Emmett Hunt's Diary entry for May 7, 1884

Pretty fair, breeze Northerly.  Got her . . . aboard & in P.M. came home slowly but surely safely.

© 2012 Harbor History Museum. All rights reserved.

Peter Goldsmith (Petar Zlatarich)

We know so little about Petar Zlatarich who after arriving in the United States changed his name to Peter Goldsmith.  So, here is a little information we do know and hopefully some of you readers might be able to fill in a few more blanks.

We do know he died on April 12, 1914 and doing in research on genealogy they recommend if you know nothing, start from death and work backwards.  So here goes.  

Unfortunately on the US Census reports his age on the various reports changes.  Not unusual because in the mid-1800s several people didn’t know when they were born for various reasons.   It these reports vary, it doesn’t exactly mean that the information on Ancestry.com is any more correct.  However, a search of Peter in their files reveal the following information:

• 1878 Territorial Census
• Peter age 45
• Birthplace - Spain
• Occupation - fisherman
• Precinct Steilacoom
• S. Goldsmith age 45 
• 1880 Territorial Census
• Peter age 51
• wife - Milly age 20 (The Washington Death Index lists one “Millie Goldsmith” who died in 1900 age 39)
• Son Joseph age 2
• 1892 Territorial Census
• Peter age 60
• Son Peter Jr. age 10 - student
• 1900 Census
• He was born June 1832 in Habsburg Austrian Empire that part of Austria known as Dalmatia in or near Dubronik as were his parents, names unknown
• His immigration date to the US - 1852 (New York)*
• He was a widower with one son, Peter Goldsmith, Jr. age 17
• 1910 Census
• Widowed
• WA Death Records
• April 12, 1914
• Peter Goldsmith, Tacoma Pauper Cemetery, Grave 303
• Peter Goldsmith, Jr. May 9, 1914 Tacoma Obituary
• Tacoma Pauper Cemetery, Grave 307

 I was unable to find naturalization papers showing his name change, only Index # 556103.  I am also curious as to how his immigration date and record would be in New York District.  All the information we have states that Peter arrived in US from Canada in the Harbor History Museum, as well as on the First Croatian Fishermen on Vancouver Island site and on the Gig Harbor Founding Families site .

Central Europe was involved in crises in the 1860s and Austria, Croatia and Serbia were also affected by natural calamities damaging agriculture creating vast unemployment throughout the country.  The other major way of life was fishing.  People fled seeking a more stable employment climate and the United States and Canada were a natural destination.

Petar met two other men fleeing Europe on a steamer bound for Victoria, British Columbia:  Samuel Jerisich, a Croatian and John Farragut (Farrague), a Portuguese.  It is likely that he first arrived in New York on an steamer, and then continued on that or another steamer around the horn to California, and on to Nanaimo, British Columbia.  It is unknown at which leg of the journey they met, but most like the last leg.  We only know from Dr. Zelimir B. Juricic’s book about Samuel’s trips.    In 1854, at age 21, Samuel Jerisich arrived in San Francisco for the second time; Samuel left  San Francisco for Canada when, in 1860s, gold was found in Canada on the Fraser River.  .

The three men had decided to become fishing partners by the time they arrived in Nanaimo, British Columbia.  The waters in and around Vancouver Island contained tremendous varieties of fish:  again, quoting Dr. Juricic, “halibut, smelt, haddock, and whiting, herring and herring spawn, shrimp and prawns, trout, rock and link cod, oysters, dog fish, seals and sea lions”.They settled on Vancouver Island and fished the waters around Vancouver, down into the San Juans and further down the Pacific Coast to the Olympic Peninsula, rowing the long flat-bottomed skiff with sixteen-foot oars.  The men fished by trolling with hook-and-line as practiced by the Native Americans and the First Tribes of Canada, or from the harbor shore drawing the nets into shore by hand.    They never fished with a motor-power boat.

On one of their fishing trips on the Puget Sound they were caught in a storm, seeking shelter, came into the Gig Harbor bay.  While here they found there was good fishing in the sound and that the San Juans were not that far away.  They liked the Native Americans they met and decided to settle here in 1867.  Samuel returned to Vancouver to fetch his wife, Annie and their children.

Samuel built his business selling the fish he caught in Steilacoom, Olympia, and the Hudson Bay Store at Fort Nisqually.  He built a dock in Gig Harbor, rendering plant to extract dogfish oil, a smokehouse and warehouse for smoked and salted fish.

John Farragut also remained in Gig Harbor.  Both he and Samuel are buried at the Artondale Cemetery.  

But Peter basically just disappeared for memory with few men or women remembering him.  I recall a few years ago of seeing something about him owning and selling a piece of property in Gig Harbor but unfortunately couldn’t find it for this piece.

If you are a Sherlock Holmes and discover more facts about Peter, his son, his life, please share with us by commenting on the blog.

© 2012 Harbor History Museum. All rights reserved.

Emmett Hunt's Diary entry for Wednesday, April 30, 1884

Calm & quite pleasant.  Started out to collect Poll Tax & got as far as Rains in B. Cove

© 2012 Harbor History Museum. All rights reserved.

