Next week some members of the University community will celebrate the sesquicentennial of King County with a party for their new book, More Voices, New Stories: King County Washington’s First 150 Years.
“The book is cultural and social history of the county,” says Mary Wright, a lecturer in American Indian Studies and History and the book’s editor. “The idea was to bring in accounts of underrepresented groups as well as aspects of everyday life not always covered by historians.”
Accordingly, the essays that make up More Voices include accounts of the Vietnamese community in the county, black coal miners and local restaurants over the years, among others.
King County, Wright explains, was founded in 1852, a year after Seattle’s beginnings in 1851. Both city and county pre-date Washington territory (established in 1853), which was originally part of Oregon territory.
The book was conceived in 1999, when Wright was president of the Historian’s Guild, a local public history group that welcomes dedicated history buffs along with professional historians. “We knew the sesquicentennial was coming up and we knew there were some funds available from the county to pursue heritage projects,” she says. “So, we decided this would be a worthwhile undertaking.”
The group applied for and received funds from the King County Office of Cultural Resources that they used to meet one of their goals, which was to support new research by funding the work of historians. Contributors responded to a call for proposals from the Historian’s Guild.
The group had two other goals — to connect professional and community historians and to bring the new work to the public. The diverse essayists represented in the book reflect the first goal, while the book’s publication meets the second.
UW authors in More Voices include Elizabeth Salas, associate professor of American Ethnic Studies, who wrote “Mexican American Women Politicians in Seattle”; Coll-Peter Thrush, a graduate student in History, who wrote “Creation Stories: Rethinking the Founding of Seattle”; and Michael Reese, another graduate student in History, who wrote “To Help Her Live the Right Kind of Life: Mothers Pensions in King County, 1913–1937.”
Wright, who teaches Northwest history, among other things, says she learned while working on the book. “I didn’t know much going in about the Vietnamese community, which arrived here in 1975, and the piece on the founding of the Buddhist temple was new to me, too. We tend to think of Japanese-Americans in terms of the internment, but this happened decades before that.”
Bruce Hevly, associate professor of History and Carla Rickerson, head of Manuscripts, Special Collections and University Archives, served on the committee that reviewed manuscripts, while Wright was the overall editor for the project. She also wrote the book’s preface.
“We’re pretty proud of it,” Wright says. “It’s been a trend in history to take more of a social and cultural approach and to look at groups that hadn’t previously been included. I think it’s an interesting and accessible book.”
More Voices was published by the Historian’s Guild and will be distributed by the UW Press. The publication party is from 5 to 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 16 at the Museum of History and Industry, 2700 24th Ave. E. The public is invited to come and meet the authors and to get them to sign books, which will be available for purchase at $17.95.