“and the Seattle area (including the Olympic peninsula)”
My family is here on the Olympic Penninsula and has been for more than hundred years AFAICT. My Great -Grandmother/mom’s side belonged to the family that founded a rural town named Porter that still exists. A couple generations before her the family name was “Twidwell” and they helped found the small rural community of Brooklyn, Wa and basically were the (vigilante) law enforcement back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Not much is known about my mother’s fathers’ side past his mom who was an alcoholic and gave him up for adoption around the age of 12. She did however name him after one of my favorite authers; Robert Lewis Stevenson. He was a logger and family farmer in Aberdeen, Washington for many decades when he retired and moved himself and Grandma out to the Eastern part of the county.
I have been told that the family came from Europe in the mid 1800’s and were (again moms’ side) Swedish Jews.
My mom stays in contact with one of her uncles in California, apparantly there are still many “Twidwells” there and in Kansas that we are related to.
So we might be distantly related! My father’s family moved to Seattle (from St. Paul) in the 1920s, and then across the sound to Poulsbo on the Kitsap Peninsula in the late 30s. My aunt, his youngest sister, now lives in Kinsgston, WA. She married a man of Finnish descent whose family has lived on the OP since the late 1800s. The old family house still has no modern bathroom, but the sauna outside is well maintained and regularly used. My uncle told me once that his grandparents used to row across Puget Sound to Seattle once a month to buy the supplies they couldn’t grow or make for themselves.
Huh... your ancestors probably knew mine.