A Complete Chain of Custody

Peter and Wygerdina Best

Peter and Wygerdina Best purchased The Point from the estate of Mary Curry in January 1940. Originally from the Netherlands, the Bests had arrived in the United States in 1912 and, at the time of the 1920 census, were living in Long Beach, California, with Peter employed as a real estate agent. But evidently they moved to Canada sometime thereafter, for another immigration record from 1923 indicates that their permanent residence was Vancouver, BC (and that Peter was then employed as a farmer).

In subsequent border crossing records from Canada to various parts of the United States, the Bests listed their permanent residence as Victoria or Vancouver. Then, in 1938, a border crossing record indicates that they wanted to establish US residency in San Diego. It's unclear if they ever made it back to California for that purpose; the deed of sale for the Lake Samish property in 1940 indicated the Bests were "of Bellingham," so perhaps that's as far as they went during that period.

The 1940 purchase of The Point at Lake Samish may have been part of their residency and retirement plan, for by then Peter was 64 and Wygerdina was 53. But evidently it was a short-lived one, for in August of that same year, the Bests sold the Lake Samish property to J.E. McGinnis for "one dollar and other good and valuable consideration."

John and Harriett McGinnis

A treasurer from Bellingham, John E. McGinnis and his wife, Harriett, owned The Point for the next five years. The small house that currently stands on the East Parcel (the Lots 12-15 side) of the property is believed to have been built in 1940, so perhaps it was the McGinnises who built it (or perhaps it was the Bests). During their ownership of the Lake Samish property, however, the McGinnises continued to appear in the Bellingham city directories as living in town, indicating that Lake Samish was never more than a recreational property for them.

Einar and Muriel Erickson

A previous post erroneously concluded from a 1940 census that Einar and Muriel Erickson were the owners of The Point at that time, since the census shows them as living in Crescent Township. In fact, Einar and Muriel first bought property at Lake Samish in 1939, but at the other end of the lake. That year, they purchased Lots 7 and 8 in the "First Addition to Summerland." This area, just to the west of the original Summerland plat in which Roy Road is located, is shown on the following map.

1942 map of Lake Samish, detail of First Addition to Summerland (Metsker's Atlas of Whatcom County)

It actually wasn't until 1945 that the Ericksons purchased The Point from John and Harriett McGinnis for $10 and other valuable consideration, as shown in this deed:

1945 deed from John and Harriett McGinnis to Einar and Muriel Erickson (Washington State Archives)

The Full Chain of Custody, At Last!

West Parcel
Thomas McTighe: August 1899 to April 1910
E.E. Scott: April 1910 to May 1910
George and Amanda Loggie: May 1910 to August 1917
Ernest and Marcella Purdy: August 1917 to January 1921
George and Harriett Griffith: January 1921 to January 1921
John and Lillian Griffith: January 1921 to May 1924
William and Ida Jenkins: May 1924 to July 1935
Milton and Agnes McMillin: July 1935 to September 1935

East Parcel
School Land: (approx.) 1893 to before 1916
Lake Whatcom Realty Co. / Lake Whatcom Logging Co. / Bloedel Donovan Lumber Mills: before 1916 to September 1935

Joined West and East Parcels
Harry and Mary Curry: September 1935 to January 1940
Peter and Wygerdina Best: January 1940 to August 1940
John and Harriett McGinnis: August 1940 to August 1945
Einar and Muriel Erickson: August 1945 to April 1951
Maynard and M. Patricia Parks: April 1951 to April 1981
Western Foundation: April 1981 to May 1987
Herbert and Chara Messer: May 1987 to September 1989
Gordon and Carol Iverson: September 1989 to June 2012
Washington Federal Bank: June 2012 to November 2013
Graham Robins: November 2013 to Present

The Joining of The Point

The last post introduced Milton and E. Agnes McMillin as the next owners of the West Parcel of The Point, which at that time was just the lakeside tip of a larger property described as Lot 3 and the SE4 of the SE4 of Township 37, Section 35. According to the deed records, the McMillins purchased the property from William and Ida Jenkins on July 13, 1935 for one dollar "and other considerations":

Deed from William and Ida Jenkins to Milton and Agnes McMillin, July 1935 (Washington State Archives)

(Note that the deed records seem to conflict with the 1934 map posted here, which indicated that E. Erickson owned the West Parcel of The Point at that time. Deed records show that Erickson did not purchase the land until 1945.)

Originally from Oklahoma, Milton McMillin's occupation is given as mill labourer in the 1940 census, in which he, Agnes (originally from England), and their seventeen-year-old son, Robert, are enumerated as residing on a farm in Crescent Township, then the name for the Lake Samish area. The McMillin farm is seen on this 1942 map:

Lake Samish, 1942 (Metsker's Atlas of Whatcom County)

What this map also shows, though, is that Lot 3 and the SE4 of the SE4 is no longer whole by 1942. The McMillins began subdividing Lot 3 within a few months of purchasing it, selling pieces to various individuals named Curry, Hunt, Davis, and Russell. And it was the Curry sale that carved off the exact property boundaries that now comprise the West Parcel of The Point and joined it with the East Parcel.

