Historical Images

What makes a great historical image?

When I think about historical images I'm looking for specific information. How did the city look? How did the loggers cut through the enormous trees?

I also enjoy looking for themes - Logging, Gold Rush, Homesteading. These broad economic activities defined communities and incorporate the adventures of millions of human beings, spending their life's energy to build warm homes and productive farms or move the wood from the great forests to the walls of houses and the decks of ships. Other themes include Faith, Recreation, and Education.

Here's a nice historic image which I found by Google Image Search: washington frontier homestead. It is published by the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collection.

Note the structure of the house. The main frame of the house is built of logs, irregularly sized. But notice the finished lumber of the gable, the manufactured shakes of the roof, and the glass pane windows. A bordered garden surrounds the house and contains several varieties of flowers. A trellis of sorts stands at the right end of the garden, perhaps supporting bushes of some variety. The family stands in front of the house, but no obvious relations are apparent. Their demeanor is relaxed which matches the family's simple and rather somber clothing.

From the caption information we know that this was "the old homestead of Milton N. Robbins on the Duwamish River," (which flows into Seattle's Elliot Bay) "built in 1870." The caption also offers a "ca. 1880" date, meaning that the cabin is about ten years old at the time of the photo.

So we can imagine the homestead set back from the bank of the Duwamish River. It represents the labor of ten years, which makes sense given the size of the garden plants and the general prosperity of the home. Further research might uncover the exact identities of the four people in the photo, the exact location of the homestead and its size.

Thousands of pioneers built homesteads more or less like this one in western Washington from the 1840s to the early 20th century. This is an example of a prosperous, relatively large home, probably built adjacent to fertile river-bottom land. I found images of a few other homes which were smaller and more shack-like.

How different would it have been to live in this home than in the sod house in which my great grandmother was born in North Dakota around 1900? I like the information that this photo provides and the questions that it generates, pulling us into a deeper understanding of the past.