities and cannery working conditions and standards, Japanese, Filipinos, carpentry, cannery work, childbirth, land ownership, hospital costs, Georgia-Pacific pulp mill, bootlegging and smuggling alcohol and laborers over Canadian boarder to Pt. Roberts, WWII, Alaska gold-rush, male dominance over women’s clothing.
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Betty Russell Interview
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Betty (b. 1924) discusses her childhood in Bellingham living in both Park Street and Smith Road houses. She focuses mainly on traditions particular to her immediate family such as Christmas, religion, and weekend activities. One of her occasional getaways was going with the family to a beach on the Lummi Indian Reservation. She mentions her relationship and experiences with her father who was a logger and later a longshoreman. In addressing the Longshore Labor Strike in the 1930’s, she illustrates the reaction of the community and its direct effect on her family. Betty reminisces about first being an independent seamstress at 14 years old, volunteering as a receptionist at Graham Airport, and attending the old Sehome School to learn to be a sheet metal mechanic. Later she worked at Boeing in Seattle becoming one of the first women workers on the floor of the Boeing plant as a mechanic mostly building B-17’s. She also recounts both her family’s and the community’s reaction to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and further discusses serving in the hydrographic office of the Navy in Washington D. C. Here, she remarks about differences between the east coast and west coast.
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Betty Treese Interview
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Family memories, Nooksack Valley, farming in Everson and Mountainview, Everson social life, homesteading, cooking, logging, railway transportation between Bellingham Normal School and Wickersham. Poverty, homelessness, transient workers, fishing, picnics, childbirth, property, fruit orchards, animal husbandry, cedar stumps, milking cattle, fruit sales to Ferndale canneries, berry picking, water resources, wells, threshing, Sumas Mountain, early automobiles, inter-generational life, food preparation, 1918 flu epidemic, war bonds, school memories, PTA, mother was township treasurer, office equipment, labor and household chores, literacy, grange, 1924 election caucus, shingle mills, Ferndale High School, Carnation plant, school activities, Old Settler’s Picnic, Great Depression, WWII, husband’s work: shipyards, construction, Columbia Valley Lumber Company, Red Cross, socialization, community activities, childrearing, reminisces about apathy and lack of values of youth in 1980, country living, hunting, fishing, clam digging.
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Delia Haskins and Rose Senior Interview
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Conversation was recorded between two women who worked at the Lummi Senior Center. Discussion focuses upon school, childhood, housework, church life, transportation, locations: Quipper, Vancouver, religious schools, crafts: spinning wool, knitting, arranged marriage, Tulalip boarding school, Vancouver Island, Chemawa, Oregon, importance of church in people's lives, discussion about intermarriage.
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Elizabeth Bailey Interview
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Family's migration to the west, rural farming in Whatcom County, childbirth, illegitimate children, family relations, family illness, electricity in the house, school, sports, and childhood memories with good description of the different kinds of entertainment and social events of rural life in the early 1900s, Indian and settler relations, Frank Hillaire's fish business, and Indians in fishing industry, the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) road projects, and women's work during World War II.
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Eva Glass Interview
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Divorce, foster care, death, step father's alcoholism, tense relations with father, chores, pregnancy, infant mortality, marriage, flu epidemic of 1918, relations with neighbors, haying, farm work, food preparation, measles and rubella outbreak, "acid hives", Recreation, dances, Lynden veterans post, women's roles-agricultural extension service-bookkeeping, gardening. Household appliances, chores, sewing, daughter's occupations, dancing
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Florence Booman Interview
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Farming, family history, gold mining, trappers, hunters, romantic associations with mining, Balfour Quarry, hazardous mining conditions, Native Americans, Indian life in Marietta, Bow Farm, Carnegie public libraries, Lynden Library, Whatcom County Library System, children's literature, bookmobiles, libraries and literacy, stereotypes of librarians, philology, ethnobotany, pre-science age, science and technology, science fiction, religions: the Bahai Faith, Methodist Church "Conference on the Status of Women", women’s work, politics between the sexes, women’s liberation, and schools: Normal School, one room school houses, Kendall School, Bennett School, schoolteachers, school conditions in mining towns in rural Washington.
