Graveyard to Table, A Story of the Land
From Graveyard to Table
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On a recent Sunday morning, my husband I met some friends for brunch in Sekiu Washington. Sekiu is about two hours away from where we live in Sequim. While we were eating, I told our friends, Gerri and Robert, that my paternal grandmother had grown up not far from where we were, at Lake Ozette. I told them I had never been to Lake Ozette.
Robert said, “So let’s go!”
We all climbed into Robert’s pick-up truck, and off we went. Lake Ozette was only 18 miles from where we were in Sekiu, but it took us the better part of an hour to get there. Just as we started to see signs that we were approaching our destination, I told Robert that I needed to use a restroom. In a minute or two he noticed the Lost Resort General Store. As I got out of the car there, my husband said, “Maybe somebody in there will know something about your family.”
“Maybe so,” I replied.
Lost Resort General Store
A young girl greeted us from behind the counter. I asked her if she had lived there long.
She said, “No, only a couple of years.”
I said, “My grandmother grew up here, but this is the first time I have visited.”
Surprised, she said, “What was her name?”
“Nylund”, I said.
Suddenly a voice from the floor above us said, “Who down there said ‘Nylund’?”
An elderly man rumbled down the stairs, eager to hear who had said that name.
“I did,” I said. “It was my grandmother’s maiden name.”
“Well, let me show you something,” he said as he made his way to a bookshelf in the corner of the store. He pulled out a small picture album.
He opened it to this picture: and then this one:
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“Wow,” we all exclaimed.
“Where is that?” I asked.
He told us that it was not far away, just past the ranger station. I told him I didn’t know where the ranger station is. He told us how to get to the ranger station, then went through some elaborate instructions on how to walk to the graveyard through the woods.
The ranger station was close, but we really didn’t know how to get to the graveyard. There was a forest service man there clearing some brush with a tractor. I showed him the picture. He gave us the same, somewhat complicated, directions on how to get to the graveyard. He pointed us in the right direction to get started. Within a minute or two, though, he followed us, parked his tractor, and said, “I figured I’d come help you find it since some folks have gotten lost up here looking for it.”
His name is Jonathan. He led us through the woods. When he stopped, he explained that the spot on which we stood is where the Nylund homestead house had been.
He told us that it had been built in about 1905 and had fallen down under snow, or caught fire, or both, in the late 1960s. We were standing right next to the Nylund’s well.
The grave site was just about 100 yards away.
There are four grave markers there, but as yet, we did not know who the people were who were buried there, except that they were my grandmother’s family, and this is where she grew up!
Jonathan told us that a man who lived just across from the ranger station, on the shore of the lake, was the local historian. Jonathan said this man, Larry Sears, would be happy to talk to us about the Nylund family. “You might see him puttering around in his yard when you go by. “Stop and talk to him if you have time. Mr. Sears loves to talk!”
Sure enough when we got back to the road, Mr. Sears was in his yard. We did stop to talk. I told him who I was.
Mr. Sears greeted us with much delight, “What was your grandmother’s name?” he asked.
“Annie,” I said.
“I know Annie!” he said. (Of course he did not know her personally, but she was in the history he had been collected, and records he had been keeping.)
He started to tell us stories about the family, the school on Lake Ozette, and the homestead itself. He told us that he had been gone for a few years and discovered when he returned that the house had collapsed under heavy snow. The family had moved away years earlier.
He brought out a huge old growth cedar plank he had in his garage. He said he had dug it out where the homestead house had collapsed. After he found it, he dug around and found some more. He said the old growth cedar had been part of the walls of the house. My great-grandfather had made them, I assume from the trees on his 40 acre homestead land.
Mr. Sears showed us where my great-grandfather had carved out the edges to make it tongue and groove planking. Mr. Sears said he had picked up several planks like this and brought them home.
He said he had made a table top out of three of them. “Would you like to see it?” he asked.
“We would love to see it,” I said.
He led us into his workshop where he moved some things, including a small motorcycle, to show us the tale top. “I never put legs on it,” he said. “You can have it, if you want it.”
This incredible gift from Larry Sears is now in our fellowship room.