Frederick Eugene Austin (1/10/1912-12/30/1994)

Today whenever the name of Austin is mentioned as one of our pioneers, the man that immediately comes up is Charles Osgood Austin and his connection to the lumber industry, and of course, Austin Estuary at the mouth of monkey Creek.

But there was another Austin family who arrived on the Gig Harbor peninsula around 1902 and settled in Gig Harbor and that was Frederick Eugene Austin (9/10/1861-11/27/1940).  He and his first wife, Mary Rose Sackett Austin (7/12/1866-10/7/1908) moved west because Mary Rose had relatives, George and Ida Sackett  who were living in Tacoma and the St. Peters living in Gig Harbor.  These two families had been writing home to Scio, New York enthusiastically about life in Washington.  He found some land about 10 1/2 miles south of the bay and bought out the interest of thief a man who had filed title but made no improvements.  Its about, as I understand the intersection of Stinson Avenue and SR16; SR 16 cutting the property in half.

I happened to run across two different articles about Fred in the Harbor History Museum Research Room and became curious.  I also found the name “Austin” on the Gig Harbor Peninsula Historical Society’s list of recommended street names.

The first article was a Peninsula Gateway piece by Andy James regarding a book signing at Mostly Books by Fred, the son, when he was 82 years old entitled “Bringing old days back’.  I don’t want to spoil the book review by Andy James, but it is very detailed and very good.

The story of the family is delightfully recounted in a charming memoir written by one of Frederick Eugene Austin’s sons entitled “Tales from the Woodshed”  published in 1992 by Red Apple Publishing and published by Gorham Printing in Rochester, WA.  The book reads as though you and Fred were sitting together and talking about the old days.

Fred spent his working life as a logger until age 68.  Then he, and with his sons assistance, he opened a Christmas tree farm.  Two of those sons are also named Frederick Eugene just to confuse you when researching the name.  So there are four Frederick Eugene Austins total in the articles, though there may be more now. His age though had caught up with him and even running the tree farm known as Artondale Sincere Tree Farm on a full-time basis became too much work after 10 years.  So his daughter, Mary Young Zawlocki, encouraged him to keep busy by writing down all his memories of the family, its life, and Gig Harbor as it evolved over his lifetime.

I discovered when trying to find copies of “Tales from the Woodshed” it is very difficult, and when you do they are expensive some copies up to $500.  Surprising I believe for a self-published book written by an unknown author.  However, No Dearth of Books has a copy.  One of the reasons the book is so difficult to find is that its initial run was only 100 copies published.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could come up with a way to have a few more copies published?

It was the second article was also in the Peninsula Gateway entitled “A Pioneer’s Plaza” that really grabbed my attention and confused me to no end.  The Pioneer Plaza referred to is the Kimball Plaza just off Pioneer Way.  

The property referred to was, before it became Kimball Plaza, Albert Simerson’s rye field  As the article when talking about the property says “Then it was a field of rye and Frederick Eugene (Dad) helped his son Albert Simerson harvest the grain with an immense grain cradle, according to Austin’s son, Fred Austin of Gig Harbor.  

Following the death of his first wife, Mary Rose Sackett Austin, in 1908 from cancer Fred Austin’s father returned to New York with his daughter Rhoda went back to New York.  He sold his 2 lots  located near Stinson Avenue and Wollochet where an Assembly of God Church was located for one thousand dollars in gold and once back in New York  and winter over, he headed for the farming country.  While attending a town picnic he met and fell in love with Marie Huxel Austin.  By fall, they married and pulled up stakes tp return to the west although Marie would much rather stay in New York where her family, friends, and life had been up to that time.  Marie, her two sons, John (+/- 1903) and Albert (1894) and Frederick (Dad) came to Gig Harbor, but when they arrived it was no longer the boom time it had been when he left in early 1909.  Europe was gearing up for war, and it affected the United States as well with the panic of 1910-11 following the enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Once back, Dad worked as a common laborer for others, and bartering and trading for food.  But he also located 20 acres of ‘wild land’ that he was able to buy no money down and $10 a month.  This property was “about 2 miles south of the first place.  Address: 6001 Wollochet Drive NW.  I was born on the north half of the property and guess what?  The south end, now in 1989, sports a new and much larger Assembly of God Church.  Just a little oddity I thought interesting, that the only two pieces of property Dad owned in the West would have Assembly of God churches on them.  Neither church was built during Dad’s time.”  (Tales from the Woodshed)

So let’s jump from 1912 when Fred was born to 1924 when he was 12 and got his first job picking loganberries.  Then the following year he saved up enough to buy his first 5 foot saw and started cutting wood.  But 1930, Fred graduated in a class of 25; he was in the senior class play, a four-letter man in baseball and 2-letter in football.

Following graduation, in the midst of the Great Depression, work was hard to come by so Fred earned money through a variety of different jobs.  Things like picking hops in Eastern Washington, helping plant crops and apple trees as well as picking the apples, and working in an apiary on the Yakima Indian Reservation.  Oh yes, he even trapped skunks for money so he could get a marriage license.  

