Strolling through Colby, Summer 1942.

A great-granddaughter of one of the
original Yukon Harbor families offers
her thoughts and insights into life in the
once-booming town of Colby.

By Jo Ann Grant Lorden.

The view of Route 1 where it passed the Grant & Sons Store, in 1941. Photo provided by Doug Grant.

The Northern Latitude of Puget Sound in the summertime means the daylight lasts well into the evening, but a day here in this beautiful place is never long enough. I’m walking Northward on Yukon Harbor Road where the Southern end of Cole Loop Road intersects, and from this vantage point I can see Blake Island and the town of Colby, just a few yards below me, with Seattle off in the distance. The weather is warm and the skies are clear.

It’s 1942 and the Second World War is at its height. I am eleven.

The small towns of Colby, South Colby, Manchester, and Port Orchard are abuzz with the collective effort to defeat Japan and Germany. Dull, gray warships are commonplace on the Sound, as are military vehicles on the roadways and men in uniforms in all of the stores. Americans — the civilians as much as the solders — are at war. Victory gardens are everywhere, boxes of recycled rubber and metal sit on stoops, and people go about their daily business with a serious, purposeful look on their faces. It is summertime, though, and the war is a concern left to the grownups. We children of Colby put those thoughts aside to play, explore, and enjoy the fair weather. It is a carefree time for us.

Right here, on the corner, is where Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Graham live. Their children, Elwood and Jean, are my friends. As I turn right to walk down the sloped Cole Loop roadway, I glance across the avenue, to my left, to Captain Shaw’s house. It is a large lot and has such a beautifully landscaped yard with flowers everywhere. Captain Shaw — everyone simply calls him “Cap”– is the captain of the ferry just across the bay, at Harper.

Bearing left on Cole Loop I walk up the slight incline, past Capt Shaw’s house and the gray two-story “foursquare” owned by the King Family to the Billing’s family house, a two-story building with a porch. Barbara and Ross are their children and Barbara is my friend. Our little group of friends spend many evenings at her house playing the piano. Everyone knows most of the “boogie woogie” bases and we trade off playing while the others dance. Barbara makes wonderful fudge. Her parents are very tolerant of us kids.

The Whitner’s once lived in that house but they moved across the road to a house you reach by walking down a wooden stairway towards the beach. Robert, Frances, Fred and Earl are their kids. Earl is a friend. Bobby Nittaberg sometimes joins us. His dad is the dentist in Manchester and his mother has a beauty shop there. Sadly, Bobby would later die at a very early age in an automobile accident.

As I turn around and walk back and down to Front Street, toward the pier and old steamer landing, I pass the flat-roofed brick building on the left that used to be a grocery store and is now used by the brush pickers. They gather ornamental branches and foliage and re-sell it to florists, storing the material there. Across the road is Squire Grant’s little white confectionery store, where ice cream and postcards were sold to travelers who landed at the pier years ago. Squire was my Grandfather Tom Grant’s younger brother. It’s vacant now, but to support the war effort, my grandmother, Georgina Harding Grant, has converted it into living quarters as everyone has to do to accommodate defense workers. A young couple lives there now. The husband works in the Navy Yard in Bremerton, building and repairing Navy Ships for the war, and his wife is expecting a baby.

Continuing my walk down Front Street, I pass the metal waterfront warehouse, Great-Grandfather Grant’s original Grocery store, and my Aunt June’s house on the beach. So many times my father, Fred, and I have walked along this road past the lumber mill and stopped to fill a couple of pint jars with sulfur water. There is a pipe that comes out of the ground with a faucet right in front of George Harmon’s house at the intersection of Front Street and Yukon Drive.

He is the only Indian resident of Colby that I know. His house is a little wooden cabin on stilts and built over the water. George goes fishing almost every day and everyone recognizes his rowboat on the bay. We sometimes see it drifting along with apparently no one in it but we all know he is asleep in the bottom of the boat and no one was concerned. I did hear that one day his drifting boat was on a collision course with the Manchester ferry and someone had to go out and rescue him at the last moment.

