Author Archives: KarenP

About KarenP

Current webmaster of sahs-fncc.org

Spring Tea Thank You !

Thank you to all who joined us to celebrate spring with our Tea Social.
It was a fun event this year after a great tradition that began in 2012 to celebrate the opening of the long running Waistlines & Hemlines Exhibit. That exhibit has been updated over the years and we hope to again the FNCC Third Floor with new displays and new histories in the coming year. Volunteers who like to work with antiques of all types, have carpentry skills, display ideas and skills, writing and keyboarding skills are welcome! Contact Us

Stanwood’s Namesake

Womens History Month is the same month as the birthday of Stanwood’s Namesake, Clara Stanwood, March 18th.

Clara Stanwood Pearson, Namesake for the town of Stanwood,Washington.

Clara J. Stanwood Pearson was born in Lowell, Massachusetts March 18th, 1849. In 1868 the came to the Puget Sound by way of the Isthmus of Panama, when she was 19 years of age. She joined the Pearson Family in Coupeville and on the June 3rd, 1868 she was married D. O. Pearson. In 1877 the young couple and their children moved to Stanwood then known as Centerville. He established a mercantile and had a wharf built on the shallow mouth of the Stillaguamish River. After living on the waterfront for sixteen years they moved north to their home on Market Street, now the Pearson House Museum.

Her children attended a small school on the waterfront but in 1892 she lobbied for a new school among other social needs. To learn more, click the photograph below and read more.

New books available!

Learn more about the history of Stanwood Main Street and other mysteries in our new books
Main Street (270th Ave NW) is the last of two brick roads constructed in the late 1910s and 1920s in Stanwood. Many changes are in planning stages but hopes are high that they will be preserved. Many little shops are tucked away in both Stanwood’s historic west end and the depot district (East Stanwood)
Copies available at SAHS ~ Scroll down…
Contact us for copies, see SAHS Hours for picking them up.
[See also Coyote Hill Press which includes A Scrapbook of Stories – a History of the Utsalady Ladies Aid]

South End String Band Feb 1

Join us for the return of the South End String Band for some traditional fiddle music aka “Camano Roots Music” – songs derived from the ballads and dancing tunes of the old world and the South End nettle clearcuts.

Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center
27130 102nd Ave NW
Stanwood, WA
Saturday Feb. 1, 2025

Music begins 7 pm
Social Hour 6-7
Suggested Donation $20 as a
Fun[d] Raiser for the Floyd

Many thanks to Jim Karr, Erich Schweiger, Jim Knighton and Jack Archibald for bringing their bog banjo, homemade fiddle and handmade mandolin and special backwoods bass for your listening and dancing enjoyment. Your attendance helps support other music, art and historical events and programs for the Stanwood Area Historical Society.

Program: The Stillaguamish, A Short River with a Long History

October Lecture Series Program

Sunday afternoon, October 20th, 4 pm
October Lecture Series Program featuring Tug Buse who will present “The Stillaguamish, A Short River with a Long History”
The program will feature his research discoveries long buried in places like the Hudson Bay journals and British Library. It will include both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous History.

Tug (Michael) Buse is a teacher at the Insight School of Washington in Tacoma and has been working on several history research projects in his spare time.

Important !
Sunday afternoon, October 20th, 3 pm – 4 pm
The program will be preceeded at 3 pm by the SAHS Annual Meeting to Elect new Officers and Trustees whose positions are expiring in December 2023 followed by short report on activities in the past year. Members and potential members are strongly encouraged to join the meeting for a short review of last year’s projects and help plan for next year.

This program will be preceeded by the Annual Meeting of Stanwood Area Historical Society at 3 pm.

FAQ – Odd Fellows Halls

We often are asked who were the Odd Fellows? and why did they own a hall?

Our Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center was built in 1902 as a fraternal hall of local Stanwood businessmen known as the Stanwood Fraternal Association. They quickly sold the building to Anton Anderson who eventually sold the hall to the newly formed Stanwood Odd Fellows #249 in 1909. They used it for community music, meetings, events, performances and other events until the 1930s when it was sold to be a storage building for the local Bryant Hardware. In 2000, the Stanwood Area Historical Society purchased and named it after our major donor, Floyd Norgaard, a local resident who wanted to see it saved.
Scroll down to check out a random list of Odd Fellows Halls throughout the country and some contemporary organizations websites to learn more about their history and how widespread they once were. Note the amazing variety! Many are on the Historic Register, local and National.

Please also search on your own for your own home town, many of the buildings exist throughout the country.

Fulton County, Georgia

Santa Rosa, CA

Arroyo Grande, CA