William Vincent turned a page in an old scrapbook. There, clipped from a newspaper, was a picture that took him back almost 85 summers.
“Old Ironsides came into Everett for the Fourth of July,” said Vincent, who’ll turn 90 this July. “I was 5 then. I got to go aboard.”
Nicknamed “Old Ironsides,” the frigate USS Constitution, launched in 1797, did indeed make its way to Everett in 1933. It was boarded by 55,797 visitors during its week-long stay at Pier 1.
Vincent was one of more than 20 people who came to the Everett Public Library on Tuesday night for a “History Mystery” event, part of the library’s 2018 Hands on History series.
The public was invited by the library’s Northwest Room staff to look at vintage photo albums and scrapbooks with the goal of identifying people, places and events from the region’s past. Vincent, of Everett, was among those poring over photos and other items brought out from library storage.
Following Library of Congress preservation advice, they wore non-scratching gloves while paging through albums that date as far back as the early 1900s. Would-be sleuths puzzled over locations, trying to match scenes of dirt roads with today’s busy streets.
“My family was here before statehood,” said Everett’s Theresa Gemmer, 67, who is retired from the library. She spent time with an album containing travel photos. “They went to Stanford University and Santa Barbara,” said Gemmer, guessing that the people pictured had taken a tour of campuses. The names “Ted” and “Edward” were penned on some photos, but Gemmer couldn’t tell whether or not they showed the same person.
“The only kinds of real breakthroughs were the locations,” said Lisa Labovitch, a history specialist at the library with Mindy Van Wingen.
Looking at pictures she believes were from about 1911, Labovitch worked Tuesday with Dave Ramstad and Jack O’Donnell, both members of the Everett Historical Commission. She later checked 1911 and 1912 Polk City Directories and a 1914 Sanborn Map to find place names from the pictures.
Labovitch figured out that the 1911-era photos likely showed the Grand View Hotel at 2370 Norton Ave., and a business at 1114 Hewitt Ave. called Frank’s Place. The western mouth of the rail tunnel near Everett’s waterfront also was pictured.
“I don’t recognize much,” said 85-year-old Mike Hancock as he looked at one album. A retired builder, Hancock moved to south Everett in 1937. “He built a lot of houses in our neighborhood,” said Donna Mazar, a neighbor of Hancock’s who was at the library Tuesday.
Cars offered some clues. “That’s about a ‘38 Plymouth or Dodge,” said Hancock, examining one photo. “I had a ’39 Plymouth. I can tell the old cars.”
When people did find clues, they stuck jotted notes into the albums as bookmarks. There remained many poignant mysteries.
A fancy wedding book, with a white cover and pictures of the bride and groom, had been dropped at the library with a handwritten note: “Dear Folks at Everett Library, 11 years ago I found this photo album next to a dumpster in my apartment complex,” it said. “I cannot bring myself to throw it away.”
The evening was a chance to meet people with a shared interest in history.
“It’s really a unique event,” said Everett’s Brent Diamond, whose family came to town in the 1890s. He and Laura McCarty, of Mukilteo, were strangers. Yet they worked together to find information in a scrapbook filled with faded photos. McCarty said her grandfather once worked at the old Everett Pulp and Paper Mill in Lowell.
“A lot of people were interested in the person who was shot in the foot,” Labovitch said.
That tale of woe was found in an Everett Daily Herald clipping from Sept. 19, 1907. It said that man named Fay Compton, “an Everett chauffeur,” had his foot shot off when a companion’s gun accidentally fired as they were duck hunting at Union Slough.
There were sadder stories. One scrapbook has a page with a gold-colored star, and images showing a framed photo of a World War I soldier on a table next to a vase of flowers. A name scribbled on the pictures is illegible.
This is the first year for the Hands on History series, which includes book discussions and film screenings.
“It’s kind of like peeking into people’s lives,” said Larry O’Donnell, who shared a table with Jerry Solie and Janice White, all of them Everett High School members of the class of 1955.
They didn’t solve many mysteries, but the fun is in the history hunt.
“You do it piece by piece, book by book,” Ramstad said. “There’s so much to learn.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
Hands on History
The Everett Public Library’s Northwest Room historians have scheduled the following events as part of a Hands on History series. Events are at 6 p.m. in the main library, 2702 Hoyt Ave.
May 1: Discussion of the book “Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens,” by Steve Olson.
June 5: Screening of a film from library’s archives.
Aug. 7: Computer training to help research family and local history with the Ancestry Library database.
Sept. 4: Workshop on family photos, then and now.
Oct. 2: History-Mystery night to identify photos from library archives.
Nov. 6: Discussion of the book “Mill Town,” by Norman H. Clark.
Dec. 4: Screening of film from library’s archives.
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