The wool uniform is surprisingly heavy, and in fine condition, considering it’s a century old.
Now cared for by Ruth Pickering, the suit’s original owner was Jesse Kelley of Fall City.
Jesse donned the heavy shirt and laced on the puttees after he was drafted into the Great War in 1917. He probably wore it during his 1918 service on the Western Front in a balloon company, just before World War I came to a close.
Years later, he passed it on to his son, the late Jack Kelley, complete with campaign hat. Today, it’s part of the small collection of Fall City Historical Society, stored with other valued relics in an upstairs room at Fall City Methodist Church.
As museums go, Fall City’s is small, and technically off limits to the public. But once a year, the society invites the community for an annual meeting, sharing the last discoveries from the past.
Without a real display room, Fall City’s physical collection is necessarily limited. But there are still a few treasures, and some stranger finds, preserved here.
Symbols and secrets
Not long ago, Historical Society President Ruth Pickering was poring over a digital photo the museum recently obtained from the Washington State Historical Society.
She was zoomed in, perusing the shelves of the Fall City confectionary shop owned by Scott and Nettie Magee, as they looked in 1930s. Eyeing the tins and boxes, she got a shock.
“I was semi-astonished” to see “Swas-Tika Sodas” soda crackers, she said. Most Americans know the swastika as the symbol of Nazi Germany and white supremacist groups. It wasn’t always so.
But the swastika was a symbol of luck, peace and prosperity long before the Nazi party appropriated it. Many American brands embraced it prior to World War II.
“I remember being surprised to see it in a brand name,” Pickering said. “I didn’t realize it was so widely used.”
That confectioner’s shop vanished more than 50 years ago.
“We lost most of our original buildings along River Street, because they widened that road.” Of all the old wooden buildings, only a handful were moved back, and survived. “That happens to a lot of small towns,” Pickering said.
A counterclockwise swastika also appears on a souvenir medal from the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, in the shape of an arrowhead. The medal belonged to Jesse Kelley, passed to his son Jack, then donated to the Fall City society.
Survivals like these, odd relics of history, are the topic for the historical society’s special speaker at this weekend’s annual meeting, 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 19, at the Fall City Masonic Lodge.
Speaker Harriet Baskas wrote the book, “Hidden Treasures: What Museums Can’t or Won’t Show You.” She discusses the secret side of historic collections when she comes to Fall City this weekend. It’s a fast-paced, photo-filled and sometimes offbeat tour of Washington museums and episodes in state history, told through the stories of museum artifacts that are rarely or never shown to the public.
Examples include Bing Crosby’s toupees in Spokane, a quilt made of Ku Klux Klan robes in Yakima and Native American spirit boards in Tacoma.
In Fall City, Baskas will explore how those objects came to be in the local collections and who makes decisions about what is displayed or kept from view.
Another example from the Yakima Valley Museum, only occasionally displayed, is a quilt emblazoned with swastikas. It was made years before Hitler’s rise to power.
“That quilt was made when that symbol meant good luck and good fortune and hospitality,” Baskas says. For millennia, swastikas were used by cultures across the globe as motifs of good luck, prosperity, peace and fortune, turning up in art, architecture and as logos for products and businesses in the United States as late as the pre-war era. Then, the German Nazi party adopted the symbol, and it has been besmirched ever since.
Fabric and wood
With no real display space, Fall City Historical Society is in the process of putting its collection online.
“Most of it is photos and documents,” Pickering said. “We really don’t have storage space for big things.”
Yet some treasures, normal or unusual, do remain, kept in the Methodist church’s collections room.
Besides Jesse Kelley’s army uniform, Fall City preserves other relics of his day and age. One collector’s item is his rare Fall City community band uniform. A group of townsfolk, mostly young men, formed the band circa 1914. They gathered and played music on occasion. The gray wool uniform with black piping, made by the DeMoulin company of Greenville, Ill., gave the group a more ornate look than their Sunday best. It broke up when the men went off to war in 1917.
In an interesting coincidence, it was fate that brought the uniform into the care of the historical society intern, Julie Coulter. She went to school and got married in Greenville, where the uniform was originally made all those years ago.
Another legacy of the Kelly families is the rocking chair that came west with Jack Kelley’s grandmother. She was a small woman, so it’s a very small chair.
“It would be difficult for us to accept big stuff,” Pickering said. But one keeper is a china cabinet that belonged to Fall City’s historic Bush family.
“We’re hoping to find a spot for it some day,” Pickering said.
Meeting info
All are welcome at the annual meeting, and refreshments will be served. The event is a chance for residents and local history buffs to learn more about events, programs and future plans of the historical society.
The speaker, Harriet Baskas, writes about airports, museums and a wide variety of other topics for msnbc.com, USATODAY.com, AAA Journey and other outlets. She also maintains two blogs, StuckatTheAirport.com and MuseumMysteries.com. She produced a radio series on hidden museum artifacts that aired on National Public Radio, with Smithsonian-based historians as advisers. Baskas is the author of six books, including Washington Curiosities and Washington Icons.
Her presentation is sponsored by Humanities Washington, an independent nonprofit dedicated to sparking conversation and critical thinking. They use storytelling as a catalyst to stimulate and engage communities in this state, providing cultural programs, exhibits and experiences to Washingtonians. This year marks their 40th anniversary serving the state. Learn more at www.humanities.org to learn more.
Fall City Historical Society is also supported by King County Heritage 4Culture, which funds arts, heritage, and education in local communities.
Top, an image of the Fall City Community Band, taken in 1916, just before the U.S. entry into World War I.
Above, Ruth Pickering holds one of the uniforms bought for the band, owned by Jesse Kelley, now in the Fall City collection.
Kelley once owned a souvenir medal from the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Expo, marked with a swastika.