The abandoned lumber mill, located ahead at the water’s edge, provides us with entertainment. It is at least two stories high and is fun to climb around in. All of the machinery has been removed. We often play a hide-and-seek game called “Washington Poke” when we can get enough kids together.

Through the lazy days of summer we often gather on the beach behind the mill where there is a sandy spot. Our days are spent swimming, riding logs in the water and sunbathing on an old scow that has been beached there for years. We usually stay in that water until we literally turn blue and our teeth are chattering.

Often we head for Curly Creek when the tide is coming in and today I walk that far, down along the beach parallel to the road that crosses the bridge to South Colby and Harper. There is usually so much driftwood we play a game requiring that you have to run all the way to the picnic grounds on wood or you would “be poison.” Curly Creek is a meeting place for the kids from Colby and South Colby. Cookie Biggs is often there. His father, Alfred Biggs, has a grocery store along the highway in South Colby.

The mark of heroism for the older boys is to jump or dive off of Curly Creek Bridge at high tide. It’s dangerous because the steep bank is rip-rapped with cement bags and the point of entry into the water is narrow. I’m sure most of my uncles have done it and some of them have tackled the greater feat of swimming to Blake Island, about two miles toward the Seattle mainland. That Island was always intriguing because we have been told that sometimes at night you can see lights on the island. The legend is that the lights are Indian runners carrying torches. We have never seen the lights.

Earl Whitner adds: “As the tide went out  –  the last one to jump off the bridge was judged to be either the bravest or the dumbest. Charlie Smith, who lived in South Colby, was often the winner and had scarred flesh to show for it. 

“As for Blake Island.  We kids owned it; it was ours.  We camped, hiked, fished, and practically lived there during the summer, except during the war when the Army took over. They had barrage balloons, searchlights and anti-aircraft guns.  They also destroyed the large house that was  there.  During their occupation it burned down and we were very angry that they hadn’t taken care of ‘our’ island.  The house was on the other side near where the Indian Village. now stands.  The Indians should of had it so good.  In 1948 when I was home from boot camp I brought a boatload of bricks from there (there was a very large fireplace which heated the whole house, I guess) and built a fire pit near the bulkhead in the lawn down below [our house on Cole Loop].  I think the Trimble Family built it before Blake bought the island, but of that I’m not sure.  Maybe it was the other way around.  The south end of the island was in our school district and the lumber from that paid for the Colby school.  At least that’s what I remember hearing from my parents.

“We had unorganized (unlike now-a-days) sports teams: The Colby Cookie Dusters, The Manchester Mud Hens, The Waterman Wharf Rats. and The Orchard Heights Pigs.  We played football in the vacant lot just east of the Curley Creek bridge on the south side of the road.  Had to dodge the cowpies.   Basketball in the Colby School Gym  and baseball at the school also.  ‘Them were  the days’.” Postscript to Earl’s comments: A detailed history of Blake Island is forthcoming that will clear up some of the questions about ownership and occupation.

It’s getting late. Of course, it will be light well into the evening this time of year, but it is time to turn back. I head home from Curly Creek on Yukon Harbor Road, back to where I began. I pass the picnic grounds, mill house and then Squire Grant’s house. I never stop at Uncle Squire’s house because he has a vicious German Shepard tied up in the front yard, named Cougar. As I burst in the door my grandmother asks, “What did you do all day, Jody?” And I offer my usual response: “Oh nothing….”

For a young girl Colby is a perfect place to be and life seems so simple. I visit often – in my memories — and I am so glad I have them.

 

Jo Ann Lorden is the great-granddaughter of Joseph Squire Grant, one of Yukon Harbor’s early businessmen featured prominently on this site.  She spent her summers visiting her grandparents in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, leaving for good about the age of fourteen. She currently resides in Santa Barbara, California, with her husband, Jerry, and is an active support of the Yukon Harbor Historical Society. See other articles and photographs about the Grant Family and Colby provided by Jo Ann on this site.

