Washington State Archives are the state level archives for Washington State. The archives are formally located at the state capital, Olympia, at the southern end of Puget Sound. Owing to the urban development of the state during the twentieth century and the relatively lowly place of Olympia within it, there are branches of the state archives located in other cities and towns, notably in Seattle and Cheney. The archives contain records relating to Washington State dating back to the beginning of American settlement there in the mid-nineteenth century. As such they are an excellent repository for genealogical studies and tracing one’s ancestors in the region from the 1840s onwards. The Washington State Digital Archives opened in Cheney in 2004 and constitute the first state archives in the United States dedicated solely to electronic records.[1]
History of Washington State
Washington State was one of the last regions of the United States to be explored by European voyagers. Both the Spanish and British did so in the 1770s and the Vancouver Expedition mapped much of the coastline here and further north in the 1790s.[2] The overland expedition to the Pacific of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark culminated here in October 1805 with the pair noting the more peaceful nature of the natives in the area by comparison with the Plains Indians.[3] The region became a source of dispute between the British in Canada and the US government in the decades that followed and so American settlement only really began in the 1840s as westwards settlement in the United States accelerated following the Mexican-American War of 1846–8 and the inception of the California gold rush. Olympia was established at the southern end of Puget Sound in the late 1840s and its position as the first significant administrative center ensured it would become the state capital in due course.[4]
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Seattle was first settled as a logging town at the start of the 1850s and soon eclipsed Olympia and other burgeoning urban centers as the main town and then city of the Washington region.[5] It experienced a challenge in the last quarter of the century for dominance in the area as Tacoma was chosen as the terminus point for the Northern Pacific Railway which connected Washington with the Great Lakes and from there to Chicago and then the East Coast. Once this was completed settlement increased, with the population of the territory expanding from 24,000 in 1870 to 75,000 in 1880 and 350,000 in 1890.[6] By 1910 it stood at 1.14 million people as the Klondike gold rush to the north in western Canada from the late 1890s onwards brought increased settlement along the western seaboard of North America. Washington became a state in 1889.[7] In more recent times the state has emerged as the home of several global corporations, notably Amazon and Starbucks.
Extent of collections at Washington State Archives
The collections at Washington State Archives reflect its history in so far as one will not find extensive records here for any date before 1840. This is unlike many state archives on the East Coast, many of which house records dating back as far as the mid-seventeenth century when English colonization of those regions first began. The records for Washington State range from everything from court and judicial records to the paperwork produced over a century and a half pertaining to government departments and from newspaper collections to dozens of major collections of private papers pertaining to the state.[8] As such, there are a huge array of records for tracing one’s ancestors in Washington State back as far as the 1840s available here.
The Washington State Digital Archives are a pioneer in the digitization of state archives in the United States. There are over 240 million records preserved through this, 87 million of which are searchable online. Tens of thousands of new records are added to this repository every month. All considered, this makes Washington States Archives one of the most accessible state archives in the country, with many records available remotely.[9]
Finding material at Washington State Archives
Researchers looking to trace their relatives or any individuals who might have settled in or lived in Washington State since the mid-nineteenth century are best served consulting the Washington State Archives' website and familiarizing themselves therewith before undertaking any trip to the physical archives. This is especially true when it comes to this state as the Digital Archives are sufficiently well developed as to make it possible to carry out extensive research from a computer anywhere in the world. For instance, census records pertaining to the state are fully searchable on the Digital Archives. The search page is intuitive and searches can be run using basic criteria. For instance, if a researcher simply has the surname of an ancestor and knows they were resident in Seattle in the 1880s or 1890s, a search can be run on that basis and results will quickly be generated. More specific details such as a first name or the details of where an individual was resident at a specific time will narrow the search considerably.[10] Numerous further finding aids are available on Washington State Archives’ website.[11]
Explore more about Washington State Archives
- Seattle, Washington Passenger Lists, 1890-1957 record collection on MyHeritage
- Washington, Births record collection on MyHeritage
- Washington Marriages record collection on MyHeritage
- Washington, Tacoma-Pierce County Obituaries and Death Notices record collection on MyHeritage
- Researching Your Washington State Ancestors at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ https://www2.sos.wa.gov/archives/
- ↑ https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/vancouver_george/
- ↑ https://www.historylink.org/file/7062
- ↑ https://www.historylink.org/file/5105
- ↑ https://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Curriculum%20Packets/Evergreen%20State/Section%20II.html
- ↑ https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1890/bulletins/demographics/110-population-of-wa.pdf
- ↑ https://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Curriculum%20Packets/Klondike/Klondike%20Main.html
- ↑ https://www2.sos.wa.gov/archives/archives_holdings.aspx?r=1
- ↑ https://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/
- ↑ https://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov
- ↑ https://www2.sos.wa.gov/archives/teachers-and-students.aspx