A Union At The Mill
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 COURTESY OF BETSY DARNTON LEUNER THEN: Friends and family members of Sarah Taylor Frankland pose in the backyard of her home, ca. 1890, at the south end of Lake Union. The Western Mill appears, in part, to the right, and a still mostly forested Queen Anne Hill spans the horizon.
PAUL DORPAT NOW: Cousins Marta Brace and Betsy Leuner pose on the site of the former Frankland/Brace residence. |
For Marta Brace, this week's late-Victorian view into the South Lake Union neighborhood was one of the finer rewards of nearly 20 years' research into the extended Brace family. Earlier this year, cousin Betsy Leuner uncovered this photograph for Marta's research. And here in the "now" the cousins, Marta on the left, repeat the historical scene while standing in a parking lot at the southeast corner of Boren Avenue and Republican Street. This, Marta figures, is where Betsy's great-great-grandmother, Sarah Taylor Frankland, lived at 430 Moltke St., later renamed Boren Avenue.
Sarah is near the center of this group of 10 family members, friends and one Methodist preacher, a Rev. Loy, standing on the side porch, far left, as in a pulpit. Sarah's daughter, Katie, is to the right of the pastor. Later that year (Marta has figured it as 1890), Katie Frankland married John Brace here at her mother's home. John Brace was the manager of David Denny's Western Mill, which shows in part to the right of the home.
The couple probably met at the mill because Katie worked there as a bookkeeper. When the 1893 financial panic bankrupted David Denny, John Brace kept the mill going. By the end of the decade John (president) and Katie (vice president) were owners with Frank Hergert (secretary-treasurer) of the renamed Brace & Hergert Mill.
The Braces moved in with Sarah in 1890, and by 1897 had filled this home with five children. Sarah died in 1893, at 73.
For 20 years John Brace was president of the Lake Washington Canal Association, but died in 1918 months too early to welcome the S.S. Fonduca, the first oceangoing vessel to make it through the new canal to take on lumber here at the south end of Lake Union.
"Washington Then and Now," the new book by Paul Dorpat and Jean Sherrard, can be purchased through www.washingtonthenandnow.com ($45).
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