❖ FRIDAY HARBOR CANNERIES ❖ 1894

"I am going to take you back 60 years when I was a boy in Friday Harbor. My brother-in-law, Ashton Thomas, was the sheriff of San Juan County. He was also the proprietor of the Bay View Hotel, now the San Juan Hotel, and I was helping there. Sheriff Thomas and his two brothers had a little track of land on Waldron Island where they were [having a boat built.] At that time San Juan County and the entire USA were in the grip of a great depression. There was no employment for anybody. The wages for young men at that time were about $20 a month, and a girl could get $2 a week if she could find a job. However, SJC was rich with fertile lands and large herds of stock, but there was no call to raise much of anything for there was no sale. The people of that day, couldn't buy a new suit of clothes or a new dress every time there was a dance. However, they made the best of it.
      

KATY THOMAS
ON 161054
Built on Waldron Island by A.J. Hinckley
for the Thomas Brothers of Waldron Island, WA.
38' x 12' x 3.6' wood sloop
11 May 1894.
Source: Master Carpenter Certificate from
the National Archives, Seattle, WA. 

Around the first part of April 1894, one beautiful afternoon a new boat came sailing around Carter Point with brand new sails and fresh paint. This was the little vessel the Thomas boys had built. It wasn't long until she sailed up close to the dock, then it was necessary to get their oars to assist them in getting to the dock. There were no gas or steam engines in those days for smaller boats.
      She landed at Sweeney's Dock and it wasn't long before Thomas was aboard and talking to his two brothers regarding their trip down. For the next two days, Sheriff Thomas was very busy taking his friends aboard the new sloop named after my sister, Katy Thomas. After taking some of his friends for a number of short sailing trips into San Juan Channel on a Sunday afternoon, Thomas and his two brothers and three other men left Friday Harbor for a trip to Pt. Townsend to get her measured for register. They went on down through San Juan Channel and through San Juan Pass and then off into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and across, arriving in Pt. Townsend about 5:30 AM Monday.

S.S. LYDIA THOMPSON (on right)

Location: Port of Friday Harbor, WA.
ON 141266
92' x 28'

built in 1893 by Enos Raymond, Pt. Angeles 

for Thompson Steamboat Co. 

She ran Seattle–Bellingham via 

the Islands 3 times/week. 

Capt. W. B. Thompson (author of this letter)

 was master when 

she went on rocks near Orcas Island, in 1898.
A post of LYDIA's event that day 

can be viewed here.

 No lives were lost; the crew camped ashore, 

 the LYDIA was floated free and towed 

 Seattle for repairs.

She went back in service for many years of 

uneventful sailing on local runs.

Original undated photo from 

the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

      

About that time, the steamer LYDIA THOMPSON was just arriving from a trip through the Islands at six o'clock. The LYDIA landed a little ahead of the new KATY THOMAS, and as Thomas' boat was coming alongside, three men came running over and were not long in getting into a conversation with the Sheriff. Those three men were looking for a fishing place to start a cannery or something of that sort. In mentioning that to Thomas they couldn't have found a better-known man, and after only a few words, Thomas decided to leave his boat and return with those men who were from Astoria, OR. These men were Johnny Devlin, Fred Keen, and Phillip Cook. During the trip from Pt. T. to Argyle in SJC, it gave Thomas plenty of time to line up the different places for fishing and the conditions, pertaining to that business.
      At Argyle, they were fortunate enough to find Alfred Douglas with a new buggy and a team of horses who volunteered to drive the four men to Friday Harbor, about one and a quarter miles. A hurried meeting of the merchants and businessmen of Friday Harbor was called while Thomas stated the conditions that the men were looking for. Called to order–– everybody came to terms almost immediately.
      The men at the meeting were: banker J.A. Gould; Joe Sweeney, merchant: Churchill & Nofsgar, of the San Juan Trading Co; L.B. Carter, merchant; C.L. (Kergy) Carter, former county commissioner; S.E. Hackett, county attorney; C.L. Tucker, county treasurer; Wm Shultz, superintendent of Roche Harbor Lime Co; Mr. E.H. Nash, county clerk; Mr. Louis Hix* and his step-son, Del Hoffman from Shaw Island; the latter two being very important men because they owned the only pile-driver in SJC at that time, and they knew where piling could be obtained.
      The meeting was such a success that those three men from Astoria decided right then and there they would build a cannery in the Harbor, provided Devlin could get the Chinamen to do that kind of work. It was late in the year, for this is what they had to do; they had to build a cannery, get the material to make the cans, install machinery, and have this work done before the 25th of July because that is the time the fish commence to run. The little steamer, SUCCESS, was chartered to take Mr. Devlin and Mr. Keen to Anacortes where Devlin would go to Astoria and Keen would stop at Seattle to arrange conditions there, while Phillip Cook was left in Friday Harbor to open an office to handle the business of a new cannery. 
       Four days later the little steamer MICHIGAN came steaming into Friday Harbor with Captain Howard Buline as master, and Mr. Keen on board as well. Mr. Devlin had succeeded in hiring the Chinese; he stayed in Portland to take care of the business. Two weeks later the steam schooner SIGNAL came steaming into Friday Harbor with lumber, tin plate, and all kinds of cannery machinery that were required for the cannery and word went out to all parts of the county for men who didn't have a job, and it was high speed to get the China house built so the Chinese could land and start work.
      It was a bolt of thunder into a silent little community and before twenty days had passed, there wasn't a man, woman, or child who wanted to work that didn't have a job.
      The San Juan Trading Co had volunteered to let the newly formed company use their dock at no cost in order to get everything going. Mr. Gould also gave a 30-year lease for enough property on which to build the cannery and China house. From that time on, men would arrive from the OR canning industry and Jimmy Burke, well-known son of a homesteader, Alfred Burke of Shaw Island, had charge of placing the machinery in the completed cannery. The Friday Harbor cannery was built and when the fish started to run on 1 August of that year, they were all ready for work. At the close of the season, they had canned 18,000 cases of salmon. In those days all they canned were sockeyes. The humpbacks, silvers, and others were thrown back into the sea. 
      This was the start of the bust of the depression, and after the fish business got going, there were two more canneries started in Anacortes, two more in Blaine, and one in Bellingham." [Later there were canneries on other nearby islands.]
Above words by Captain William P. Thornton, June 1958.
Fish and Ships. Andrews, Ralph W. and A.K. Larssen.

