Julie McDonald Commentary: St. Helens Club Celebrates 125 Years

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When first invited to join the St. Helens Club in Chehalis, I knew only one thing about it: The women’s club had restored the dilapidated Jackson Courthouse and preserved a precious part of Lewis County’s history.

That alone was plenty of reason to accept the invitation to the club formed in 1895. Two of Matilda (Glover) Koontz Jackson’s descendants belonged to the club — longtime Chehalis librarian Anna Koontz, a granddaughter, and author and educator Dr. Kate Gregg, a step great-granddaughter.

At my first Wednesday meeting at 1 p.m., I wondered if the historic club was a gathering place for ladies of leisure to stimulate their minds while their husbands toiled in the workplace.

First impressions often prove wrong. Listening to hour-long presentations at every meeting for the past five years, I’ve been honored to learn more about the club members who have worked in schools, hospitals, brokerages, museums, colleges, nonprofits, state departments, forestry, and many other fields.

I am honored to serve as vice president as this week the St. Helens Club celebrates its 125th birthday. Although being self-employed means paying for all your own benefits — health care, vision, dental, retirement, vacation — one of the perks is the ability to attend meetings in the middle of the day.

The membership roster of former club members reads like a who’s who of prominent women who helped shape Chehalis and Lewis County.

The founding members who gathered Feb. 8, 1895, at the home of Grace Barrett Robertson to organize a Literary Club were Jennie Arnold, Dorothy Bingham, Adaline Coffman, Kate Donahoe, Ellen Harmon, Mary Holbrook, Evangeline Kepner, Kate Millett, Flora Power, Isabel Scribner, and Catherine Montgomery, a founding faculty member of Bellingham’s New Whatcom Normal School, which became Western Washington University, and mother of the Pacific Crest Trail.

Initially known as the Women’s Fortnightly Club, the club listened to papers presented by members and exchanged recipes, according to a talk given in 1984 by Jean Smith, whose daughter Betsy was a reporter for the Battle Ground Reflector decades ago when I worked for the Lewis River News and Kalama Bulletin. We sat together as we covered La Center School Board meetings.

In May that first year, a lecture committee recommended changing the group’s name to St. Helens Club with pink and green as its colors and the clover as its flower. The members discussed possible mottos — either “Education is liberation from narrowness,” by Unitarian minister and author Cyrus Augustus Bartol, or “The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life,” a quote from English poet and playwright Robert Browning.

A majority of the members selected Browning’s quote as the motto, which is still the case today. The club’s scrapbook, stored at the Lewis County Historical Museum, contains the printed program for the year 1895-96. Among the early topics addressed were Kate Millett’s presentations on “What shall girls be taught?” and “Women and public housekeeping.”

On the latter topic, Millett spoke about the city resembling a large home and the need for good housekeeping by city officials, especially with regard to drainage and sewerage.

“A drawback to having clean streets in our town is the fact that cows are allowed to run at large,” Millett wrote in her speech. “Many of our town cows have become adept in the opening of gates so that even flower gardens are not exempt from their depredations. We should have an ordinance for keeping cows off the streets.”

Club members adopted such an ordinance and presented it to the City Council, and Millett’s speech was published in the newspaper.

Some topics seem outdated, such as “Does higher education unfit women for domestic duties?” and “Co-education is unwise.” Others pertain to issues still faced today, such as discussion of “the tramp problem” and how to put them to work and feed them.

Early topics weren’t always politically correct by today’s standards, but President Donald Trump more than a century later still seems to grapple with “The Chinese Question.”

In November 1895 the club voted to meet in the parlor of the Grand Central Hotel, built by Eliza Saunders Barrett, where “supper could be served” for fifty cents a plate. Members voted to join the Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1896.



For many years, the Chehalis Bee-Nugget and Daily Chronicle reported on lectures given by members at the meetings. The club usually has about two dozen active members as well as associates and honorary members who no longer give presentations every other year.

In 1897, the club search for a new meeting location for the year and settled the Masonic Hall. It later met in members’ homes until securing a parlor for $10 a year, and then returned to meeting in homes.

During the Spanish-American War, club members agreed to serve sandwiches as lunch for 400 soldiers passing through Chehalis November 5, 1899. In March 1900, the club held a “Gentlemen’s Evening” and furnished oysters and other refreshments.

In 1901, the club set up and maintained a furnished resting room downtown where country women could rest and change their babies during infrequent shopping trips, assessing members $1.75 each the following year to pay for the “Women’s Friendly Rest.” In 1902, a beautiful gavel was presented to the club by Henrietta S. Long. The club paid the Bee-Nugget $18 to print yearbooks with lectures listed. After reporting on the club’s first decade, Jean Smith wrote, “We applaud these women in long skirts, without most of the household appliances that we consider necessities, staunchly improving their minds, changing their community for the better.”

In 1914, at the urging of Anna Koontz, the club raised $264.50 in pledges ranging from fifty cents to $25 to restore the Jackson Courthouse, which was falling down. They raised enough to restore the 1850 courthouse on Jackson Highway south of Chehalis.

Three years later, the club planted a mile of Norwegian maples between Chehalis and the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds, which lined the highway until they were removed to widen the road in the 1960s.

During the early years, each meeting contained a theme and two to four women would speak on the topic, according to a report prepared in 2005 by club historian Donna Loucks, and members answered the roll call with quotes or words related to the topic of the day.

In 1929, club members discussed the chapters of  “Dante’s Divine Comedy,” and in 1940, the club decided to focus on one speaker per meeting.

On Feb. 19, 1955, The Daily Chronicle reported on the Founders Day celebration of the St. Helens Club under the headline “Chehalis’ Oldest Club Celebrates 60th Year.” At that time, the first 50-year members were honored — Gertrude Burrows and Johanna Cory. Mel Johnson, who also belonged to the club for half a century, presented a card she had drawn.

During the past 65 years, membership in the club has changed as women moved away or passed away, but the traditions continue with well-researched lectures designed to educate the members on topics of interest. This year we’re discussing masterpieces. Last year we learned about flowers, and the year before we focused on happenings in 1917.

Women interested in the St. Helens Club can contact me or any of the other members to learn more about the lectures, responsibilities, and goals.

Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at chaptersoflife1999@gmail.com.

 

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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.