Archives West Finding Aid

Records of positions held, promotions, disciplines taken, civil service investigations, and extracurricular activities on behalf of the Fire Department. The records provide glimpses into the employees’ personal lives, especially in the 1910s and 1920s, as the files include explanations for tardiness, communications with debtors, and reasons for resignations. Excuses for tardiness include waiting 35 minutes for a street car, mother did not wake him up, or slipping on car rail and straining back while about to board the car to come to work. One employee was written up in 1905, in part, for wearing the same clothes around the station as he wore cleaning the stables and “the men do not like to sleep in the same room with him.” Some of the employees performed in musical groups for the Department, sometimes at no charge and other times at events organized to raise funds for the Fire Department. The Department had a band and an orchestra at various times; the band performed at the Seattle Day and Washington State Day ceremonies at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915. The personnel files cover employees who worked less than a year to those who worked more than 50 years. Women began working in the department as clerical workers in larger numbers in the late 1950s. Most worked for a years or less; the files record their reasons for leaving which include pregnancy, to attend school, health, or “to seek more suitable employment.” An excellent source for genealogy, the Personnel Records contain information about how the Department functioned as well as insight into the lives of the employees in the Department.