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Genevieve Maurine Melcher Interview
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Family history, Irish Catholics, peasants, pregnancy, Ku Klux Klan activity, mentorship of nuns, women's liberation, women’s clothing, occupations: housekeeping, store clerks, working at Boeing during WWII, education, teaching, rural life, attitudes towards teaching as a career, Fairhaven College, and religion.
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Hazel Schroder Interview
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Early memories of grandmother and her house in Leese, WA. Childhood illness, school memories, speech impediments, transportation by horse, wildlife, homesteading, dairy farming, housework, home child birth, marriage, German midwife/nurse delivered sister, food preparation, fishing, holidays, lengthy description of Santa Claus’s visits, Seventh Day Adventists, dancing descriptions at social gatherings, description of musical instruments, entrepreneurs, opened a bunk house, harvesting fruit, thoughts about pregnancy and childbirth, childrearing, and logging.
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Helen Paul Interview
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School memories of Van Zandt and Deming, migrant agricultural work: berry and vegetable picking in Eastern Washington, illnesses, poverty, fishing, food preparation, home-made clothing, home childbirth, planting and farming, tuberculosis, mortality, women's club, Pow-wows, longhouses, smokehouses, gatherings of Indian Tribes, Native songs and traditions, First Nations Canadians, cannery work, senior center, bone games, card games, Cushman Sanitarium, recreation, fish preparation, transportation of groceries by canoes, recycled clothing, knitting, Bureau of Indian Affairs sponsorship of Indian Hospital/field nurse. Description of Grandmother's log cabin fire, the flood associated with it, and the grandmother's death of pneumonia. Discussions of boarding schools, forbidden to speak Skagit-Helquinim Indian language, selling of Native American land near Lynden, factory work, Native crafts.
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Helen Peterson Interview
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Native Americans, Makah Tribe and language definitions, women together, clubs, women’s work, pre-arranged marriages, school memories, white/Indian relations, traditional crafts, housing, construction, church, education, boats, transportation, fishing, singing, dancing, family worked for Governor Stevens, childhood memories, storytelling, salmon preparation. Description of different Indian societies: Lukla, Hum-a-dah (wild men of the woods), the Medicine society. Helen relays some of the words in the songs. Alaska seal hunting, description of how one gets an Indian name. Helen was given the 1980 Peace and Friendship Award for her contributions to historical heritage. Talks about the importance of passing the history of her culture to her children. Forbidden to speak the Makah language at school, now teaching it to young children of Kindergarten age. Life during the Great Depression. Crafts made with readily available natural fibers. Recreation, horseback riding, cannery work, women leaders, helping schools, minorities, and travel; discusses importance of making Native American botanical and other information available to the public.
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Jennie Elenbaas Interview
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Family immigration from Holland, housework, farming, midwifery, migration west from Michigan by train for "golden opportunity" that was promised by land agents in the Midwest, Dutch language and barriers when moved to WA, gender roles relating to chores, sewing since childhood; occupations: sewing; meat preparation, canning, cheese making, Bellingham roads made of split logs, Guide Meridian description, food harvesting and storage, bread making, recreation including hayrides, camping, singing, church activities; farm equipment, school memories, dating, correspondence with husband when he was in Navy, mothering, child birth, child rearing, flu epidemic after WWI, illness, women’s hairstyles and reputation, hair care, women socializing.
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Jennifer Hammes Interview
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Family (Millie and Norman Pratt) were prospectors, hunters, mountaineers. Parents opened a cookhouse mainly catering to firefighters in 1924. Worked in forest service as a "fire lookout" at Copper Mountain and in Winchester ranger station, look out for Japanese fighter planes, code work, contact with Church Mountain, isolation, women in forestry, packing in their own food and supplies, cooking, sacred feeling of nature, scared of heights, wanting to be brave--Mt. Redoubt, Mt. Challenger, astronomy, artists, restoration of Winchester ranger station, mentions her father's friend Joe Galbraith an old hunter and prospector, talks about people she knew in Glacier, Bennet family, description of prospector's cabins, Lone Jack goldmine, digging latrines on Winchester trails, women friends would visit.
