VASHON ISLAND’S NATIVE PEOPLE:
RESOURCES FOR LEARNING
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Vashon Rural Heritage
The collection labeled “Vashon’s First Peoples” includes: --Lucy Gerand’s place names and village sites for Vashon-Maury Island, as told to Thomas Talbot Waterman in 1918 --Testimony by Lucy Gerand and other Puyallup Native people in the U.S. Court of Claims in 1927, describing their homes and way of life --"Vashon’s and Maury Islands: Hands Across Time,” a film produced and directed by Roxanne Thayer, in 1998 that shows the Burton Acres excavation and interviews with many members of the Puyallup Tribe and descendants of the sx̌ʷəbabš.
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Seasonal Round of the Coast Salish People
A poster showing Puyallup Tribe names for every month of the year in both Twulshootseed and English, and illustrating key activities of the months. Produced by the Vashon Heritage Museum and available for purchase from the museum.
GENERAL RESOURCES
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Vashon Rural Heritage
There are four collections in this resource - Journals and Memoirs, Maps and Periodicals, Vashon's First Peoples, and Vashon College.
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Puget Sound Regional Archives
This office is a great place to start researching your house. You can email with your parcel number, and for a small fee, an archivist will send you a tax document from the 1930s, with a photo of your home and any other buildings, and descriptions of building materials. Additional research can be done by request or in person.
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Washington Digital Archives
This is a great online resource for genealogical research, with searchable birth, marriage and death records as well as other legal records.
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Vashon History
Island Historian, Dr. Bruce Haulman, chronicles the Island’s cultural demographic end historic legacy. You can visit this external resource including Vashon's historic newspaper pages from 1907-1933 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about Vashon's newspapers published between 1907-1933. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
Ellisport Trail
The Burton and Ellisport Trail Sign Projects are not projects of the Vashon Maury Island Heritage Association (VMIHA). VMIHA acts as Fiscal Sponsor for these groups respectively, and provides research and historical assistance as we would for any private individual or group of individuals. The VMIHA board voted to be a fiscal sponsor of the Burton Group in November of 2022 and Ellisport in 2018. For questions about the signs, please, reach out to those groups directly.
It's all about connection
The Vashon Heritage Museum is part of a network of museums that support and connect to each other. This includes:
BURKE MUSEUM
CENTER FOR WOODEN BOATS
FORT NISQUALLY LIVING HISTORY MUSEUM
HARBOR HISTORY MUSEUM
LOG HOUSE MUSEUM
MUSEUM OF HISTORY & INDUSTRY