PORT GAMBLE — The two front parlors have an original fireplace, dating back to the early 1860s, and three chimneys.
Closet and storage space are pretty much nonexistent. The windows are single paned and the only bathroom — added on later as outhouses were the then norm — is small.
But 150 years later, the Thompson House — the oldest continually lived in homestead in Washington — is still very habitable, standing in its historical glory surrounded by grass fields overlooking Gamble Bay.
“The house has been great. It’s very livable,” said the Thompson House’s current resident since 2002 and Port Gamble manager Shana Smith, who is thankful for her one bathroom. “It was all outhouses. I have no desire to go back to that part of history.”
It’s easy to understand why Smith prefers life in the 21st century, especially when delving into Port Gamble’s early days and the tribulations of residents who moved from Machias, Maine, to found the once-thriving mill town.
James A. Thompson and several others set sail from Maine on the schooner Toando, traveled around South America’s Cape Horn, to arrive in Northwest Washington and work at the Port Gamble Mill. In 1859, the year of their travels, there was no Panama Canal.
Three years passed before James returned to Maine for his wife Sarah.
James and his family built the Thompson House themselves, with wood from the mill, being one of five families allowed to build on the land. James was granted a 99-year ground lease, paying $1 per year.
Once settled, James worked as the head saw filer until his death in 1911. He was compensated $110 a month for his labor, and his job was prestigious, earning the same pay as the mill boss.
After James’ death, his son William took over as head filer, netting $9 a day.
“Will got $9 or he was going to quit,” Smith said. “He got a $7 check from Port Gamble and a $2 check from Seattle so the Port Ludlow filer (making $7) wouldn’t know.”
William was the head filer until 1946.
Aside from working 11-and-a-half hour days at the mill, what was life like?
Robert Thompson, James’ great-great grandson and Will’s great grand son remembers.
“We did a lot of community things because you couldn’t go very far,” said Bob who rode his bike over every inch of Port Gamble. “It was horse and buggy with just dirt roads.”
They had a Port Gamble band, a baseball team, community picnics and fishing derbies marked the social calendar.
Bob said William owned the first car in Port Gamble, a 1910 Reo, ate oatmeal every morning for breakfast and played the piano with the flair of a concert pianist.
“He played the piano in the front room and when he’d play they could hear it downtown,” Bob said. “I’d sit on the front step and listen and eight to 10 others would stand and listen. they’d hear it downtown and they’d just come over.”
Back then a schoolhouse and a hospital, with wooden steps and a wooden elevator, were apart of the Port Gamble expanse. Being a mill town, it was a necessity to have a hospital.
Bob remembers when Will told him about a near miss at the mill.
“It was pretty dangerous,” Bob says. “Grandfather told me once how a saw come off and went right by his head and into the wall timber about four inches of his head.”
Bob spent his childhood learning how to hunt and make sail boats with his grandaddy. He even taught Bob how to save money.
“I’d pick berries and then count my money at my grandparents’ house and then we’d put it in the bank,” he said.
Will also owned the theater in Port Gamble and Bob’s favorite memory of his childhood at the Thompson House was a Thursday night tradition.
“The took me to the movie theater and afterward we’d go to the Puget Hotel (Port Gamble’s hotel) and I’d get to have a hamburger and milkshake with my grandparents and then stay over,” Bob said, his eyes shining at the memory. “The first color film I can remember was “King Solomon’s Mines.”
Bob said he used to spend every free minute with his grandparents, except the day they got in a fatal car accident, causing him to ponder fate.
Bob’s grandparents were driving in Port Gamble one day and it’s believed Will had a heart attack.
“He stepped on the gas when it happened and they crashed into a cement wall. They both died together that day,” he said. “It was the longest funeral procession ever seen at that time. He knew so many people.”
After Will’s death, his sister Virginia moved into the house and lived there until 1967, the last of three generations of Thompsons to occupy the homestead. Bob’s family didn’t move in, as his father had built a house one mile out of town.
Bob would like the Thompson House to be occupied by Thompsons, but that’s no longer the case. But Bob does preserve and hold on to family history as best he can.
He still uses the same mail box in Port Gamble as his grandfather and father used. He spent nine solid years building My Girl Drive-In in Kingston, a 1950-esque Rock-n-Roll museum, that’s seeping with family history: photos, his grandfather’s inventions, dolls and teddy bears from 1917, a 1904 “Peter Rabbit” and 1912 “Titanic” hard back.
“I try to do my little bit to save (family history.) I can’t do the house again, but I had the finances to build (My Girl),” Bob said. “We’ve stored stuff for generations in boxes, basements and barns, you’d forget about it, and when I was opening stuff up it was like Christmas. I have more stuff to bring out.”