Earl Whitner also was raised in Colby, moving away not long after graduating from South Kitsap High School in 1947.

______________________

Here are additional thoughts Jo Ann Grant Lorden has shared with us about various places around Colby and South Colby.

Jo Ann was born in Seattle in 1931 and lived in various locations in the Yukon Harbor and Bremerton area, often spending weeks on end in the various Grant households. To explain her relationship through the generations, Jo Ann says: “Jos. Squire Grant was my grandfather’s father and Thomas Harding was my grandmother’s (Georgina Harding Grant) father.  The Hardings lived in the Banner District.”

Jo Ann explains further:

“At the time [of my birth] my parents were living in the little house between the Grant’s house and the one that was originally Joseph Squire Grant’s house [currently owned by JB Hall].  He built it and lived there until he died.  My parents and I later moved to Harper where my father operated a grocery store and post office across the road from the ferry dock.  We lived in a rented house along the old beach road to the north of Harper.  The house we rented was on the beach and I remember standing on the beach and watching the Kalakala sail past Blake Island on the way to Bremerton on her maiden run.  If you aren’t a local you may not remember the Kalakala.  She was a streamlined ferry that was ultra-modern for her time.  It’s a shame where she ended up.”

HER THOUGHTS ON HER GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S STORE, GRANT & SONS MERCANTILE, AND THE POST OFFICE:

When Joseph Squire Grant, Sr. passed away in 1916, the various properties he owned were inherited by Thomas Grant. Then, when Tom passed, his widow, Georgeina took ownership. By that time, business was very slow, due to the main roadways that took traffic elsewhere, and the loss of any ship traffic at the dock. Still, Mrs Grant kept the place open, mostly to maintain the Colby Post Office. JoAnn continues–

“The interior of the grocery store was basically the same configuration [as it had been for all those years] but with practically no merchandise.  The post office was installed in the back left of the room.  It took up quite a bit of space as it had an ‘L’ shape.  One counter ran across the front with the mail boxes standing on top and there was also space for a scale and a place to do ‘post office”‘business. Then another counter ran from that counter almost to the back wall. 

“My grandmother [Geogiena Grant, who married Joseph Squire Grant's son, Tom] kept the store open (I think) six days a week because of the post office.  Someone had to be there for the mail.  She had an old GE refrigerator where she kept quarts of milk for sale.  She also had a counter for bread and packaged sweet rolls and sometimes candy.  It was really a skeleton of itself.  I loved the smell of it.  It was kind of musty and dark.  On a hot day it was perfect to walk into and feel cool.  The walls must have been coated with all the odors of things it had contained over the many years.  

“When I was little [many years prior to that] I remember the store being very well stocked.  Every day, my uncles would fill orders that people called in and sometimes I would go with one of them to make deliveries.  They had a green Ford panel truck for deliveries. Eventually, there was no reason to stock the store, there were better stores and so it was just a handy place to pick up a loaf of bread or a quart of milk if you ran out.  In those later years my grandmother would sit by that pot belly stove and crochet or tat all day long.  Occasionally someone would come in to get their mail or pick up something. 

“I have a news clipping when the post office closed.  It states that the postmaster’s salary was $891 per mo. plus an allowance of $135 for rent, fuel, lights, etc.  I’m sure she looked upon this as a job and I’m surprised at the price they paid.  The article also states that the income for the post office the previous year had only been $207 so it was no longer viable to keep it open.  The post office was closed Dec. 31, 1954.  The article also states that Georgeina had kept this job for fifteen years and would be eligible for retirement.  So, she only got it in 1939, three years after Tom Died.  She was 79 at that time. 

“She was born in 1875.  Amazingly, she lived another 23 years and died at almost 102.  This is probably the time when Port Orchard began the Rt. 1 deliveries to Colby and eventually changed the addresses and Colby was assimilated into Port Orchard.  

