A kind reader recently gave me a 1927 hardcover book, Who’s Who in Washington State. (I’ll show a scan of the handsome cover as soon as Blogger lets me.)
It was published in Seattle by one Arthur H. Allen. His preface calls the book “the story of human activity, the successes and failures of forward-looking individuals who have not only conceived projects but have had the courage either to successfully carry them through, or to lay a ground work which resulted in final completion.”
He also promises, “An effort will be made in the next edition of Who’s Who in Washington State to list the names of more women.” As far as I’ve been able to tell, there wasn’t another edition, at least not by Allen; later books by the same name were apparently published in 1949 and 1963 by others.
The tome’s 240 pages are crammed with tiny-type, one-paragraph bios. Most of the subjects are businessmen and lawyers, with a few doctors, government officials, and educators added into the mix.
The Fisher family (then of Fisher Flouring Mills, now of KOMO and related properties) is handily represented. William Boeing, however, is listed alone, with no relatives. Such pioneer family names as Yesler, Boren, and Denny are missing altogether. So are druggist George Bartell, banker Joshua Green, and the shoe-selling Nordstroms (though the families behind Frederick & Nelson and The Bon Marche are duly included).
Those who are in the book, and whom I’d heard of, include real-estate titan Henry Broderick, longtime P-I sportswriter Royal Brougham, nursery owner Charles Malmo, UW prof Edmond Meany, naturalist/writer Floyd Schmoe (whom I’d met in his old age), lumbermen Charles Stimson and John Weyerhaeuser, Seattle Times publisher Clarence Blethen, PACCAR cofounder William Pigott, and seed packager Charles Lilly (his firm later became Lilly-Miller).
But it’s the names I’d never heard of that particularly fascinate me.
Names like Alice Rollit Cole (“teacher of expression and dramatic reader”), Walton Lindsay Fulp (“supt. Carnation Milk Products Co., Kent”), O.H. Woody (“Mgr. and publisher, the Okanogan Independent”), and Anna Elisibit Green Grant (“owner S.O.S. Placement Bureau”).
These are some of the people who helped made this state great. They, and a few million others even more obscure. It’s fun to open the book to any random name (say, “Fleming, Howard Glenn, v-p. Snoboy Fruit Distributors”), and make up an imagined full life story for the person, complete with parents, spouse(s), children, likes/dislikes, triumphs/frustrations, hopes/fears, and ultimate life’s regret, if any.
