PORT TOWNSEND — The Jefferson County Historical Society, founded in 1879, will celebrate its 138th Founders’ Day with special behind-the-scenes tours of the Historical Research Center and Collections Building on Sunday.
Imagine exploring Grandma’s attic packed with cool, creepy things and exciting treasures to discover — only without the cobwebs — at the open house from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
The research center is located at 13694 Airport Cutoff Road. There is no admission charge.
This isn’t anybody’s granny, organizers said. This granny is Port Townsend and all of Jefferson County’s grandma and she’s a bit eccentric.
Next to a room full of Victorian furniture, baby prams and sewing machines is an old stuffed cougar. His name is Charlie. At one time, he was proudly displayed in the window of the Admiralty Hotel that burned down in 1926.
There’s a giant clam shell that’s part of Henry Bash’s shell collection. Bash was appointed shipping commissioner in the 1880s. He asked ship captains to bring him shells and coral from the South Seas, eventually accumulating more than 75 pieces.
The second floor looks a bit scientific with rows and rows of movable storage.
Albert Bash’s taxidermy bird collection is housed in large metal cabinets. Albert W. Bash was Henry’s son. He worked in China for many years and was fluent in Chinese.
This helped him secure the position of collector of customs for the Puget Sound District from 1881 to 1885 when opium and Chinese immigrant smuggling was at its height.
Sent for family
Albert missed his family, so he convinced his father, mother and eight siblings to move to Port Townsend from Roanoke, Ind., in 1881.
He also missed the birds he hunted in Asia, so he had pheasants and other Asian birds shipped from China.
He rented Protection Island for his own personal game preserve.
Brother Frank was a taxidermist and stuffed many of the original birds that now make their home in the Collections Building.
The next exhibit to be presented in the Women’s Jail Cell Gallery at the Jefferson museum will be the “Cabinet of Curiosities,” which is scheduled to open in June. The exhibit will re-create a collection of curiosities, the forerunner of contemporary museums and popular in the Victorian era.
“We have some really amazing things people will enjoy. This exhibit gives us a chance to get them out and on display,” said Becky Schurmann, collections manager. The “Cabinet of Curiosities” exhibit and the open house will give visitors a chance to see some of the more unusual items housed in the collection.
More than 15,000 items are in the collections storage building.
They range from buttons to Native American baskets and from natural specimens to obsolete — and somewhat odd — technology.
80K photographs
There are also 80,000 photographs and 500,000 archival documents. JCHS also has the work of several photographers spanning the early days to more recent times.
Among them are W.H. Wilcox, whose work contains many early Native American photographs and thousands of photographs by Burdette Redding, who was active mid-20th century.
Growing collection
The collection continues to grow.
“Last week, we got in 33 ledgers that date back to 1862. They include the farm journals of William Bishop.
He made a note of what he did every day while working on his Chimacum Valley farm,” said archivist Marsha Moratti.
The Collections Building opened in April of 2012. Before then, artifacts and archives were stored at the City Hall building in every nook and cranny.
“We opened a big wardrobe and found it full of parasols and deer heads. Things were just tucked away everywhere,” said Moratti.
Donated treasures keep arriving and must be catalogued and photographed. Schurmann, collections manager, secures artifacts into custom-constructed boxes and trays.
Handling artifacts is a painstaking process; there are boxes still to be unpacked from the last move.
