Collection is open for research.
Donated to the Whitman College and Northwest Archives by Bob Schwerin in August 2005. The accession number is 2005-012.
Etta Studley Schwerin was born in 1883 to George E. Studley and Anna Barbara Neuenschwander Studley. One of four children, she spent her childhood in several communities in Washington state, including Olympia, Oaksdale, and Bossburg. After her mother's death, she and her siblings lived with their grandparents in Olympia. Her father died shortly thereafter, and the children scattered, living with various relatives until they reached adulthood.
Etta Studley Schwerin moved to Nebraska with her Aunt Cora when she was fourteen. She attended normal school in Nebraska and taught two terms there. She then taught three terms in Ritzville, Washington, where she met and married her husband, C. A. (Charlie) Schwerin. Etta Studley Schwerin died in 1987.
Elizabeth E. Peiffer Kelly was born in 1877 in a Kansas dugout. In December 1888, her father decided to move the family to Washington Territory by train. The family settled in Dixie, Washington, where her father worked as an agricultural laborer. She married L. C. Kelly in December 1896 and together they had a son and a daughter. They farmed in Dixie their entire married lives, except for a brief stay in Sunnyside, Washington from 1911 to 1913. L.C. died in 1942.
The collection consists of writings and photographs from two apparently unrelated families. Etta Studley Schwerin's writings include her childhood memoirs, genealogical information about her siblings, and a Neuenschwander family tree. Elizabeth E. Peiffer Kelly's writings describe her childhood in Kansas and young adulthood in Washington, her experiences as a farm wife and mother, and a brief history of Dixie, Washington. Researchers should note that the writings are photocopies of original documents. The photographs depict turn of the century homesteads in Western Washington, members of the C.A. and Etta Schwerin family, and agricultural equipment and processes of early twentieth century wheat farming.