SNOHOMISH COUNTY LOCALITIES "A Sense of Place"

Thank you for taking the time to look at the latest rough draft of the Snohomish County Localities Project. If you've used earlier drafts, you may not notice The New Stuff - new localities. Kind folks have contributed some very obscure place names - have you ever heard of "The Thumb"? Or "Gypo City"? Or "Punkintown"? Yes, Virginia, these ARE honest-to-goodness SnoCo localities! First visitors may be surprised at what they DON'T find on these project pages. They won't find extensive information ("stories") about individual localities. People are encouraged to check out the sources given for each locality to learn more about that locality. There's no search engine for the project pages because the data is already alpha-sorted, and there are links to the alpha sections at the bottom of each page.

Sources for the information given for each locality are listed in brackets at the end of the locality's entry. Some of the sources were: Whitfield's History of Snohomish County, the GNIS online data base, the Tacoma Public Library's online data base, "Postmark-Washington", two historical post office records groups on microfilm (at the National Archives), a gazetter of Washington from 1901, various maps and atlases, several reference books on "old railroads", community histories, lists of precincts from censuses and from the Snohomish County Auditor's office, and, of course, interviews with some wonderful SnoCo experts. Needless to say, the final draft will contain complete citations, AND more locality entries.

The final draft will also contain a better definition of "locality" - as of now, a "locality" has a name and has defined "borders". A person should be able to put his/her finger on a map and say, "Yep, 'Grace' (or 'Wana' or 'Bostian' or wherever) is/was RIGHT HERE, and THAT'S where my Great Grandfather's brother lived!" That's why a "precinct", in this project, is considered "a locality" because it has a name and defined borders.

How did this project start?

A genealogy researcher who lives in the mid-West emailed me, asking where "Manor Lake" was. She said her target ancestor lived in "Manor Lake Township, Snohomish County" in 1930. She couldn't find this "township" on any county map. It took a bit of head scratching before I figured out that she had assumed that "Manor Lake Precinct" (as given on the 1930 census page) was, if not a "township", at least a "locality", which, when you come to think of it, it IS!

There are many really good place name reference sources - both in print and online. To find a particular SnoCo locality, a researcher has to look at many of these reference sources, and even then, may not find his or her target locality listed in ANY of them. Some localities are just too obscure, too unimportant to be included in these sources.

The SnoCo Localities Project is an attempt to create a Master List of Snohomish County localities with source information.

Included in the data base are some entries that at first glance don't fit the definition for "localities" - lakes, mountain peaks, streams and the like. I've learned that county precincts often took their names from landforms and roads; adding these non-localities to the data file may provide clues as to where the precinct actually was (although not always!)

"Naming" has been described as a basic human tendency. Ancient philosophers and mystics taught that knowing the name of your enemy gave you power over that enemy. When our ancestors gave names to communities and landforms, they were doing more than just distinguishing one place or land feature from another. The naming gave them a sense of ownership of the place where they lived. Our ancestors knew that future generations would remember them and what they had accomplished. Naming a locality after something or someone "back home" helped our ancestors to recreate the familiar, reminding them of another time, another place, another person.

Researching our families is a bit easier when we have "a sense of place" - I hope this project will be useful in your research.

Comments, suggestions, additions, corrections, etc., are welcome! Email Marge at mvreid@eskimo.com

For more information about this WA GenWeb Project page,