Do you know of a photo of the pile-driver belonging to L.D. Hix? We'd be interested in adding to San Juan County maritime archives. 

*What was formerly called HIcks Bay on the south shore of Shaw Island underwent an official spelling correction with the Washington State Board of Geographic Names in 2016. Government charts will adopt the correct spelling of "Hix" for Louis D. Hix and his wife Cynthia Bish Hoffman HIx. 

❖ "SMUGGLER" KELLY ❖

KATY THOMAS
 ON 161054
Sloop built on Waldron Island, WA., by A. J. Hinckley in 1894,
for the Thomas brothers, Ashton, Elery, and John, of that island.
38.1' x 12' x 3.6' 
8 G.t. and 7 N.t.
Later owned by smuggler Larry Kelly, Guemes, & Sinclair Islands.
Photo from Thomas family, courtesy of the Anacortes Museum.
Vessel data from federal document (MCC) in SPHS records.

"A legendary character who sailed San Juan waters was Lawrence Kelly, better known as 'Smuggler' Kelly. One can still hear the most lurid accounts of his supposed bloodthirstiness, yet Kelly himself always insisted he was an 'honest' smuggler who never harmed his fellow man.
      The surviving evidence seems to bear out Kelly's claim. Part of the problem is that for decades Sunday Supplement writers have carelessly confused Larry with a hoodlum and sometimes smuggler named Jim 'Pig Iron' Kelly (no relation), who did terrorize the Puget Sound country during much of the same period.
      Larry Kelly sometimes trafficked in wine and Chinese illegals, but his main stock in trade was opium. In those days drugs were not illegal in the US, but they were dutiable. Uncle Sam's customs officials were supposed to see the government got its cut in the lucrative business of supplying Chinese laundry and cannery workers with their drug of choice. Kelly used to claim customs men themselves were the most active opium smugglers of all, and that the real reason they pursued him so relentlessly was to cut down on the competition.
      Kelly hailed from the Emerald Isle and went to sea as a young lad, seeking adventures that took him to the ports of Europe, Asia, and the South Seas. A ship chanced to land him in New Orleans just as the Civil War was getting underway, and Kelly decided to stay and join the fun. Records of Louisiana's Confederate soldiers show that he joined a volunteer company of the 22nd and 23rd Infantry on 2 September 1861.
      Perhaps the war wasn't as much fun as he had expected. The records show he was only present until February 1862.
      Presumably, there was another sea voyage and then Kelly landed on the shores of Puget Sound in 1865. He did some honest labor at the little village we now call Tacoma, loading lumber on board a sailing vessel.
      Sometime in the 1870s, Kelly settled on the southwest shore of Guemes Island at a spot which is still known as Kelly's Point. It afforded him a view through Bellingham Channel to the Strait of Georgia which was useful in monitoring the movements of customs boats. He married an Indian woman named Lizzie Katz and began raising a family.
      In Helen Elmore's book about Guemes, there is a description of Kelly: short, barrel-chested, wiry brown hair,  bushy beard, small bloodshot eyes, dirty shirt and overalls, bare sun-tanned feet. Bill Rosler of Friday Harbor told me years ago that Kelly also had a scar across his forehead and was a "nice fellow".
      Kelly would purchase opium in Victoria, where there were at least two factories openly manufacturing the drug. Then came the illicit dash over the border on his fast sloop, first to one of several hideouts in the San Juans, then on to some Puget Sound city with a large Chinese population. A frequent destination was Pt. Townsend, where Kelly used to land at night and let opium down the chimneys of Chinese laundries.
      Apparently, it was a most profitable business. By 1886 Kelly was able to buy up the western half of Sinclair (also known locally as 'Cottonwood') Island where he moved and became a leading citizen. He was even elected to the school board, in spite of his occupation.