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Joan Baijot Interview
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Family heritage, (Mother is a Tlingit Indian, Father is Norwegian) raising her siblings, boarding school memories, caring for her mother and family relations, life in rural Alaska and Seattle. Also: Gaining independence as a woman, feelings and introspections about being a woman. Other topics mentioned in the interview include: illness, hypnotism, fear of flying, and women's liberation.
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Julia Adams Interview
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Family life, child-care, child custody issues, divorce and occupations: housekeeping, secretary, realtor, and hospital volunteer, the War Bride’s Act, and eloping.
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Katrina Jez Interview
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Sex discrimination in employment, Washington (State), Alaska, Sexual harassment, Fisheries, Women fishers, Women fish trade workers.
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Kim Walker Interview
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Walker discusses how she became involved in the commercial fishing industry and what life and work are like on commercial fishing boats. Topics cover include daily tasks, superstitions, and the dangers of fishing in Alaska, the roles of women in the commercial fishing industry and the various different positions she had on different vessels. Additionally, she provides insights into becoming a licensed commercial fisherperson and different aspects of the professional fishing industry.
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Leona Ward Interview
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Rural life in Washington State, railroad construction, dairy farming, children, homesteading, labor, farming equipment, tomboys, socializing, education and gender, women’s roles, hygiene, remedies for emergencies, chores, evening entertainment, sexuality, sex education, neighborhood and community activities, electricity, birth control, midwifery, threshers, holidays, infant mortality, singing, "Silver Bells" singing group, "modern" appliances, food preparation, transportation, divorce, poverty, childbirth, death.
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Louisa George Interview
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Nooksack Tribe, Indian boarding school Stickney Home School, Native American Indian relations with white settlers, arranged marriage, divorce, starvation, tuberculosis, childbirth, poverty, infant mortality, Indian gambling, Pow-wows, Native American traditional song and dance, crafts, and ceremonies. Descriptions of face painting, bone games, and other rituals, religion; Christianity, Pentecostal Church, Methodists, Shakers, translation of Christian hymns into Native American languages (Chiliwack, Skagit) inherited ancestral Native songs, difficulty of communicating family songs, work; logging, farming, cooking, migrant labor, and agricultural work.
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Lucille Mason Interview
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Begins with Mason's memories of her grandparents (German Immigrants), migration from New Jersey to Inglewood, Washington with 13 children in 1889 near Lake Sammamish. Tells about transportation to Seattle by boat. Uncle settled in what was Freedonia, between Burlington and Anacortes. Mother (dressmaker), Father (teacher), home schooling, home made clothing, memories of one room school house and having her father as her teacher, education in Skagit County, Mount Vernon, women's higher education, discussion about women's colleges, teaching botany, micro-biology while raising a child, being pregnant while teaching: unusual. Discussion of tension during WWII when schools attendance was down because west coast so close to Japan. Discusses "box socials", fundraising for charity, sex education, attitudes about sex, birth control, incest, pre-marital relations, monetary discrimination for female teachers, suffrage amendment, voting rights, alternatives women's roles, discussion about life pre welfare, charity, poor farm, women's social customs, talks about her relationship with son, David Mason - former Fairhaven College professor.
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Lyda Colfax Interview
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Deah and Makah Indians, Nootka Indians, Canadian Klaquot Band, Clallum Indian-chief of the Pishk Tribe, Native American Indian Councils; family relations, salmon and other food preparation, eating habits, fishing conditions; traditional Indian crafts: basket making, marriage, children, childhood, midwifery, healing arts, religion, nursing relatives, traditional Indian songs, ceremonies, importance of passing along the lineage to future generations.
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Lyn Dennis Interview
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Sex discrimination in employment, Washington (State), Alaska, Sexual harassment, Fisheries, Women fishers, Women fish trade workers.