H.C. Curry: The First Owner of the Whole Point

In September 1935, Harry C. Curry, a salesman in a power and light company in Burlington, Skagit County, Washington, purchased the West Parcel from the McMillins -- once again for that infamous "one dollar and other good and valuable consideration." At the same time, he purchased Lots 12 through 15 (i.e., the East Parcel) of Bloedel Donovan's recently divided Shallow Shores plat, making him the first owner of the whole Point property as it exists today.

At some point in the next few years, Curry must have transferred the property into his wife Mary's name, because after Mary died in 1939 in Skagit County, her estate included the Lake Samish property. As her executor, Harry sold the property in January 1940 to Peter and Wygerdina (or Wyendena) Best for $3,000. The next post will pick up the story with the Bests.

A few more owners of the West Parcel: E.E. Scott and J.H. Jenkins

A visit to the Northwest Regional Branch of the Washington State Archives last week revealed that the West Parcel of the Point changed hands a few more times than previously thought.

E.E. Scott

When Thomas McTighe, the original homesteader, died in 1909, he evidently died intestate, as his estate, including his land at Lake Samish, came under the administration of F.J. Barlow of the State of Washington.

On April 22, 1910, F.J. Barlow executed an administrator's deed to sell the Lake Samish property to E.E. Scott for $3,000, as shown in the pages below from the deed volume.

Source of both images: Washington State Archives, Northwest Regional Branch

According to Lottie Roeder Roth's History of Whatcom County Volume 2, E.E. Scott was born in Kansas. After working in the lumber business in Iowa and North Dakota, he came to Washington and eventually settled in Bellingham in 1906, where he became sales manager for Whatcom Falls Mill Company.

George Loggie

Whatcom Falls Mill Company was owned by George W. Loggie, whom we know owned the West Parcel of the Point in 1916. And in fact it was Scott who sold it to him. On May 10, 1910, less than three weeks after Scott purchased McTighe's Lake Samish land for $3,000, he sold it to George Loggie for "One dollar and other considerations in hand paid."

Presumably, Scott procured the property on behalf of his boss in the first place, and was compensated for it via those "other considerations" obliquely mentioned in the deed.

J.H. Jenkins

Another new owner name was discovered in a 1929 map from the Whatcom Photo Archives, which shows that the West Parcel of the Point was owned by someone named J.H. Jenkins.

Source: Whatcom Photo Archives

Corroborating information about a J.H. Jenkins in Bellingham or Whatcom County has so far been hard to come by. None of the Bellingham city directories of the period show a J.H. Jenkins, for example.

Another trip to the Washington State Archives should be able to tell us if Loggie sold the property to Jenkins, and if Jenkins then sold it to Einar Erickson (the next owner we know about based on a 1934 map), or whether there were any other interim owners.

1934, West Parcel: Einar Erickson

In the 1934 map shown in the last post, the owner of the West Parcel is an E. Erickson. This was Einar Erickson. It is currently unknown when Einar first acquired the property.

Born in Bellingham in 1907, Einar married Muriel Trickey in 1934, and both worked for a collections agency at the time of the 1940 census of Crescent Township (indicating that the Ericksons had their permanent residence at Lake Samish at that time). Einar enlisted as an infantryman in the Second World War in April 1944. He was medically discharged that October.

Einar and Muriel had two children: Gregory, born in 1947, and Thomas, born in 1950. Muriel died in 1952. According to the Whatcom Assessor report for the West Parcel of the Point, Einar sold the property at Lake Samish in 1951.

Platting of Shallow Shores Road

The next clues about the Point's history come from a 1934 map of Crescent Township (the original name for the Whatcom County voting precinct surrounding Lake Samish; see page 21 of the Harris Journal for a brief explanation of the origins of the name).

A closeup of the map shows an E. Erickson as the owner of the West Parcel, and that the East Parcel is now platted along a road named Shallow Shores.

Source: Historic MapWorks

We don't yet know when or by whom Shallow Shores Road was platted, but it was sometime between 1916 and 1929. In an oral history about the Lake Samish community of 1929, a local resident named Davis said: "No one lived between Zugelders + Shallow Shores Road,  On Shallow Shores Road -- going north again from Nulle Road, the first house was Bill Sarland’s. He had the place where Morris is now. The present house was not there then. It was built about 1934 or 35, I think, could have been built in 36. I’m not real sure when any other permanent residents moved on to Shallow Shores, but I know that in 31 the McCullough’s were there + Roy Powells, also Al Forslof + another couple I don’t know."

We should be able to obtain road and original platting records that indicate when and by whom Shallow Shores Road was created.