Unidentified Children in the Strickland Barnyard, circa 1926. 

The Guemes Island Historical Society is happy to announce the resumption of monthly meetings. Our last public meeting was held in March of 2020 and was highlighted by Barbara Spaeth's presentation on the Cahail family of Guemes Island. Since that time, the Covid 19 outbreak has precluded meetings of this sort.

In the interval, the GIHS has remained active behind the scenes. We are working in partnership with the Guemes Island Library on the Washington State Library’s Rural Heritage Project. The Guemes Island Library applied for and was awarded a grant for this work. The focus of the project is to digitize photos and documents for uploading to the WSL system for ease of access by all interested parties.

The grant has specific goals that are to be met, chief of which is the digitization and uploading of a minimum of 100 items to the WSL site. We have five volunteers working on meeting that goal including Morna McEachern, Klaudia Englund, Sue O'Donnell, Janice Veal and Tom Deach. This is an ongoing project and over time we will be adding and training more volunteers to help with the work.

Happily, we are now in a position to resume our meetings. Our next scheduled meeting will be Monday, August 9th at the Guemes Island Church. Our regular business meeting will begin at 5:45 with a presentation following at 7pm. This month's presentation will focus on the Rural Heritage grant and the processes it entails. Speakers will include Morna McEachern, president of the GIL and Klaudia Englund who is a certified archivist and Guemes Island resident. It is our hope that this presentation will rekindle interest in Guemes Island History and inspire interested parties to submit photos and documents for inclusion in this worthwhile endeavor. Please contact Tom Deach by email at: guemeshistory@gmail.com or by phone 360-708-2582 with any questions.

Due to an abundance of caution, along with the newly pending CDC guidelines, masks will be required at this gathering.