Perusing the books in the gift shop of the Island County Historical Society Museum in Coupeville, I came across “A History of Whidbey’s Island” by George A. Kellogg. The author’s name was immediately recognizable to me as the grandson of Dr. Joseph C. Kellogg, one of the original recipients of donation claims lands on the island in the early years of white settlement in the mid-19th century.
George Kellogg was born on Whidbey Island at the close of that century, but only lived there for the first seven years of his life. His bio on the book’s back cover describes him as a “teacher, salesman, musician, historian, advertising man, corporate leader, and storyteller.” Following a career in advertising and corporate management in Chicago and New York, he retired to yet another island — this one off the coast of Georgia — in 1959, but frequently visited friends and relatives in Coupeville.
Kellogg’s book was the culmination of research for a master’s thesis in Northwest history (which he never completed), and much of the material was gleaned from a collection of weekly columns published in the Oak Harbor Farm Bureau News. In the book’s foreword, Kellogg refers to his work of nearly 200 pages as “only an attempt to write an informal history of a pioneer community.” But what drew me to the book was the sense of intimacy in the telling of this history. It was clear that although you could take the boy out of Whidbey Island, the many years between Kellogg’s birth on the island and his death in 1983 never succeeded in taking Whidbey Island out of the boy.
This Tales of the Magic Skagit podcast episode is a reading of Chapter 1 of “A History of Whidbey's Island,” in which Kellogg recounts the finding of Deception Pass by the island’s namesake, Joseph Whidbey, ship’s master on Captain George Vancouver’s vessel, Discovery. Over the course of the next year I plan to read other chapters from Kellogg’s book, which was first published in 1934 by the Island County Historical Society and is currently in its fifth printing. Kellogg graciously granted the Society not only his permission to reprint his work, but to use the royalties to further its work. From my perspective, it’s arguably the best $14.95 I’ve ever spent.