William Rosler, Friday Harbor, WA. 

Son of Christopher Rosler (d.1907) 

who was one of Capt. George Pickett's soldiers 

who helped build American Camp.

(Writer Richardson interviewed Bill Rosler in 1960.)

Original photo from S. P. H. S.© 

As Bill Rosler recalled, 'everyone knew he smuggled, but the trick was to catch him.' Kelly was a first-rate sailor and pretty hard to catch. He mastered the old smugglers' trick of going out in bad weather when the law stayed close to shore. The customs boat at the time was a steamer, the WOLCOTT; but it was pretty slow in any kind of wind, Kelly could sail faster than the WOLCOTT could steam! In any case, Kelly knew every inch of coastline and if pressed too hard he would head for shallow water where the larger vessel couldn't follow.
      In time, they caught him and Kelly paid several fines for carrying contraband. But he was a thorn in the side of customs officers who were determined to 'put him away'––and they did.
      In March 1891, Kelly was traveling to Portland to board a train that, whether by accident or design, was also carrying two customs inspectors. They opened Kelly's large, new leather suitcase and found 65 half-pound cans of prepared opium. Kelly was arrested at Castle Rock and returned to Tacoma for arraignment, where he protested long and loudly that the customs men themselves had planted the drug among his effects while he was in the wash room.
      Larry Kelly wound up in McNeil Island pen for a couple of years, in spite of the petition his Sinclair Island neighbors put out for his pardon. During his incarceration, his small son was drowned in a shallow well on Sinclair.
      When Kelly emerged from the federal clink he was a beaten man. Federal agents had raided his home and seized and sold his sloop. He needed $500 to pay back bills and had to mortgage his property to raise the money. There were domestic disagreements and Lizzie moved out. By 1896, the last of the Sinclair Island property had been sold and Kelly was living in Anacortes.
      He was in and out of just about every jail on Puget Sound in the course of the next ten years. The last record of Larry Kelly in an item in the San Juan Islander for 16 May 1911, reported that his sloop had just been boarded again off the north end of Lummi Island. Kelly gave a fictitious name and claimed he was on his way to Alaska, but the boarding officer was sure Kelly was headed for Victoria for another buy.
      It's claimed Kelly finally retired from the smuggling business, went back to Louisiana and lived out his days in a Confederate soldiers' home. Some years ago this writer tried to find some documented record of Kelly's last days but a fairly lengthy correspondence with Louisiana archivists, including the curator of the state's Confederate Cemetery, failed to turn up Kelly's name.
      Kelly used several sailing vessels in his career, the last two of which were seized by agents. Some years ago the Anacortes Bulletin ran an article claiming that one of Kelly's boats, a ketch-rigged sloop, 38-ft long, weighing over seven tons, was still in use in local waters. The boat in question had been built on Waldron Island, [WA] in 1894, named the KATY THOMAS.
      In one of those strange twists Fate seems to delight in, Kelly happens to have two great-great-grandchildren still living in Bellingham. And their names just happen to be Katy and Thomas."
Above text by author, historian, long time San Juan County resident David Richardson, for The Islands' Sounder, 9 December 1981.
From the collection of the Saltwater People Historical Society.
1971: 
This year the KATY THOMAS was the subject of a news article by Marine Editor Glen Carter of the Seattle Times.
      At that time the sloop was on the hard on property owned by the City of Anacortes, next to the Washington State Ferry terminal, Anacortes, WA. She was owned by the Northwest Seaport who had plans to save her but in the next decade she fell apart and was scrapped.