When we got the table home we discovered this note taped on the underside.
We bought some legs for it, and gave it a permanent home.
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The day after we brought this treasure home, our friend, Jack, came to visit. We told him the whole story. Jack said something about it that will stick with me.
He said, “Isn’t it interesting how the story of families is tied to the land. Where there is no land, there is no lasting story.” He went on to explain that when someone lives, and dies, in a huge apartment complex, there is no family legacy to go back and find. Jack is part of our small group Torah study. I don’t know if he knew how significant what he said is to our study of “The people, scriptures, and the land” of Israel. For Israel, for us, for all of us—our past, our present story, and our future are inextricably tied to the land, –the land; the world–that God created.
God looked on all he had created and said, “It is very good.” It was very good, but the whole earth was not yet like the Garden of Eden. If Adam and Eve had not failed on their mission, the garden would have been spread, by people, over the whole face of the earth. That is still God’s goal, and it will happen when sin and death are destroyed. Then we will all live in peace, shalom, on the land God created.
When I told the story of our adventure at Lake Ozette to another friend, she said, “Now you have a tie to this land on the Olympic Peninsula. You have been to the land where your grandmother grew up, and you have a table top made from cedar that your grandfather cut, sawed and used to build the house where she they lived.”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said. “I was also born not far from here in Aberdeen, Washington. I have come back to the land where I was born, and my where grandmother grew up. ”
Her husband, John Svensson, my grandfather, may have grown up there, too. Mr. Sears had told us that John Svensson’s brother went to school with my grandmother. We will probably learn more about that soon.
About My Grandmothers
Grandma Nylund Svensson, my father’s mother, was a pioneer woman who lived on a homestead where her father cut trees down to build their home. She later married my grandfather and moved to Tacoma with him. When he lost his job during the depression, she bought a cow with his last paycheck. She milked the cow in a small shed behind her house on North Pearl Street in Tacoma. She staked the cow out in the neighbors’ yards to graze, and sold the milk to a local grocery store, and her neighbors. I remember a cow in my grandmother’s shed.
My other grandmother, Grandma Terry, my mother’s mother, grew up in Texas. She was the daughter of a street preacher, and the granddaughter of a Texas pioneer woman who started orphanages and a home for “fallen women,” i.e. a live-in crisis pregnancy center. Grandma Terry went to China in the 1920’s and raised her family on the mission field there. That’s where my mother was born and grew up.
I see my character origins in both of my grandmothers. I too, was a pioneer woman. I packed my babies and went commercial fishing in Alaska where women and children were seldom found on fishing boats. I spear-headed a crisis pregnancy center in Bellingham. When my fishing career ended, Tim and I bought goats and milked them. Above all, I am a sold-out, born-again, disciple of Yeshua who fears not to obey, to go where he sends me, and to proclaim him. I lived for years in the house my mother’s parents bought in Blaine when they came back from China. Now the Lord has brought me back to the peninsula where my father’s parents grew up.
Hallelujah!
Addendum:
My sister, Christy and her husband are planning a trip to visit with Larry Sears, soon.
He wrote this email to her, and CC’d it to me.
Hi Christy,
I’m sorry I forgot to send you this “Annie” insert with my last email. It’s a little ironic that I beachcombed this life ring a few years back. I know now why I decided to bring it back the three mile hike since I didn’t need another life ring. I had so many others from years earlier. I did look up the numbers through the Coast Guard, but they had no record of it. Maybe it’s been floating off shore since 1895.
Ander and Johanna Nylund immigrated to Seattle in the late 1800’s, and were living there while having their first three children, Hulda 1891, Inga 1892, and “Annie” 1894, when they heard of a large Scandinavian community homesteading at Lake Ozette. They left for Ozette when Annie was 11 months on a Steamer for Neah Bay, hired Indians and 6 canoes to take them down the coast to the mouth of the Ozette River, and then walked up the river 3.3 miles carrying your “Annie” in a shawl around Ander’s neck, to their Lake Ozette 40 acre homestead plot which he had previously purchased from the Gov. Land Office in Seattle.
