Trees have been the lifeblood to the Thompson family for four generations, and though Jim Thompson broke from the pioneering family’s legacy as loggers and mill workers to be a welder at the Navy shipyards, one great, old American chestnut tree outside his back door is a reminder of their heritage and lore. Both the ancestry and the tree continue to thrive on Leyman Lane off West Kingston Road.

The homestead tree, amongst the oldest in the county, was one of two brought out to Kingston in 1920 on horseback from Ohio by Sam Leyman, who lived on five acres next door to the Thompsons. Since then its branches have spread wide and the trunk is many arm lengths in diameter. The chestnuts themselves are covered in a pokey, lime-green pod that must be pulled off to reveal the nuts inside. Jim’s daughter, Jo Nelson, who now lives in Hansville, said the pods each have three chestnuts, “one is good, the other two are duds.”

When the chestnuts are ready for picking, the stellar blue jays “go crazy” and hundreds fill the tree at a noisy feast.

Thompsons rooted deeper than the tree

At 95 years old, James A. “Jim” Thompson, still lives in the house he built with his father, William A. Thompson. Jim’s grandfather, James, came to Port Gamble from Maine in 1859, sailing around the Horn on a 180-day journey to work in the mill. He built one of the first houses there for his family, which still stands today. They were given a 99-year lease with rent at $1 per year. The Thompson house now has a plaque out front noting its historical significance.

“Dad was the head filer at the mill and his father before him,” Jim remembered. Filing the huge saw blades was the highest paid job at the mill where on one shift, 450,000 feet of lumber could be cut. Sailing ships would back into the dock at Port Gamble. Jim said it took nearly three months to load them.

Both Jim and his father were born in Port Gamble. Jim started in his father’s footsteps at the mill in 1930 but after a year headed to Alaska with his Uncle James Herdman to trap beaver and mink in Chulitna near Mount McKinley. Herdman wrote a book about working trap lines in winter conditions so severe that one of his partners froze to death. Jim said that after working in sub-zero temperatures that caused frostbite, “I was lucky – they decided they didn’t have to cut my hand off.” He spent the next summer working on the Alaska Railroad to pay off his hospital bill then came back to Port Gamble.

“I’ve always been lucky – I’ve lived on borrowed time.”

While working at the Port Gamble Mill, Jim would head to Seattle on weekends to attend welding school and eventually became a welder at the Navy shipyard for 20 years.

Days gone by

Jim married the girl next door, Jane Leyman, Sam’s daughter. They bought five acres next to Sam’s property and Jim drew up plans for a house on the backside of an old calendar. With $1,200 that he “scrounged,” he and his dad built the house from scratch, splurging on windows and flooring. They cut the lumber at a sawmill built on the property. In the modest house, the Thompsons raised their daughter Jo. Jane passed away in 1993.

Sam worked as a locomotive engineer on trains that ran from Kingston, snaked around Little Boston and Buck Lake, and ended at Gamble Bay where the logs were dumped.

“Sam always had a huge garden,” Jim recalled. “He grew tobacco and used it for bug killer.”

At the corner of Leyman and West Kingston, Shorty Campbell owned property. Jim remembers Shorty as a Civil War veteran who “raised a few chickens and fished off the Kingston dock for rock cod. He’d call his chickens and wake up all the neighbors!”

Jim also owns about 80 acres near Kingston Junior High, the location of Thompson’s Kingston Airfield (with a motto of “Where the bears and I call home!”). The 2,000-foot airstrip accommodated North End pilots, Jim said, who commuted from Kingston to Sea-Tac. Eventually, insurance headaches caused him to have to shut it down. “I had to kick everybody out – it’s a shame.” Jim was a pilot and owned airplanes over the years but had to stop flying after his hips gave out on him.

A love of modes of transportation runs in the family. His nephew, Bobby Thompson, owns the My Girl Drive-In Car Museum down the road. Jim’s still got an old chicken coop full of vintage motorcycles and a yellow Volkswagen bug that’s become one with the pasture.

The chestnut tree continues to grow alongside the Thompson family, a witness to the comings, goings and buzz of development. Its deep roots hold fast to the homestead, like Jim.