Collections · Museum Library
The museum library preserves local publications and research materials. Explore digitized selections here, beginning with a 1982 walking tour of historic Marysville.
Digitized from the library
Open a publication in a full browser window, or download a copy for your own local-history research.
Featured publication
Published by the Marysville Historical Society in June 1982, this illustrated guide leads readers through local landmarks, community history, and the Gehl Pioneer Home.
The booklet was compiled and illustrated in 1982. A later revision is credited inside the document to Society members in 1985.
From the archives
A lifetime of research by longtime resident Fred L. Saunders Sr., compiled as a 172-page collection of historical notes, an index, and typewritten pages covering the naming of Marysville, its early settlers, businesses, the Marysville Globe newspaper, and more.
Scanned and OCR’d from the Society’s original collection so the text can be searched. A handwritten 2004 note from the Saunders family, asking that the research be shared with the Historical Society, is preserved on the first page. At 18.6 MB, it is a large scan best suited to downloading rather than viewing in-browser.
Community cookbook
A Society fundraiser compiled by Cathy Callan in 1989, packed with persimmon recipes—from frozen whole fruit and puree to holiday cakes and puddings—plus a handy reference chart of pan sizes and substitutions.
Compiled and typed by Cathy Callan and sold as a Society fundraiser in May 1989. Scanned and OCR’d from the Society’s original copy so the text can be searched.
Souvenir program
The souvenir program for the Fifteenth Annual Marysville Strawberry Festival, held Saturday, June 17, 1950, and sponsored by the Marysville Veterans’ Club and American Legion Post No. 178. It includes the parade route and full day’s schedule of events, the festival committees, and dozens of period advertisements from Marysville businesses.
Scanned from the Society’s original copy of the program, including the festival-day schedule, the parade map, and advertisements from businesses along Third and State streets.
Local research
Retired City Records Clerk Jacqueline (Mitchell) Jacobsen read through Marysville’s handwritten council minute books to trace nearly a century of local law enforcement, from the first town marshal, elected in March 1891, through the night marshals, police justices, and police chiefs who followed.
Jacobsen finished the booklet for the Police Department’s open house in July 1988. It also lists Marysville’s first registered voters, early town ordinances, and 1950s Police Reserve members, with photographs of Marshal Sanford T. Asbery in 1904 and of Chief Herman Broeker’s force in the 1950s. Names and spellings are kept as she copied them from the minutes, and the text has been checked against the scans so it can be searched.
Veterans’ records
The record books of two Marysville veterans’ groups: American Legion Auxiliary Unit 178, organized in 1946, and Marysville Barracks No. 142 of the Veterans of World War I, founded in 1954 at the Veterans Hall on Second and Cedar.
Includes typed World War I service records for 97 Marysville-area men, membership rolls and rosters with addresses, the Barracks’ charter members and a list of members who had died, and years of Strawberry Festival work, from the Auxiliary’s 1948 Junior Queen to the festival’s concessions in the late 1950s. The minutes, rosters, and service records, handwritten pages included, have been transcribed so names can be searched, with spellings kept as written.
Veterans’ records
The Barracks’ own record volume, gathered by member John Michael “Jack” Nelson and presented to Barracks No. 142 to be passed from commander to commander. It follows the group from its 1954 charter through its monthly meetings at the Veterans Hall into the early 1970s.
Holds meeting minutes from 1954 to 1965 and 1970 to 1972, yearly membership rolls, the charter roster, typed World War I service records for Marysville-area men, and delegates’ reports, among them an account of the 1956 national convention in Portland. Most pages also appear in the combined Auxiliary and Barracks volume above. This copy adds a few pages that one lacks, including the October 11, 1965 minutes, when Jack Nelson and Leon Stock were named the Barracks’ historians. Spellings are kept as written.
County planning
Snohomish County’s plan for the fast-growing country around Marysville, written after the Boeing 747 plant brought a wave of new residents. It revised the County’s 1964 plan and was worked out with the City of Marysville’s own comprehensive plan, adopted in 1969.
Written by planner Howard Lovering with Tom Flack and Bill Cyders, it covers the unincorporated land from Ebey Slough north to Stimson Crossing and east to Highway 9. It weighs three ways the area could grow, records the City’s water and sewer systems of the day, projects 35,000 residents by 1990, and closes with a fold-out color land-use map. The County Planning Commission adopted it on June 23, 1970, and the Board of County Commissioners on August 17. This copy carries the name Dennis L. Derickson, handwritten on its front cover.
Research at the museum
The museum library and archives hold more material than is currently available online. Send the Society a research request and tell us what you are trying to find.
Start a research requestThis digital shelf will grow as additional museum-library materials are prepared for online access.
