Where In The World Is Danville?

Have you ever been to Danville? There are 24 places in America with the name of Danville, but our Danville is in Ferry County, Washington, just a few miles south of the border with Canada. 

Originally named Nelson from merchants Peter and his uncle Ole Nelson. An early reference to this settlement is dated 1896. The town was renamed in 1899 to prevent confusion with Nelson, British Columbia just across the border.  By 1897 the town boasted a jewelry and watch repair section of a general store, a post office, a newspaper (lasted only a year) and a sawmill. By 1913, the mill which produced 50,000 feet of lumber daily, was one of the three larger producers in the area.

The 1920s brought increasing prosperity to Danville when it became a rendezvous for whiskey smugglers, who employed local guides familiar with the old trails to avoid detection by border authorities as they smuggled booze from Canada down into the "dry" U.S. 

The top image is of the U.S.-Canada border crossing station. The lower photo is the Nelson's general store in the 1890s.  

From the website MyNorthwest:  Danville is in the part of Washington that was once the Colville Indian Reservation. However, when valuable minerals were discovered there, the land was taken away from Indigenous people by the federal government and opened to settlement and mineral claims by white homesteaders and miners. This little-remembered episode surely ranks as one of the great injustices in the state’s history.

Now isn't that a sad factoid?

What Is A Keeper?

 

Sue Kreikemeier is president of the Whitman County Genealogical Society. Her editorial in their November 2025 newsletter was a real zinger and I asked permission from her to share it with you.

"Dear Readers, I am sure many of you can related to the quandary I find myself facing on a continual basis... how to manage my plethora of notes, hard copy records, unlabeled family photos and other ephemera from my genealogical pursuits. How do I know what to keep and what to toss out? Might something seeming irrelevant become an important clue in the future? 

"Asking myself what is a "keeper," I went to Google and found many definitions. My favorites were (1)a person whose job it is to guard to take care of something or (2) a curator. This gave me a new way of looking at those challenging piles and files. Instead of thinking about which items I should keep, I started thinking about how I might better define and deliver on my role of "keeper" especially as it relates to family history."

Sue went on in this editorial to tell about how she and her siblings were collaborating on putting down their memories of a very frightening event that occurred in the family when Sue was about nine years old. Sue says she has realized that "sometimes being a "keeper" means sharing something that can't be found in any document or archive."

Isn't that just another way to say WRITE YOUR STORIES NOW! I think Sue would second that motion. 

Ossuaries?

Do you know what an ossuary is? What it was used for....and when? Well, let's learn!

 

An ossuary was usually a smallish chest or box used to hold the bones or cremains of the dead. As far back as 40 B.C. ossuaries were popular among the Jewish population.  Historically they have been used in areas where burial space was scarce or in situations were large numbers of people died in a short time such as a plague or battle. Also, over time, they were used when the bones were exhumed from a grave to make space for a new burial. (Very common in Europe even today. You have your cemetery space or plot for x-number of years and then the plot is reused.)

Are ossuaries used today? Certainly yes. How many have their deceased loved ones still with them sitting on the mantel?? There are funeral urns even for our beloved pets!

Francis Harold Potter

 

Ever been out on Fairchild Air Force Base and driven past the real-life B-52 parked on display there? My father, Francis Harold Potter, was the AC (Aircraft Commander) of that very plane! My son took the serial number of that plane and did the research to prove that fact. 

Dad would have been 105 years old today. He's been gone for 22 years. And I realize every day that I should have given him more of my time. 

I'm so glad I talked to him over the years gleaning his stories..... from a poor, rural Illinois childhood, to a brilliant career in the Air Force (he flew in the Berlin Airlift and Operation Chromedome), to a great grandpa to children. He did his last waterskiing at age 80. He and Mom traveled the world. He could change rocks into candy for big-eyed grandchildren. He was a great guy.

