Thomas: Little-Known Town Was Site Of Historic Fort

Stan Flewelling, fledgling author and history buff, lives in the maid's quarters of the 13-room Erick Sanders Mansion, deep in the heart of dear old Thomas, a farming community at the south edge of Kent.

``There were times when I first moved in, it was spooky,'' Flewelling says of the dwelling at the foot of West Hill on South 277th Street between Kent and Auburn.

Flewelling is caretaker of the 78-year-old home. He also is caretaker of another sort. He has assembled a history of the area in his 137-page book, ``Farmlands: The Story of Thomas, a Small Agricultural Community in King County, Washington.''

The author, a 1972 graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois, talked to dozens of old-timers, studied documents and scanned newspapers to find out about a community that most people have never heard of.

``The writing is painstaking work,'' he said. ``But the research is like digging up treasure.''

Among the gems he unearthed was John Nishinoiri's 1925 thesis for a master's degree at the University of Washington on Japanese-American farms in Washington. Nishinoiri wrote that 65 percent of all the Japanese-American farms in the state at that time were located in the Kent-Auburn-Renton area.

Few of them remain.

Many Japanese-Americans who were farming in the Thomas area were interned in World War II, Flewelling said. Their removal was supported by some of the valley's most prominent white farmers.

Two of the former internees he talked with, Mae Yamada of Kent and Thomas Hikida of Auburn, returned after the war. Yamada has a son who still farms in Thomas.

Hikida, who was named after the community of Thomas, served as a U.S. soldier during the war. With the help of Quaker families, he was one of the first Japanese-Americans to come back to the valley.

The community of Thomas was named after John Michelltree Thomas, who came to the Oregon Territory from Kentucky. He built a small cabin, not far from the Indian village of Pop-sholku. He and his wife, Nancy, moved in on July 17, 1854, the first white couple to homestead in the valley. That fall Indians attacked the area's settlers, killing a number of them.

An Army fort was built at Thomas in 1855. Logs for Fort Thomas were shipped from Fort Steilacoom under the supervision of Lt. William Slaughter. After his death at the hands of Indians, the growing community that is now called Auburn was named Slaughter.

Decades later, a train station would be constructed in Thomas for passengers on the interurban railroad commuter line that ran through the valley between Seattle and Tacoma. The community would also be called Thomas Station, Pialschie, Lewisville, and just plain Washington.

Early 20th-century characters on Flewelling's pages include Charles Leonard, a storekeeper and cockfighting enthusiast, and George Yank, a German immigrant who failed as a tobacco grower but later ran a bustling three-story hotel that had a saloon on the first floor and an upstairs dance hall.

``Yank owned a tavern in Thomas when Kent was dry, so people from Kent would come there,'' Flewelling said. ``Even the newspapers were talking about how well-worn was the road from Kent to Thomas.''

But life at the saloon got too wild - Flewelling said authorities decided to yank Yank's liquor license ``because his sons were getting into too many brawls.''

Thomas boys knew their way around the potato patches but they couldn't play baseball worth beans. John Ham, who died several years ago, recalled in the book that Thomas youngsters were clobbered by a team from Kent in 1906.

``The score was 52-0 at the end of the third inning, and from then on, in order to finish the same day, they passed up their turn at bat,'' said Ham. ``We suffered much humiliation and did not seek any more games, as school was soon out, but we learned something about baseball.''

The home Flewelling lives in was built in 1912 by Erick Sanders, a wealthy lumberman who owned 1,100 acres in the area. Currently it is owned by the Advent Christian Church, which holds weekly services in the living room.

The mansion is next to a pond where Sanders kept logs for his nearby sawmill. Geese now inhabit the pond, but the house still has many of the original furnishings.

During the Depression, the Ben Smith family leased the home. Smith started Smith Brothers Dairy in the White Center area in 1920, eventually moving it to Thomas. His son Dan runs the dairy, one of the biggest in the state.

Flewelling, 40, started out to be a teacher and ended up as a ticket agent in Chicago for Japan Air Lines for much of his adult life. He moved to Thomas 3 1/2 years ago.

Aided by a grant from the King County Centennial Commission, he spent more than a year on the research and writing of the book. His mother, Esther Flewelling, helped type the manuscript. The book was published by the Erick Sanders Historical Society.

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SANDERS MANSION BOOK -- ``Farmlands, the Story of Thomas'' is available at the Erick Sanders Mansion, 5516 S. 277th St.; the White River Valley Historical Society Museum at Les Gove Park in Auburn; Comstock's Bindery and Bookshop, 257 E. Main St., Auburn; and Heritage Bookshop, 200 S. Third St., Renton. About half of 1,000 copies from the first printing have been sold. Proceeds from the book, which costs $10, will be used to restore the mansion.