“The little brown building (my grandmother’s description) that stood next to the store [which served as a seperate post office in the early days] was really small.  I would guess the floor area was about 10 ft. by 10 ft.  It seemed square.  The walls were wider than that because of the rows of shelves that jutted out from the walls.  It may have been used as a post office, but I never heard it referred to in that way.  It was definitely smaller than a two car garage.  I always knew that it was Jos. Squire’s lending library (I wonder how that worked) and then a polling place for elections.  I think it was torn down before Grant & Son’s was.”

OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE GRANT FAMILY:

“Getting back to Jos. Squire, I think Annie [his oldest child, Annie Grant Hamilton] may have inherited his drive.  Being a girl, I wonder if he appreciated her abilities.  I always think about how she insisted on paying him back for the money he had loaned her.  It seemed that Tom and Squire seemed to be willing to take what ever he was offering.  That’s unfair of me.  I wasn’t there.  I agree with you, I would have loved to have known him, too. 

“I have a death certificate from England , Paddington actually, stating that on the 19 of September 1856 Robert Grant, 46 years old, who was a gentleman’s coachman, died of dysentery choleric collapse.  His children, Joseph Squire Grant and Robert Michael Grant left England for Kansas sometime later.  I do not think that Percival Squire Grant came to the US.  At least I haven’t found that info yet.  Sarah Annie didn’t come to the US until Joseph Squire’s wife, Emma Green,  died and his mother, Sarah Squire Grant came to help with the three children.  At that time Sarah Annie came with her and eventually (rather quickly) married William Morgan.  Do you suppose the money came from the Squire side of the family in the educating of the children?  I have pictures of Michael Squire, his lovely estate outside of London and his beautiful hunter/jumper horse.  I do remember my grandmother getting letters from Mary Squire (maybe Michael Squire’s wife) telling of buzz bombs coming over their estate outside of London and picking up care packages dropped by the Royal Air Force during WW II.  This may be a whole new story.  I don’t know how Michael Squire was related.  Could have been Sarah Squire Grant’s brother.  I don’t think he could have been her father.  He looks too young in the pictures I have.  He also looks very British.”

HE SOUTH COLBY GRANGE.

“The Grange Hall was the social outlet for the community when I was younger.  I would guess from the 1930’s to 1940’s or maybe even longer than that.  As I remember every Friday night there was a dance there.  I remember attending what seemed like a county fair there with women bringing cakes, jams, flower arrangements, etc., to display and be judged.  There were always dances or parties and for Halloween and everyone dressed up.  I was too young to go to the dances, but my uncles and aunt always went, as did all their friends.  I would be interested to know why it is in such a mess now.  I’m sure that building was used for meetings, too.  For me it was a fun place to go with my grandmother. All I can remember about the Grange Hall and the church is that they were both well cared for.”

The Grange meeting hall, boarded up but still essentially sound, still stands on the rise above the Methodist Church in South Colby, just a few hundred yards down the shore from Curley Creek.

THE SOUTH COLBY METHODIST CHURCH.

“Joseph Squire Grant donated a bell to that church which is exactly like the bell that was on top of Grant & Sons grocery store.  The church used to be on Curly Creek Road just behind the Grange Hall, but was moved to the bay side of the highway where it is now.  When the new church was built the bell was taken down from the belfry from the old church and placed in a wooden frame on the grounds of the new church.  I have a pamphlet dated May 4, 1986 celebrating 100 years that the church has been established there.  Grant and Harding are two names that they were honoring as founding families of 1886. 

“The church was a typical New England style building with a high spire.  While my grandmother attended services upstairs I went downstairs and colored pictures and listened to bible stories.  When I got a little older I quit going with her.  While my grandmother was still Georgina Harding, before she married my grandfather, she would take a wagon and drive around the community collecting offerings for the church that was just starting up.  She said sometimes all a person could give her was a head of cabbage, but she would take whatever they offered.  Her father and her father-in-law were two of the original members that started that church.  Life was so simple then.”