Asking my grandmother how she named him, she explained that she liked "Frank" but that sounded too grownup for a baby so they settled on Francis. As for Harold? She giggled and lowered her voice to tell me "It was after an old boyfriend...but I never told Mel!" 

The point of this post today is to beg you to procrastinate no longer! Talk to your elders and learn their stories!  And get your own stories down either on paper or computer. Please just do it.

Flashbulb Memories

 

Flashbulb memories are moments seared into our minds. Think of any momentous moment in your life (birth, death) and likely immediately a vivid memory will flash into your mind.

Think Mt.St.Helens that day in May 1980. Think seeing men walking on the moon in 1969. Think your first hearing or seeing the awful events of 9-11. Think of that November day in 1963 when you watched the footage over and over of Pres. Kennedy being shot. 

Not to mention some terrifying or fantastically happy family moment. Think when you learned of the death of a loved one. 

Flashbulb memories are said to be the surprise and indiscriminate illumination that "flash" into your mind when something..... sight, sound, image, smell..... triggers that flashbulb memory.

My daughter was aboard when a Delta airliner crashed upon take off. It took years of work for her to overcome "airplane smell" and fly away on vacations again. My son's face when he learned that he didn't quite make it home in time to see his father one last time. The time I was barefoot on the lake dock ready to jump into the boat when the boat sloshed up and my big toenail was torn loose. 

Don't we all have these flashbulb memories? So what to do with them? What might we should do with them? If we consider them as autobiographical memories then shouldn't we be writing them down?? Aren't they part of our personal history? 

Do you suppose your ancestors had flashbulb-memory-events? What would you give today for a one-page scribbled memory from them of that event? 

Today, YOU are the ancestor. Please, for the sake of your posterity, write down your memories! They will bless you forever for doing so. 

Interesting Washington Architecture

 

  

On the left is the Frederick Longbotham Building. Constructed in 1909, the building was designed to provide residential rooms for working men........ and after the 1889 fire devastated Spokane, workers flocked in to help rebuild the city. This building provided 57 rooms on the upper floors while renting street level spaces for local businesses. Opening in the 1910s as the Frederick Hotel, it was one of the most successful and prominent Japanese-owned businesses in Spokane. The building was renamed in the 1930s by the new owner, Lewis Longbotham. This building is historically interesting also because of it's "ghost signs:"  Albers Rolled Oats, Rex Flour, Bull Durham Tobacco, painted in places of high visibility to appeal to workers passing through from the nearby rail depots, are still faintly visible today. 

The Rainier Tower in downtown Seattle is a 41-story skyscraper completed in 1977. It has an unusual appearance, being atop an 11-story concrete pedestal base that tapers towards ground level like an inverted pyramid. The design was chosen in order to preserve the greenery of downtown Seattle and allow more ground space to be devoted to a retail shopping plaza. Locals often refer to it as the "Beaver Buiding" as its physical appearance looks like a tree being felled by a beaver. It has also been referred to as the "Golf Tee Building."

Vikings In Washington??

 

Bet you'd never in a million years believe a newspaper story like this that appeared in the Spokane Daily Chronicle for July 6, 1926. I've transcribed the entire bit for your enjoyment:

RUNIC WRITINGS ON ROCK AT FIVE MILE TELLS OF BATTLE WITH INDIANS THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO

Spokane Daily Chronicle, 5 July 1926, page 1 and 2.

The discovery of a Viking grave or burial mount and the most remarkable Runic character record ever uncovered on the North American continent, telling of the visits of Norse Viking expeditions to this hemisphere many hundreds of years ago, has been make almost near the city limits of Spokane.

On a great boulder of lava rock just north of the city limits, below the cliffs that found Five Mile Prairie, and beside a flowing spring of cold water, Professor Oluf Opsjon of Dishman, an internationally known authority on Runic writings, has found the story told in indelible paint of the visit to that place in the year 1010 A.D. of a band of Norsemen and a terrific battle which took place there with the Indians.

