Hardy Pioneers

If you go into Friday Harbor’s Town Hall you will see this photograph hanging in the reception area. The hardy pioneer in the middle is Charles McKay, one of the first Americans to settle on San Juan Island. McKay and his friend D.W. Oakes were 49ers who after unsuccessful prospecting for gold in California took a schooner out of San Francisco to Astoria, Oregon. From there, they bought a large Indian canoe and paddled the rest of the way up the coast, around the cape and into the Strait of Juan de Fuca against formidable winds and currents, north and up the Frazer River. As I mentioned, these were hardy pioneers! Both men farmed on San Juan Island where they married native women and raised families.

Powder-Keg Island, Jo Baily & Al Cummings, p 30-31

Friday Harbor Founding Fathers
Edward Warbass, Charles McKay and Stephen Boyce

W. D. Oakes and I, returning from the Frazer River mining excitement, arrived in Victoria, B.C. on our way back to California. There we got acquainted with some hunters and they told us about San Juan Island. They told us what a fine Island it was, full of game. So we went there to see it. There appeared to be a lodestone on the island, for we got stuck there at once. We found the Hudson Bay Company had a station on the island. They had more than 2,000 head of sheep and cattle and horses. There was also an American Customs Inspector by the name of Hubbs. We took up farms and soon there came a number of other American citizens to the island. All took up farms, and among them there was a man by the name of Cutlar who took a farm.

Charles McKay 1908

source: Powder-Keg Island, Jo Baily & Al Cummings

Island Holiday Events

November 23 & 24
Holiday Bazaar at the Elementary School
10am-5pm
November 30
Memorial Park Tree Lighting ~ 5:00 PM
~
Port of Friday Harbor Lighting ~ 5:45 PM
December 1
CATS Festival of Trees ~ San Juan Community Theatre ~ 5:00 PM
December 2
“Winter Wonderland” Holiday Decorating Contest ~ 5:00 PM
December 5
San Juan Historical Museum
Old Fashioned Holiday Celebration ~ 5:00 PM ~ 7:00 PM
December 8
Lighted Boat Parade and Santa Ship ~ 5:30 PM
December 9
San Juan Community Theatre Teddy Bear Tea ~ 11:00 AM
~
Limekiln Park Lighthouse Holiday
“Tours to the Top” 1:00 PM ~ 4:00 PM
December 15
Roche Harbor Old Fashioned Christmas
Neighborhood Block Party ~ Late Afternoon
~
San Juan Singers Holiday Concert
San Juan Community Theatre ~ 7:30 PM
December 16
San Juan Singers Holiday Concert
San Juan Community Theatre ~ 5:00 PM

* * * * *

send holiday event news to pmcrae@rockisland.com

or leave it as a comment and I will post it.

Arctic Raven ~ November 23

ARCTIC RAVEN GALLERY
FIRST SNOW

Hot Cider Reception 5:30 - 7:30 Friday & Saturday November 23 & 24th
This show will feature a new collection
of Native Arctic artwork & gifts from recent trips North

Puffin by Henry C. Shavings Sr. Woodcarving

Pumpkin Pie

The San Juan and Orcas Island 1941 Rebekah Lodge Cookbook

Pumpkin Pie, always a favorite, is featured in my Grandmother's 1941 Rebekah Lodge Cookbook. It is that time of year. If you are contemplating baking a pumpkin pie here are a few recipies from Island cooks for you to consider.

photo: Margaret Bell

Remembering Veterns

Colorguard: National Park 1998 Encampment

photo: National Park Service

"For more than 10 years, re-enactors from throughout the Pacific Northwest and Canada have been gathering to celebrate peace each August on the English Camp parade ground.

The annual Encampment commemorates the peaceful joint occupation of San Juan Island by British and American forces from 1859 to 1872, and final, peaceful settlement of the Northwest Boundary dispute." NPS

Link to: San Juan National Historical Park

Thirty Thousand semi-barbarous Californians

Victoria, 1858 ~ Illustrated News of the World

Adding powder to the powder keg building up on San Juan Island, in 1858 gold was discovered on the Frazer River in British Columbia. Here is a brief excerpt from: “an Irish-American itinerant journalist and California propagandist” J. Ross Browne’s account, The Golden State’s View of the Frazer Gold Rush, originally published in Harper’s Magazine 1861.

The British Lion had been slumbering undisturbed in Victoria for half a century, and was very much astonished, upon waking up, to find thirty thousand semi-barbarous Californians scattered broadcast over the British Possessions. Governor Douglass issued manifestoes in vain. He evidently thought it no joke. The subject eventually became a matter of diplomatic correspondence, in which much ink was shed, but fortunately no blood, although the subsequent seizure of San Juan Island by General Harney came very near producing that result.

~ J. Ross Browne

"Returned From the Frazer"

Resource: Unsettled Boundaries: Frazer Gold and the British-American Northwest
by Robert E. Ficken

Things Heat Up

Punch cartoon from Vouri's The Pig War

Following the “exceedingly annoying affair” of the sheep auction on the beach tensions continued to rise. Both British and Americans received instruction from further up their command counseling them to maintain the peace. Neither country however went so far as to suggest ceding territory as a means to secure the peace. To the contrary, both sides saw retaining San Juan Island as being in their respective national interest.

Not only that but northern tribes were sweeping south with increasing frequency in fierce raiding parties attacking both settlers and southern tribes taking slaves, guns, pots and scalps (remember Issac Ebey). The common adversary inspired some cooperation between the British and the Americans while at the same time bringing the military closer in. The United States established military posts at Bellingham Bay and Port Townsend and by 1856 Rear Admiral HW Bruce of Her Royal Majesties Navy relocated his Pacific fleet from Central America to Vancouver Island.

references: Baily-Cummings Powder-Keg Island, Vouri's The Pig War