East Times article on Jack Chisholm

Jack Chisholm, 1920s

The Seattle Times, East Times, Section G, Wednesday, March 24, 1982

Pioneer recollection

Long-time area resident built his log-cabin home

by Blaine Schulz

Times East bureau

The logs in the fireplace glowed and crackled in Jack Chisholm's log cabin east of Fall City.

Reminiscing, Chisholm said he built the cabin from 1935 to 1937, reared a family there and still makes the cabin his home.

At 77, Chisholm is a jack-of-all-trades. He's worked as a fire warden, farmer, electrician, plumber and general handyman.

He also is a local historian of sorts -- he knows the early history of the Fall City area from personal experience, because he was 6 years old when he first settled in the area with his parents.

Hanging in Chisholm's study is a picture of a black bear he shot when he first got his rifle at 18.

"When I was in the second grade," Chisholm said, "I was walking close to a log chute on a steep hill going hom from school, got tired and fell asleep. When I woke up, a bear was feeding right beside me. Startled, the bear jumped and ran away. There were lots of bears then."

Chisholm also has a collection of Indian lore, 360 hours of it, on tapes -- some have priceless Shaker Church music from the Tulalip Indian Reservation near Marysville. In one of the prayers or chants, an Indian woman kept time with a spoon. She chanted, rhythmically, "Our Lord, Our Savior." During the chant, her language changed from English to the Indian dialect.

With his recorder, Chisholm spent many hours interviewing his Indian friend, Ed Davis, 94, of Fall City. Davis is an old minister of the Indian Shaker Church.

Davis has a stockpile of pioneer and logging stories and knows the Indian legends, but he won't talk much until he has confidence in his white listener. It was Davis who helped Chisholm, a white man, to get into the Shaker Church, with the recorder.

For eight years, Chisholm drove Davis to the Shaker Church -- until four years ago.

Until he was 6 years old Chisholm lived in the Greenwood District in Seattle. One day he accidentally broke a neighbor's window, "so my family decided it was time to move to the country," he said.

Fall City was a great place to grow up during the early 1900s, Chisholm said, adding, "My mother didn't want me to grow up in town. She'd rather I worked in the country."

Chisholm's father bought some land and built a log cabin not too far from where Chisholm's home stands.

In 1918, Chisholm said, the flu killed off many of the Indians from the Snoqualmie area.

Chisholm lives in his log cabin at Fall City with his wife, Irene, and his daughter, Penelope. Family names which were prominent in the Fall City area when Chisholm grew up included Plum, Tarr, McKenzie, Nelson, Howe, Chisholm and Rutherford.

NOTES:

The reporters came out to interview Jack, supposedly about his Indian friends. By the time they were taking pictures of him my mother and I had tumbled to the fact that the article was going to be about him. Jack didn't tumble to it until it was published.

East Times is the part of the Seattle Times that covers the Seattle Eastside.

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