Huntsville Exhibit Showing in Waitsburg

WAITSBURG – A childhood’s worth of memo- ries floods back for Kay Baker as she peruses the photos and memorabilia that she and friend Mary Phillips set up two weeks ago as part of the Huntsville history exhibit now showing at the Wilson-Phillips house on the grounds of the Bruce Mansion.

“When most people drive from (Waitsburg) to Dayton they don’t even know Huntsville is there,” said Baker. “They don’t know it exists. And I want them to know there was actually a town there. It was a nice little community.”

It was a community that Kay (Huwe) Baker and Mary (Liebermann) Phillips shared as young girls.

Baker, the youngest of nine children born to Robert and Hazel Huwe, grew up on old State Highway 410 (now U.S. Highway 12) across the road from the current Wilbur-Ellis plant. Her fam- ily’s home sat next to the old Perfection Flour mill. Both structures are gone except for the mill’s stor- age warehouse—the medium-sized white-painted barn with two cupolas astride the roof which still stands just south of the highway and east of the Poverty Lane and Sorghum Hollow turn-offs. Photographs in the exhibit show both the house and the mill in their hey-days.

Train tracks once crossed the highway there, then slid between the main part of the mill and the storage barn. Photos and news-clippings in the exhibit also commemorate the greatest non-flood related disaster in Huntsville history—a collision between trains from opposing companies (Union Pacific and Northern Pacific) that occurred right outside Baker’s front door.

“I remember standing in our dining room window just bawling,” Baker recollected, unsure of just how young she was at the time. “I was so afraid, because that train wrecked and it was all over the highway. Boxcars were on the highway. Someone left the switch open and the train crossed the road and ran into the back of the other train parked at the flour mill.”

Baker said that the idea for a Huntsville exhibit began at around the same time the two friends and others put together the Huntsville reunion a couple of years ago. People who had grown up or gone to school in Huntsville met at Lewis and Clark Trail State Park and began sharing stories and photos.

“We all started gathering things and Mary has kept most of the stuff that we had from the reunion at her house,” said Baker. “Bill Kendall called Mary the other day and said I’ve got some things for you. They aren’t here yet, but they will be added to the display. Ruth Wolfe (daughter of Huntsville General Store proprietor Wade Wolfe) called one day and said we have the (hand-crank) coffee grinder that was in the store that we’d like to donate.”

Baker pointed to two pictures on white card- stock with red handwriting under them.

“Bud or Dell Groom wrote this up about Hattie Groom. She was a wonderful person. She was our janitor at the school. She would go in and get the coal furnace going. She did all the cleaning at the school. She would make the wonderful hot lunches for us. She was also my baby- sitter when Mother worked. I called her Grandma Groom.”

The exhibit prominently features the grade school that in an earlier life was a much larger structure and key to the town’s founding.

The United Brethren de- nomination chose the area to be the site of a new seminary. The Christian group built a 3-story wooden structure and two dormitories in the late 1800s on land that J. Benjamin Hunt donated. The facility was called the Washington Institute. The exhibit features several ex- terior of the old structure. The only interior photograph shows four newly-minted pastors, including Wade Wolfe, awaiting graduation proceedings near a stage.

“I think it’s quite interest- ing the rules and regulations that were there (govern- ing Huntsville) and to my knowledge are still there,” Baker said. “I was told that when the state of Washing- ton was interested in build- ing WSU (Washington State College) they wanted to buy this (the Washington Insti- tute). The United Brethren said that’s fine, but students have to go by the rules. They can’t dance, they can’t drink, and they can’t play cards. If they do, the school would revert back to United Breth- ren. Can you imagine what Huntsville would be like now if WSU were there?”

The exhibit also features information and photographs of the Huntsville railway station, general store, saw mill (that popped up along the river in the town’s later history—the 1950s), the cemetery on Hammer Hill, the camp meeting grounds at Shiloh near the state park, the building of the Starr Bridge over the Touchet, aer- ial photographs, plat maps, and much more.

One other item, a table and chairs in the kitchen of the Wilson-Phillips house, is an important piece of the Huntsville exhibit as well. The dining set once belonged to Huntsville General Store owners Wade and Edith Wolfe.

“Winifred (Wolfe) got real sick one time and (her parents Wade and Edith) called the doctor,” said Bak- er. “Dr. Carter from Waits- burg came up. He put her on this table and took her tonsils out.”

Baker credits friend Phil- lips with doing the majority of the work in making the exhibit a reality. Unfortu- nately, Phillips was away in Tucson, Ariz. at the writing of this article.

“So much has come alive for me,” Baker opined. “In- formation I didn’t know. At one time there were four churches in Huntsville. And there were lots of houses and now there’s not much. We don’t even have the sign (along the railroad tracks) anymore that said Hunts- ville. And that’s kind of sad.”

For a few months through Fall Festival at the Wil- son-Phillips House though, Huntsville’s anonymity will fade, like its history once did, into the past.