Jones photo collection is treasure trove of Harbor history
STORY BY RICK ANDERSON
PHOTOS COURTESY OF JONES PHOTO HISTROICA L COLLECTION
PHOTOS COURTESY OF JONES PHOTO HISTROICA L COLLECTION
For a pictorial view of 20th century Grays Harbor, area residents need not buy a book. Nor are they required to visit a museum or sift through microfilm at a library.
More than 8,000 photos depicting the Harbor’s historic past have been assembled into the Jones Photo Historic Collection. The digitized collection can be viewed free of charge online at the website www.jonesphotocollection.com.
“What a marvelous resource,” said John Larson, the director of Hoquiam’s Polson Museum. “It’s just a treasure-trove of local history.”
Now owned and administered by the Anderson & Middleton Co., the collection represents the work of the Jones family — four generations of commercial photographers who operated studios in Aberdeen for some 90 years.
William Lloyd Jones, an immigrant from Wales and a former seaman, started the business in Silverton, Oregon, in the 1880s. He and his son, Bliss, moved to Grays Harbor in 1913, and owned separate studios in Aberdeen and Hoquiam for more than a decade before financial constraints forced by the Great Depression necessitated consolidation into a single Aberdeen operation.
Bill D. Jones, Bliss’s son, began working for the company as a delivery boy at the age of 11 in 1933. He then teamed with his father as a photographer until eventually taking over the studio, which was a fixture in downtown Aberdeen before ultimately relocating to Simpson Avenue in Aberdeen.
More than 8,000 photos depicting the Harbor’s historic past have been assembled into the Jones Photo Historic Collection. The digitized collection can be viewed free of charge online at the website www.jonesphotocollection.com.
“What a marvelous resource,” said John Larson, the director of Hoquiam’s Polson Museum. “It’s just a treasure-trove of local history.”
Now owned and administered by the Anderson & Middleton Co., the collection represents the work of the Jones family — four generations of commercial photographers who operated studios in Aberdeen for some 90 years.
William Lloyd Jones, an immigrant from Wales and a former seaman, started the business in Silverton, Oregon, in the 1880s. He and his son, Bliss, moved to Grays Harbor in 1913, and owned separate studios in Aberdeen and Hoquiam for more than a decade before financial constraints forced by the Great Depression necessitated consolidation into a single Aberdeen operation.
Bill D. Jones, Bliss’s son, began working for the company as a delivery boy at the age of 11 in 1933. He then teamed with his father as a photographer until eventually taking over the studio, which was a fixture in downtown Aberdeen before ultimately relocating to Simpson Avenue in Aberdeen.
“Father and son were meticulous craftsmen working with bulky large-format cameras to record all manner of events — from ship launchings to pioneer picnics, auto collisions and river scenes, not to mention the weddings, engagements and graduation photos that were the bread and butter of photo studio revenue,” former Daily World editor/publisher and recently retired Washington State historian John Hughes said.
The Joneses were assuredly not your garden-variety commercial photographers. They were hired by most of the timber companies that dominated the Grays Harbor landscape for much of the 20th century to provide photos of logging operations and were also the official photographers of several law enforcement agencies.
“They took photos out in the woods, for Anderson & Middleton, Lamb-Grays Harbor, ITT Rayonier, Weyerhaeuser,” related Paul Jones, Bill’s son, who now lives in Montana.
“He did have the studio, but he was also the (Aberdeen) police photographer,” Bill’s daughter Barb Caskey, an Aberdeen resident, said of her father. “He had a badge and everything. He was on call all through the night.”
The family’s various duties provide unusual breadth to the photo collection, which is stocked liberally with environmental, slice-of-life pieces of art.
“This collection includes more than just the old logging photos, though there are plenty of them,” said Terri Middleton of Olympia, who manages the collection. “It also includes shops, festivals, schools, churches and community events.”
Preserving a historical record of Grays Harbor became a particular passion of Bill Jones, who became an original member of Aberdeen’s Museum Board.
Although a soft-spoken man with a wry sense of humor under normal circumstances, the lanky Jones could become effusive while discussing Aberdeen history.
“I just spent three hours with Bill Jones and we only got through the (World War II) years,” former Daily World writer Dee Anne Hauso Shaw wrote in an article announcing Jones's selection as the newspaper’s Citizen of the Year for 1996.
