Nugget Newsletter – Spring 2025 | Ferry County Historical Society

Annual Meeting News

Ferry County Historical Society held its annual meeting on March 25, 2025. About twenty people were in attendance, including several current and former board members and representatives from the Ansorage Museum and the car museum in Curlew.

President Jim Rochelle welcomed attendees and introduced two new board members, Amy Sharbono and Debbie Almquist. He briefly mentioned the work accomplished on the Slagle property in the past year: new chimneys, new outside painting, and work cleaning the barn. He also reiterated the work on preparing the garden site on the adjacent property. Work planned for the coming year includes rebuilding the rock retaining wall at the back of the garden site and preparing the site for moving the Kauffman cabin to the Slagle property. It also provides foundation work and porch work on the Slagle House itself.

Treasurer Jayne Jurgenson presented a written report on the society’s financial status. She also reported that, as of February 2025, we had 168 paid members. A recent drive has been quite successful in increasing our membership.

Representatives from the Ansorage Hotel gave a short report on the museum’s progress. They have several new members and plan to complete the maintenance needed on the foundation and the porches. They also plan to coordinate the open Saturdays with the Slagle House schedule. They invited the Historical Society to plan a board meeting at the hotel soon.

Steve Perrins, President of the Curlew Car Museum, gave a brief report on the status of the Museum and Sawmill. They are planning a Show and Shine on May 26th from 11:00 to 5:00. Another car club has been invited. The Historical Society membership is encouraged to attend. They announced that the Curlew Barrel Derby will be held on June 21st this year.

Generous Donation!

In February, Historical Board members were excited to learn that the Society had received an anonymous gift of $40,000. This gift was specifically given to move the Kauffman Cabin to the garden site at the Slagle property. This 1895 log construction has been moved twice before to its present site behind the present museum. Thus, getting it to its permanent site will require special handling.

The cabin represents turn-of-the-century housing for miners and their families. It is furnished with furniture, tools, and household goods appropriate to the time.

The plan is to place the structure on a cement pad and an overhead structure to protect the hand-split shingle roof. This generous gift will allow us to preserve and utilize this historic building to benefit our tourism audience.

I Remember… By Katherine Johnson Almquist as told to Nancy Morris

I was born in Republic, WA, in 1931, to Alfred Johnson and Christina Bremner Johnson. My mother, who was seven years old when she migrated from Scotland in 1907, joined the clan of Bremner relatives. I was the middle child in a family of seven children, three older and three younger. My formative years were spent during the Great Depression. I didn’t know we were poor, although we must have been. Everyone I knew was in the same circumstance. As I recall, we ate a lot of venison and potatoes.

We lived in the first house on Lambert Creek Road. It must have been a three-bedroom house because the boys slept together in one room and the girls in another. We had no electricity in those days. We heated with wood and used a wood cookstove. The bathroom was an outhouse, some distance from the back door. My mother washed our clothes on a scrubbing board, so was a happy day when we finally got a gas-operated washing machine. We raised a big garden and did a lot of canning. My mother baked all of our bread. We always packed our lunches for school. I always admired Betty Cameron’s perfectly sliced white bread, and she admired my homemade bread.

My father worked on the Bremner ranches and in the lumbering industry. He worked for a mill that made ties for the Great Northern Railway and later worked for San Poil Lumber.

The family didn’t own a car in the early years, so we did a lot of walking. The Garinno Cousins, who lived on the Heckley Ranch then, often gave us a ride into town for the movies. Mostly, we amused ourselves playing in Lambert Creek during the summer and Sleigh riding in the winter. The Bremner family had a big toboggan and organized big sleigh-riding parties. There were cousins on both sides of Curlew Lake. I recall one family outing to climb Mt. Elizabeth, but I was deemed too young to make the trek. I remember when we got a battery-operated radio. We could listen to news of World War We often listened to Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats. The War years meant sugar and shoe rationing. A jug of honey was a real treat for the family.

When I was about 13, we moved to Old Town Republic. I spent 12 years at the old brick schoolhouse, graduating in 1949. After raising five children with my husband, Francis, I finished my working career with several years in the county assessor’s office, as deputy treasurer, and elected treasurer.

Spokane Outdoor Show

Madeline Perry attended the Spokane Outdoor Show and Exhibition on behalf of Ferry County. She represented Stonerose Fossil Center and Ferry County Historical Society. She was able to present brochures from the county museums, including the Ansorge Hotel and the Curlew Car and Truck Museum.