Professor Opsjon, who, during the last few years has interpreted many of the Runic characters appearing on scattered “painted rocks” in the various parts of the North American continent announced today after a careful investigation of the new Norronna rock that never before has there told the actual details of a battle or great conflict as it was fought in those days hundreds of years before Columbus sailed the seas.

The paintings on the rock were called to the attention of Professor Upsjon by Margarete Amundsen Reynolds, N 3410 Milton street, who for years has been interested in Runic writings and the stories of the Vikings. The paintings had been seen by others before but had been considered only the marking of Indians, until Mrs. Reynolds found in them the characters typical of Runics as used by the early Norse.

Her interpretation was quickly verified by Professor Opsjon and by careful study the face of the big projecting rock he was able to translate the story of the expedition and locate where the victims of the battle with the Indians were buried.

“in all the Runic inscriptions I have been able to translate, as they are found on rocks from Labrador and the New England states, through Canada and the United States to Alaska and Puget Sound, some of them dating back in a period before the Christian era, I have never before found a record so filled with thrilling description of action as this one almost within the city limits of Spokane,” said Professor Opsjon today.

“The record left tells that the men of the party put the seven women and the baby on top of the boulder, where they could not be reached by the Indians, and the men stood about the base fighting the Indians.

“Twelve of the Norsemen were killed and the others escaped, after the women were taken prisoners and carried away by the Indians while the woman with the baby in her arms was thrown from the top of the boulder and killed.

“Later six of the survivors of the expedition returned to the spring and the scene of the battle. There they dug a grave near the rock and buried their dead, who had been stripped of everything they possessed by the Indians.

“I am developing further negatives showing the face of the rock and with a powerful magnifying glass will be able to make out further characters which will tell more of the story, I am certain.

For a thousand years at least and perhaps for two or three thousands, a well-defined and heavily traveled trail ran from the west to the east, skirting the base of the cliffs that form Five Mile prairie. At a point beside a huge boulder, standing 20 to 25 feet above the ground and perhaps 150 feet in circumference, a cold spring bubbled out of the ground. The Indians knew of this spring for it was the only water for miles.

The story as I read it from the Runic records left on this boulder and translated literally, reads:

“In the year 1010, A.D. or 916 years ago, a band of Norse Vikings, consisting of 24 men and seven women, one of the latter with a baby in arms, was following this old trail, traveling from the west toward the east. Exhausted and thirsty, the band came to the spring beside the trail and camped. The spring was not a large one and the water was drained from it.

“A party of Indians came along and they too were tired and thirsty. The found the spring empty and they immediately attacked the Norse party in an effort to drive it away.

As to the burial mound, it is plainly visible, but it would have nothing within it as the dead were stripped so no effort will be made to disturb it.

“The story here told is pained on small square surfaces of the cliff, owning to the broken up condition of the rock, and which necessitated the use of small characters. This makes it more difficult to translate the entire story but I am certain that I will be able to eventually to decipher characters which are now only partially revealed and which may be the records of a still earlier expedition of Norse there.”

Professor Opsjon makes a special request that any who may visit the paintings refrain from molesting the surface of the rocks in any way as scratching or chipping off of fragments would be certain to destroy the greatest Norse record so far discovered in this country.

“This record still further substantiates my previous claims that the Norse had been in America in numbers long before Columbus,” said Professor Opsjon, who first advanced his proofs of this through the Chronicle some two years before.

The small character drawings shown are copies of Runics taken from the rock and their meanings as translated by Professor Opsjon are, literally, “one man speaks,” and “colling (sic) now,” which fit into the story of the battle.

******

Richard Sola, Spokane historian and teller of this tale, said that Opsjon was an ordinary yokel  from Dishman in the Spokane Valley and not any sort of professor.

IS THE “TRUTH” IN THE NEWSPAPERS DIFFERENT TODAY FROM THEN????