Gleason and Scholes Family Papers, 1897-2004

Little biographical information is readily available for James Heap Scholes. According to the 1892 United States Census, he resided at that time in Tacoma, Washington, was 41 years of age, and was born in Massachusetts. He lived with his wife, Matilda, and his seven children, Marion, Rilla, Jessie, Stella, Nettie, Emma, and Harold. During the period represented by his papers in this collection (1897-1910), he was engaged in a variety of international business ventures.

Jay Mark Gleason (1881-1956) was a minister and Army Chaplain with the American Expeditionary Force in France before coming to Washington state as the pastor of the Ellensburg Presbyterian Church. He resigned his Ellensburg parish in 1921, and apparently tried ranching in the Yakima area for several years. A Yakima County district elected him to the State House of Representatives in 1932 and he served as a member of both the regular and special sessions of 1933. In early 1933, he became one of the thousands of Army reserve officers who were called to active duty to superintend the Civilian Conservation Corps. When the CCC became a permanent formation in late 1933, Gleason elected to remain at his job as district Chaplain for the Fort George Wright District, Spokane. He remained at that post until the liquidation of the CCC in 1942. Gleason died in 1956 in Edmonds, Washington. (From the guide to the Jay Mark Gleason Papers, Cage 26)

Jean Gleason Witt (Dorothy Jean Gleason Witt) (1921-2016) and Robert G. Gleason (1924-2014) were siblings, the children of Jay Mark Gleason and Emma (Scholes) Gleason. They both attended Washington State College. Jean studied taxonomic botany, earning her bachelor's degree in 1943. She met her future husband, Joseph Witt, at WSC. They married in 1945, and both earned master's degrees in botany after their marriage. At WSC, she worked with Professor Marion Ownbey. One of her major projects was working with the voluminous William Suksdorf herbarium, on the classifications Rosaceae through Umbelliferae (see her seminar paper outline in folder 25). After graduating from college, she became an expert on iris, and an accomplished iris hybridizer.

Robert G. Gleason served in the Quartermaster Corps of the U.S. Army during World War II, at various duty stations in the Pacific theater, including the Philippines. He married Elsa McMahon in 1948, and graduated from WSC in 1949. He went on to a career in transportation, working as a traffic manager and consultant in the Seattle area.