Scouts Hear It For The Women -- Collecting Local `Herstory' In Issaquah

`Herstory'-- Linda Thielke encourages anyone familiar with women important to Issaquah's history to write her about their past, for possible inclusion in the "Issaquah Herstory" book. Write to: Issaquah Girl Scouts, c/o Issaquah Festival, 155 NW Gilman Blvd., Issaquah 98027.

One of them is descended from a member of the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe who knew the founders of Seattle. Another is a TV film critic. Still another is the local school superintendent. Some are living, some are not.

They really have only two things in common: They all have some connection to Issaquah and they're all women.

But they're soon to have a third element in common: They'll be included in a new book about women whose lives have had some impact on Issaquah.

With the city approaching its 100th birthday, 40 of the Girl Scout troops in the area thought it would make a good idea to present Issaquah with a look at itself from the female point of view.

The 550 girlswho belong to the 40 troops and who range in age from 5 to 17, drew up a list of 60 women.

The women still alive are being interviewed; the lives of those who have died are being examined by the Scout researchers. On April 25, the city's birthday, a book titled "Issaquah Herstory" will be presented to Mayor Rowan Hinds during the official centennial ceremonies.

Linda Thielke, who helped organize the project, said the Scouts were originally going to publish only one copy of the book for the local library. But as word spread, requests grew, and so there will be a bigger printing.

One of the interviews took place last week at Discovery Elementary School, where Troop 1201 talked with Leona Eddy, great-granddaughter of Mary Louie, a Snoqualmie Indian born in a village near what is now Carnation in the early 1800s.

Eddy told the mainly fifth- and sixth-graders that her great-grandmother was known for her ways with medicine and for the rugs "that she weaved out of anything she could get." The woman died when she was 125 years old, Eddy said, and during her life had known some of the first white settlers of Seattle.

In the 1850s, the settlers decided they wanted the land where the Snoqualmie Tribe was living and burned the village out, Eddy recounted, forcing the Indians to move to what is now Renton. Mary Louie's husband and son were killed during that attack and Mary Louie fled to the Cedar River-Renton area. She married a member of the Duwamish Tribe and eventually settled on the shores of Lake Sammamish.

Leaving Mary Louis for the time being, Eddy told her young listeners how her grandfather decided one day that his daughter should be married, took her to Seattle, attired her in her first store-bought dress and had her picture taken. Then he took the photo to different tribes to find her a husband.

A young man living on the Yakima Indian Reservation saw the picture and said he would marry the girl - and thus Eddy's mother met Joseph Forgue, who became Eddy's father.

Not all the women being interviewed have histories that stretch back to the pioneer days. The girls from Troop 1561, for example, interviewed KING-TV movie reviewer Lucy Mohl, who grew up the Issaquah area and graduated from Issaquah High School.

Troop leader Mary Clear-Padilla said Mohl spent an hour with the girls and introduced them to a woman photographer. "It was an exciting time for the girls," Clear-Padilla said. "They were good role models for them."

Not everyone in the book has to be interviewed by a Girl Scout. H.W. Stonebridge of Whidbey Island sent in a two-page biography of his relative, Thilda Tuverson Becker, who started the Stockholm Hotel in Issaquah.

Tuverson came to the United States in 1884 from Sweden and met a young man named Louis Becker on the ship. She worked as a domestic for a $1 a week in New York and married Becker. The two headed for Washington Territory and settled in a town called Olney, which later was named Issaquah.

They opened the Stockholm Hotel in 1888 and ran it with their four children until 1918, working seven days a week. She died in 1951.

"The courage of this proud lady has made Issaquah, then and now, a better place to live," Stonebridge wrote.