This collection consists of records of the Dusty B.B. Club (Busy Bees), an association of rural women in Whitman County, Washington. It includes minute books, treasurer records, and scrapbooks. Note: the scrapbooks, referred to by the club as albums, are labeled with date ranges. This represents the years during which the albums were created, and not the dates of the contents, which are sometimes considerably earlier.
Preliminary inventory:
Box 1. Scrapbooks: Album A (50th anniversary album covering club history, 1927-1977); Album B, 1957-1961.
Box 2. Scrapbooks: Album C, 1956-1971; Album D, 1973-1977; Album E, 1980-1987.
Box 3. Scrapbooks: Album F, 1987-1993; Album G, 1993-1997.
Box 4. Scrapbook: Album H, 1997-2001.
Box 5. Scrapbook: Album I, 2001-2005.
Box 6. Treasurer's report 1949-1990 (8 volumes); constitution and by-laws, circa 1970-1996 (note: earlier versions of these governance documents are included in scrapbooks and minute books).
Box 7. Minute books (4 volumes), 1927-1943, 1944-1952, 1952-1962, 1962-1991; folder with a copy of a 1997 club history.
Prior to the collection's acquisition by Washington State University, selections from were digitized by the Whitman County (WA) Library and made available online as part of the Washington Rural Heritage digital collection.
The Dusty B.B. Club (Busy Bees) was organized in 1927 in Whitman County, Washington, as a social and service club for rural women. During the club's long history, members have met regularly for conversation, needlework, including quiltmaking, war relief activities, and other projects. Until approximately 1945, club meetings were held in members' homes. In 1945 the club began using an old schoolhouse, the Jones School in Dusty, WA, as their meeting place, and they continued to meet there until 1998. Though independent for most of its existence, the club was briefly affiliated with the Farm Bureau Women's Club (1930s) and the Washington Northeastern District Federation of Women's Clubs (1940s).
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright restrictions may apply.
This is an unprocessed collection. Any arrangement reflects either a pre-existing order from the records' creators or previous custodians, or preliminary sorting performed by staff.
Sandy Passmore of Endicott, WA donated this collection to the Washington State University Libraries on behalf of the Dusty B.B. Club (Busy Bees) in 2018 (MS.2018.11).