I’m sending you the entire story from an interview with Hulda many years later, while she was living in Tacoma. But I thought I’d send this little introduction since it appeared to me that you gals might not have much information about “Annie” or Ander and Johanna.
Christy, Bebe and I are looking forward to meeting you and your husband and talking history!
Larry Sears
Earlier I had written to Larry to thank him for the amazing gift of the table top.
He responded:
Hi Grace,
Thank you for your fast response. I enjoyed reading your email. You are most welcome to have the table. As I get older, I look back at my 17 books of pictures and 4 file drawers of information on all the homesteaders and happenings here at the lake that went on from the first homesteaders until today. I am amazed at what little information people have about the area, especially since Ozette has so much interesting history that mainly started about 1890, although there were squatters here even before that time. Few people even know that the US Coastguard took over this entire area during WW-2, because at the beginning of the war the Japanese had subs right off our shore, and were sinking ships as they came out of the Straits (Port Angeles and headed South. In fact one of those subs had a sea plane aboard that fire bombed the inland coast in Oregon in an attempt to start an “out of control” forest fire. The sea-plane pilot on Japanese sub I-25 had the name of Fugita, and his seaplane was stored on the sub and it is the only time the US homeland has ever been bombed by an enemy since its inception.
I have the story from his own words. He was a part of the invasion and bombing of our Navy Fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941. I will send you a copy, in his own words, if interested.
I have found 5 pictures of Annie from back in her life here at Ozette and later in Tacoma. I have one of Annie and John. It’s an 8 X 10. Annie was born in Seattle and was 6 months old when Anders went to Seattle to bring her to Ozette along with her two other older sisters and his wife. It’s an interesting story coming by steamer to Neah Bay and then down the outer coast by Indian canoe and up the Ozette River to the first small homestead that Anders had found, where they lived until the big house he built was finished in 1905. Their story has been written up a couple of times, and you will enjoy reading what I have found over the years. I mentioned the Nylund house fell down from a snow storm around 1969. It may have been that, or maybe 70’. I was working in Bogota’ Colombia, S.A. until 71’ and found it down when I got back to Ozette in 72’. I have found no one who knows for sure.
Grace, I need to get some ink for my copier so I have pictures of Annie, etc. ready for you and your sister. We have a birthday party to attend shortly after the 4th of July, and birthdays are a big deal for my wife’s Filipina friends, so my wife needs to find the right color dress, etc. Your suggestion of Thursday or Friday is fine. Can we set a day for you and your sister sometime after the 4th? That will be a busy time for us. We will be free on July 13 and 14 if you and your sister can make it either of those days. Please let me know. We will save those days until we hear from you. That way, I will have done the research and have the information copied and ready for you two to take home.
Larry Sears, and “Unofficial” Mayor of Ozette. PS……Thanks for the prayer. It was a blessing for me!
A week later I received this email from Larry:
Hi Grace,
Just a note to mention something about your Nylund table. When I dug in that pile of rubble (the fallen down pioneer home of the Nylunds,) there really wasn’t much I could find but parts of the chimney. After some digging about 2005, I found an old cedar board that was obviously old growth. It was in bad shape and a few feet longer than the six feet you find in that table today. I kept digging and found 3 or 4 more of them. The problem was they were so water logged and heavy I could only drag them up to the trail. After finding 5 of them that were intact, I went home, got an old bike and brought them home one at a time on the bicycle seat, and stored them in a shed to start drying them out. It took 2 years to dry them out before I could cut a foot from each end and the grooves off each side of the best 3 boards. I removed as many old rusty shake nails as possible before using my electric planer to get them ready to sand and varnish,
I am so glad you came along to rescue that old table, made from the scraps of the old homestead house, built by Ander Nylund in 1905. That original 8 room home once held the hopes and dreams of a genuine pioneer family.
Larry
I wrote back to him:
Wow. Your story gives me goose bumps!
I had already been thinking, and talking, and questioning how in the world could you have gotten those huge slabs of wood down to your house!
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You have give us a treasure whose value is beyond description, or estimate.
Your hard work was not in vain. You will be remembered by generations to come in our family.
Shalom,
Grace
Faith Walking 