L 88.40.01 - James and Anna Clise, with dog Toby, at Willowmoor.

Anna and James Clise had lost their son, Willis, to juvenile arthritis in 1898. At that time, there were no hospitals in the Seattle area to treat children. In her grief, Anna sought a way to ease the suffering of other mothers and children. After visiting Dr. John Musser at Philadelphia Orthopedic in 1906, Anna was moved to action. In 1907, she organized a group of 23 other wealthy Seattle women to establish a hospital of their own.

Anna was elected the first President of the Board of Trustees of Children’s Orthopedic Hospital Association. They started with a seven bed ward in Seattle General Hospital and had an all-female board. In their first year, the Association was approached by the Dorcas Society about a 14-year-old black girl with tuberculosis of the knee. When asked if they would help her, the Association pledged to accept any child, regardless of race, religion, or the parents’ ability to pay. That year the doctors of the ward treated 13 children and performed 7 operations.

The Clise’s owned the property that is today known as Marymoor Park, in Redmond. There they hosted many lavish parties to help fund this new hospital. Guests were met at the ferry dock with a four-horse tallyho and transported to the 350 acre estate. Anna’s daughter Ruth recalled, “Gaily colored Japanese lanterns holding lighted candles were strung between the trees in the garden and down to the river, where their reflections created a romantic setting. The large rooms of the house and the spacious verandas provided ample room for dancing, the music drifting out over the garden.”

As word spread about the work they were doing, the Association quickly outgrew the ward at Seattle General. In 1908, they opened the “Fresh Air Cottage” on Queen Anne Hill with 12 beds. In 1911, they built an even larger 50-bed hospital next door. The hospital remained there until 1953, when it moved to its current location in the Laurelhurst neighborhood.

By 1917, Anna had lost her eyesight to glaucoma and the couple decided to retire to their property in California. She maintained an interest in the Children’s hospital throughout her remaining years and her daughter and granddaughter served as trustees. Anna died of cancer in 1936.

Anna Clise was included in the Washington State Centennial Hall of Honor in 1989.

To learn more about the Clise family and their Willowmoor estate, visit our latest online exhibit: Willowmoor.

Resources

"The Washington State Centennial Hall of Honor." Columbia Magazine. 3.2 (Summer 1989): 3639. http://columbia.washingtonhistory.org/magazine/articles/1989/0289/0289‐a2.aspx.

Woman's Place: a Guide to Seattle and King County History, by Mildred Tanner Andrews, Gemil Press, 1994, pp. 154–155.

Johnston, Helen, and Richard Johnston. Willowmoor: the Story of Marymoor Park. King County Historical Association, 1976.

Eastside Stories

The Eastside Heritage Center has a large collection of quilts which date from the mid-1800s to modern day. Patchwork quilting is an American tradition used mainly by women to create useful blankets, preserve family trees and memories, and demonstrate a wide range of skills related the textile arts. A quilt is made by joining a patchwork top layer to a solid or also patched backing, although they are warmer with a cotton sheet or batting layer in the middle this is not always a part of the quilters creation as it can be expensive or hard to find at certain periods of the past.

*Photo above: Detail of quilt made of hexagon patches shoeing hand stitching.*

Quilting is a very time-consuming task and one can imagine how much more so before sewing machines were readily available. The smaller the patches the longer the quilt would take to make with the hexagon flower pattern above. Each hexagon is only about an 1 ½ inch tall and the top layer for this is completely handsewn. It’s no wonder the quilter didn’t finish stretching and sewing this quilt to the backing. Still, this quilter’s labor is preserved in the EHC collection.

Some quilt designs are the result of fads like the Victorian era crazy quilt while many quilts are made from necessity. Quilters will often utilize any material they can find from fine ribbons and lace to worn clothes and flour sacks. Historically some companies have even catered to this by printing designs on their sacks or providing small slips of silk in cigar boxes which could then be used to make quilts. In the Eastside Heritage Center’s Collection there are quilts which still bare the logos of the mills which produced the flour backing some of the quilts.

Photo (above): Red, white, and blue patchwork quilt using the pattern known as "Job's Troubles".

Many quilt patterns were developed from stories in the Bible such as the quilt above showing a pattern called “Job’s Troubles”. The character Job in the Bible faced many hardships but kept his faith in God and may have been an inspiration for women who traveled west and faced many hardships themselves as they made a new life for their families. Often the creator of a pattern goes unknown. Just like today, quilters learn from each other and emulate what they see through skill. The four patches at each corner create a star and the four stars coming together create an almost circular shape. This quilter plays with the negative space by keeping all the larger patches white so together they emphasize the stars and the stars complement the shape back.

Quilts take so long to make that sometimes quilters start them and work on them for years or set their work aside and come back to it after a long period of time. There are two quilts in our collection which were started and finished about forty years apart. We know this because the quilters themselves documented the years they worked on each. In the back-left corner of a sunbonnet quilt, in a hard-to-read red thread over blue, white, and red flowers, are the words “Made by Georgia and Essa Smith 1938-1979”. Another quilt made by the sisters, featuring 25 stunningly hand-embroidered flower panels, reads “Made by Georgia & Essa Smith”/”Started 1930”/”Finished 1979”. Sometimes hand-stitched records like this are all we have to tell us who, what, when, and where regarding the quilts and other textiles in our collection.

Still, many things can be learned based simply on the patterns chosen, the cloth utilized, and the pictures, shapes, and stiches used to create each quilt. Quilts can be used to document communities, like one quilt in our collection showing the “5 Points Neighborhood” which existed on an intersection with five points that no longer exists. Their matching patches document the shape of the streets and show the creativity of each group who created them. Quilting can be an individual or a community activity and either way gives a unique glimpse into moments and times throughout east King County’s history. To see more patterns and learn about the history of quilts, download our new Basic Quilt Coloring Book and look out for more information on our quilt collection.

Photo (above): Quilt showing the use of printed bags from milling companies as backing for a crazy quilt.

Anna Clise and the Seattle Children's Hospital

Quilts of the Eastside