Back in 1902, when Congress approved $22,000 for a lighthouse at Mukilteo, that was a lot of money. According to measuringworth.com, $22,000 back then would translate in 2016 to anything from $503,000 to $16,200,000, depending on how you calculate it! The House representatives must have been convinced that a lighthouse at Mukilteo would create real value in keeping the waterways safe and profitable.
Sisters just 13 months apart, Mary Lou Hogland Holtgeerts and Kay Hogland Scheller are this year’s Pioneers of the Year. Born in Everett, they moved to Mukilteo when their family bought the McNab house in 1942, a large house built in 1906 on Webster Street near Mukilteo’s Pioneer Cemetery.
Both sisters attended Rosehill school and later graduated in 1954 and 1955 from Everett High School. Mary Lou and Kay remember that when their parents bought the big house in Mukilteo, it was being used as a WWII Army hospital run by the Ursuline Sisters. They remember cots all over, pots filled with sand, and surgical instruments. They remember seeing two well-stocked fish ponds on the property, but these were soon filled in: “Mother was afraid that we’d fall in.”
Their parents, Valeria and Everett Hogland, lived in their Mukilteo home until they died, Everett in 1959 and Valeria in 1987. Kay bought the family home and turned it into a bed and breakfast in 1993.
Their mother, Valeria Scott, was born in Minden Mines, Missouri. She came to this area on the train with her mother and siblings, joining her father who had come to Washington to work in the lumber industry.
Mary Lou and Kay’s father, Everett Albert Hogland, was born in Skagway, Alaska in 1900 during the peak of the Yukon Gold Rush. His father was an immigrant from Sweden. Everett lived with his dad in lumber camps and was working on the Seattle docks by sixth grade.
He started the Hogland Transfer Company in 1933, buying his first trucks off poker winnings that he hid behind a loose brick in a building in the Georgetown area of Seattle. He and Valeria married in 1935 and had three children: Mary Lou, Kay, and Al, who is ten years younger.
Kay, Valeria, and Mary Lou Hoglund.
After high school, Mary Lou attended Everett Junior College, and then married Kenneth Henry Holtgeerts in 1956. They had three children: Steve, Kristi, and Jeff. Ken was born in 1932 in Anacortes; his family moved to Mukilteo when he was ten years old. He attended Rosehill and Everett High, graduating in 1951. Ken was in the army during the Korean War. He worked at various jobs and then at the Hogland Transfer Company, where he retired as president. They lived on 3rd Street in Mukilteo when Steve was born, and later moved to 8th Street. Ken served on the Mukilteo City Council in the 1970s—his father, Luke Ho1tgeerts, had served on the Mukilteo City Councils, 1947-1953. Luke and his partner Russell Edgerton built and ran the bus line from Mukilteo to Everett. They built the bus barn in the 1940s—the building that is now Diamond Knot Brewery.
Mary Lou riding a horse at Hogland House with Kay and their brother, Al
Mary Lou was a Cub Scout leader, Camp Fire Girls leader, Assistant Treasurer at Mukilteo Presbyterian Church, and worked on fundraising for the Assistance League and Boys and Girls Club. Mary Lou now lives in Anacortes.
Kay married Jack Scheller. They had four children: Nancy, Earl, Greg, and Byron. The family lived on the corner of 3rd and Loveland for many years while bringing up the children. They later divorced.
Kay worked at the City of Mukilteo and the Mukilteo Water Department. She was a Sunday School superintendent and teacher at Glad Tidings Chapel. She helped organize many dance fundraisers and New Year’s dances at Royal Neighbors Hall (now the Boys and Girls Club on 2nd Street). Kay was active with the Seattle Swing Dance Club and on the Board of the U.S. Dance Championships.
Be sure to come to the Mukilteo Historical Society meeting on Thursday, August 11, at 7:15 pm at Rosehill Community Center to hear more of Mary Lou and Kay’s memories of growing up in Mukilteo.
Mary Lou and Kay will be riding in the Lighthouse Festival Parade on Saturday, September 10, at 10:30 am, accompanied by a contingent from the Mukilteo Historical Society. They will be honored at a reception at the lighthouse at 3:00 pm that day along with Mukilteo’s Citizen of the Year, Debra Borden (daughter of Lois and Bruce Brown).
Imagine being taken from your home and sent to live in a camp in another state with several thousand people, taking with you only what you can carry. What would happen to your livelihood? What would happen to your property? What if you have people or animals who count on you?
During World War II, this happened to a number of Mukilteo natives. They had been part of the Japanese community in the early 1900’s. Most had moved to other places by the 1940’s since Crown Lumber, the town’s primary employer, closed in 1930. However, many who had grown up in town and attended Rosehill School kept in touch with friends and mentors such as Clara Kane. Continue reading “Letter from Internment Camp”→
“I remember the explosion at the Powder Mill in 1930 when I was about five years old,” says Lillian Anderson Cronkhite. “We were reading the funny papers and a window fell in—and because the glass hit the paper instead of us, none of us were hurt.” This is just one of the experiences Lillian remembers from her childhood in Mukilteo.
Lillian is surrounded by her brother Norman, her mother Jorgine Anderson, Jorgine’s sister Marie, and brother William.
Lillian was born in Mukilteo in 1925 in her family’s home on Fourth Street (the house is still there) to Axel and Jorgine Anderson. Jorgine had come to the US from Norway in 1914 with her sister Marie. Jorgine married Axel, who had come from Sweden, in Butte, Montana, where Axel was working in a mine.
Axel and Jorgine’s first child was Norman, born in Montana in 1921; then William was born in 1924 in Everett; Axel had been building their house in Mukilteo, and Lillian was born there after the family moved in.
Lillian attended Rosehill School and graduated from Everett High in 1943. She met her husband, Warren Cronkhite, there; they were married in 1946, when “Cronk” returned from service in WWII. Mixed marriage runs in the family: not only were Lillian’s parents a Swedish/ Norwegian combination, but she attended WSU in Pullman while Cronk was a UW graduate!
Lillian digging clams at what is now Lighthouse Park.
Lillian and Warren have lived in their same house off Mukilteo Boulevard since 1952. They have three daughters, Judy, Janny, and Susie, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
Lillian tells the story of a Box Social held at the Royal Neighbors Hall (now the Boys and Girls Club) when the young ladies made lunches. The gentleman who got her lunch was quite disappointed because her brother Bill had put soap in Lillian’s sandwiches instead of cheese.
There has to be more to this story. Lillian Anderson Cronkhite, 2015 Pioneer of the Year, will be riding in a convertible in the Lighthouse Festival Parade at 10:30 am on Saturday, Sept. 12, and will be honored at an outdoor reception at the Lighthouse at 3:00 pm that day.
Join us for the parade and all the other Lighthouse Festival activities, September 11 thru 13.
Imagine being taken from your home and sent to live in a camp in another state with several thousand people, taking with you only what you can carry. What would happen to your livelihood? What would happen to your property? What if you have people or animals who count on you?
