Sarah Ball and son Frank

While the Hinman brothers had been busy developing the town of Clinton, another settler had been equally busy establishing a home and an exceptional farm about two miles inland overlooking Deer Lake. The unusual thing about this settler was that she was a woman...

Edward and Henry Hinman

John Phinney had established the first semblance of a town on his waterfront property on South Whidbey’s eastern shore but he soon had neighbors, the Hinman brothers of Michigan, who started a village on the beach about four miles north of Phinney.In 1872 Edward...

Arthur and John G. Phinney

About the same time that Joseph Brown was establishing a lighthouse, starting a family and dreaming dreams about founding a town on South Whidbey’s eastern coast, a San Francisco company also was dreaming large dreams about the same general area. In 1864 the firm of...

Joseph Brown

In 1859, the same year that Thomas Johns unceremoniously left the British navy to become a solid citizen on the western shore of South Whidbey, a nineteen year old Portuguese seaman, Joseph Brown, took similar impromptu leave of his ship on South Whidbey’s...

Luther Moore and Michael Lyons

A man named Luther Moore appeared on the South Whidbey scene in 1863 in what is now the Maxwelton area and, for a time, it seemed as if the southwestern shore of Useless Bay would experience the same kind of development that was beginning to occur on the western shore...