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Margaret Cable Interview
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Life in Jamestown, all-Indian communities, the Clallum Tribe, family life, marriage, pregnancy, housework, crafts: basket weaving, braided rug making, diseases: small pox and chicken pox white settlers brought and spread to the Indians, disease and infant mortality, making crab traps, boathouses, canoe storage; recreation: games, dancing, sailing, religion: Shaker Church community; illness, vivid dreams, English language enforcement at school, forgetting of the Native Indian language.
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Margaret Steiner Interview
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Nursing, hospital work, United States public health system, thoughts about marriage, child care, spinsters, barren women, housework, farming, gardening, and canning.
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Martha Tiffany Interview
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Family history, Native American reservations, school memories, illness, housing in Bellingham, memories of grandparents and other relatives, prejudice, Normal school, campus life, women’s professions, teaching in Sumas, WWII, sexuality, automobiles, women’s sufferage, voting, transportation, traveling by boat from Bellinham to Seattle, inflation, the Republican party, church memories, Sunday school, Pearl Harbor day, black-outs during the war, being single, sibling relationships, holidays, and food preparation.
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Mary Ellen Cochran Interview
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Growing up during the Great Depression, Flathead Native American Indians, French Canadian-Indians, First Nations, family rules and customs, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), hunger, bootlegging, recreation, racial diversity, Indian drinking habits in Pioneer Square, USO Clubs and dances, covered wagons, homesteading, , Buffalo round-ups and roasts, religions: catholic, sex education.
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Mary Frank Interview
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Life in the Nisqually-Puyallup area, and Nez Perce Indian Reservation, migrant work: berry and hop picking in Nisqually, life at Mud Bay (Oyster Bay), boarding schools, women Indian Elders doing field work, picking crops; babysitting, Tribal registration, illness, strained family relations, foster care, Juvenile Hall (Washington State Department of Social and Health Services?), latch-key children, improper doctor-patient interactions, improper burials, marital problems, divorce; recreation, Frank's Landing, army destroying land at Frank's Landing, Indian names, lineages, Native American traditional crafts, basket making, closeness with relatives, religion (Shaker), traditional marriage, Indian names, Shoalwater-land base, reservation organization controversy, Native American Indian history.
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Rose Morford Interview
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Migration west from Wisconsin, WWII, work in Seattle dockyards, farm life in Eastern Washington, homesteading, WWI soldiers, hop harvesting, housework, nursing, life in Fresno, cannery work, abuse, Tacoma, homeless refuge, childhood memories, school memories, poverty, social customs, recreation, sewing, elopement, transportation, sex education, birth control, marriage, pregnancy, the Great Depression, anti-nuclear demonstration, equipment description, beginnings of Hanford nuclear power plant, factory work, Rose's impressions of the German immigrants around her.
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Ruth Torgerson Interview
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Family history, German immigrants, child rearing, life in Alaska, highway construction, dance performances, potlatch parades, WWI, education history, teaching on Lummi Island and Lummi Nation Reservation.
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Verna Friend Interview
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Good description of family and farm life in Sumas; rural Whatcom County in the early 1900s; homesteading, childbirth, child rearing, illnesses, recreation, gardening, food preparation, farming, chores, and equipment as well as children's activities, games, social life, marriage, 4-H involvement, cooking, and home economics.
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Wave Verkist Interview
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Native American Indian and white settler relations, household chores and activities, writing career-Puget Sounder and Bellingham Herald, occupations-secretary, teaching, marriage, homesteading, wildlife, overwhelming nature, old growth forests, music, Normal school, farming, animals, clearing land, fruit harvesting, selling fruit to fish cannery in Ferndale, primitive water and heating conditions, children’s jobs, threshing, airplanes, WWII, gardening, food preparation, camping, Lummi-Stomish, Indian woman midwife/doctor, discrimination against Native Americans, minorities, school subjects, novel writing, Great Depression, her children’s occupations, rest homes.
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