And, on May 28, 1934, he and Marie Bridget McDonough were married.  In the fall of 1935 the C.M.C. Timber Company started logging the last stand of old timber on the Gig Harbor Peninsula.  It covered 10,240 acres and Fred got a job with them falling (as he puts it in his book “not felling, HA!)

Fred’s last job was logging eighty acres of timber that he had gotten.  It took him 3 years, but when he finished he hung up his saw.

Fred’s book is 142 pages and divided into 5 parts with titles such as:  Merging Paths; Chat with Family; Happenings during My Section of Time; Bits & Pieces and And Now the Tales.  So, as you see, I’ve barely touched the surface.

Let’s end with Fred’s Senior Class Poem, which appeared in Perclawam (Gig Harbor Union High School Annual)

Oh, Union High School,

We’ll soon be leaving you,

For we have other places to go

And other things to do

Four years you have been our home,

Four happy years were they, 

But now the time has come for us

To leave you and be on our way.

We’ll be homesick each and every one

But we will forget that after awhile,

And we’ll think of our high school days

With many a happy smile.

We have all looked forward to the time

When we would bid you good-bye,

But now that the time is here

We leave you with a sigh.

As dear to our heart as other places grow,

I know we each and all

Will be wishing we could return to you

When school begins next fall.

Others will take our places

And our duties will perform,

Until they, like us, will be turned out

To face the withering storm.

Of all the things you gave us

The greatest were wisdom and happiness,

And now we have more to thank you for

Than we ever can express.

But even the best of friends must part

And the time for us is here,

But as we leave you, Old High School,

In every eye there shines a tear.

© 2012 Harbor History Museum. All rights reserved.

Emmett Hunt's Diary entry for Wednesday, April 23, 1884

Tearful showery & wet.  Stayed in most of the time but got some more wood aboard the boat.

© 2012 Harbor History Museum. All rights reserved.

All Fools Day aka April Fools Day

Is there anyone out there who has not played an April Fools joke on someone, or hasn’t had such a joke played on them?  The pranks, jokes and games associated with the day start at an early age and go on long after that.  But why write about that on a history blog?  Because, for lack of a better reason, the history of the day.  Why do we celebrate a day devoted to an international day of pranks?

What follows is what I have discovered via the internet, that wondrous bit of technology that brings forth answers on most anything you ask for, and within minutes (or should I say seconds?).  

Theory no. 1:  The Council of Trent in 1563 made the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.  France made the change in 1564.  Once again, not everyone caught up with the times and continued to celebrate the wrong day for the start of the new year.  The gullible, those who had not yet received news of the date change, often had paper fish stuck on their backs.  These fish were called “poisson d’avail” or “April Fish” and symbolizes a young, easily caught fish and someone who is gullible.  In France, patisseries, chocolateries and bakeries make all sorts of fish shaped treats to enjoy on this day.  

Theory no. 2:  In 1582, Pope Gregory III (you know, the man the Gregorian calendar is named after) decided that new year should start on January 1st now March 31.  The change was published throughout the Church, but many people remained unaware of the change and continued to celebrate New Years Day on April 1st.  According to Ginger Smoak, a medieval historian at the University of Utah in a Huffington Post article, those people were made fun of and called fools.  Hence, April Fools.

Theory no. 3:  Not every country adopted the Gregorian calendar at the same time; for example England did not adopt in until 1752 but had already established the tradition of celebrating April Fools Day.  According to Wikipedia, in the United Kingdom and those countries whose traditions are derived from the UK, all joking ceases at midday.  Anyone playing April Fools jokes after 12:00 pm is the “April fool” themselves. 

Theory no. 4:  The Romans celebrated a festival named Hilaria on March 25 rejoicing in the resurrection of Attis (in Phrygian religion, vegetation god).  The Hindu calendar celebrates Holi  (king Prahad), and the Jewish calendar has Purim (the salvation of the Jews from the wicked Haman).

  

Theory No. 5:  Joseph Boskin, History Professor at Boston University, said the practice began during the reign of Constantine.  Supposedly a group of court jesters told Constantine they could do a better job running the empire.  Constantine, amused, allowed Krugel, a jester, to be king for a day.  Kugel passed an edict calling for absurdity on that day, and it became an annual event.  

Boskin’s explanation was picked up and printed in an Associated Press article in1983.  It was only later that Associated Press realized they had been made an April Fool themselves.  Boskin himself had made up the story as nothing more than an April Fools joke.

Theory no. 6:  April 1st is just a time when normally winter ends and spring begins and people feel the need for fun and lighthearted celebration, at least for one day.

Note:

International Business Times

France Travel Guide

Wikipedia

infoplease
© 2012 Harbor History Museum. All rights reserved.

Emmett Hunt's Diary entry for Wednesday, April 16, 1884

Cloudy and cool with S. breeze.  Steamed up and ran to Seattle for inspection in 4 hrs. & 45 min.  Get around with some business in PM and in we go to the "Alhambra" for diversion.

© 2012 Harbor History Museum. All rights reserved.