“When I was in junior high, he put together a slide show, a history of Aberdeen as he knew it,” Paul Jones recalled. “He was really proud of Aberdeen’s history and he wanted to share it.”
Jones would frequently sell historical photos to the Daily World and other publications, but hardly became rich in the process.
“Twenty-five bucks a photo and sometimes he’d throw in a freebie,” Hughes remembered. Another son, Greg, took over the studio operation upon his dad’s retirement. But Greg’s premature death in 2003 (Bill Jones died in 2010) resulted in the closure of the business and clouded the future of the collection that Bill had meticulously assembled.
That’s when Anderson & Middleton, the family-owned Hoquiam-based timber company that was one of Jones’ clients, figuratively entered the picture. Company executives (and cousins) Jim and Rick Middleton approached Bill Jones and convinced him to sell the collection.
“We didn’t buy it as a profit-making operation, but as a community service,” current CEO Rick Middleton explained. “The goal was to get it online, where somebody could access it.”
“The bottom line was that Jim Middleton so loved Harbor history that he wasn’t going to let the Jones collection be sold off piecemeal or otherwise leave the Harbor,” Hughes asserted. “I remember that vividly from my own conversations with him.”
Jim Middleton, who died in 2009, was a somewhat improbable advocate of turning the collection into a digitized online service.
“He was a big proponent of it,” Rick Middleton said of his cousin. “It’s ironic, because he didn’t use e-mail and he wasn’t online. But he wanted it online so people could access it. Jim did not want it where the only people who could access it were academics.”
The Middletons hired Howard Giske, the respected photo archivist for Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry, to oversee the team that assembled and digitized the collection. The online operation began in 2006.
According to Terri Middleton (Jim’s daughter), the collection currently contains some 8,500 photos — spanning the period from the 1890s through the 1980s. It includes some of William Lloyd Jones’ early work in Oregon and a large assortment of Olympic Peninsula aerial photos taken by legendary California-based photographer Stan Spiegel.
By following instructions included on the website, specific photos may be ordered for varying fees. But the price is truly right for those wishing to use the photos to illustrate a school project or a non-profit historical enterprise.
“Licensing is usually free, since most uses are not for profit,” Terri Middleton said. “We have charged a fee when the photos are used for books that are meant for commercial sale for profit. There is a licensing agreement to be signed that specifically (details) what use is permitted.”
The cultural benefit of the Jones Photo Historic Collection is impossible to measure.
“The fact that it is a free resource makes it incredibly valuable,” John Larson said.
“I couldn’t put a value on it,” Grays Harbor Port Commissioner and Harbor historian Tom Quigg added. “It can’t be replaced.”
The Joneses were assuredly not your garden-variety commercial photographers. They were hired by most of the timber companies that dominated the Grays Harbor landscape for much of the 20th century to provide photos of logging operations and were also the official photographers of several law enforcement agencies.
“They took photos out in the woods, for Anderson & Middleton, Lamb-Grays Harbor, ITT Rayonier, Weyerhaeuser,” related Paul Jones, Bill’s son, who now lives in Montana.
“He did have the studio, but he was also the (Aberdeen) police photographer,” Bill’s daughter Barb Caskey, an Aberdeen resident, said of her father. “He had a badge and everything. He was on call all through the night.”
The family’s various duties provide unusual breadth to the photo collection, which is stocked liberally with environmental, slice-of-life pieces of art.
“This collection includes more than just the old logging photos, though there are plenty of them,” said Terri Middleton of Olympia, who manages the collection. “It also includes shops, festivals, schools, churches and community events.”
Preserving a historical record of Grays Harbor became a particular passion of Bill Jones, who became an original member of Aberdeen’s Museum Board.
Although a soft-spoken man with a wry sense of humor under normal circumstances, the lanky Jones could become effusive while discussing Aberdeen history.
“I just spent three hours with Bill Jones and we only got through the (World War II) years,” former Daily World writer Dee Anne Hauso Shaw wrote in an article announcing Jones's selection as the newspaper’s Citizen of the Year for 1996.
“When I was in junior high, he put together a slide show, a history of Aberdeen as he knew it,” Paul Jones recalled. “He was really proud of Aberdeen’s history and he wanted to share it.”
Jones would frequently sell historical photos to the Daily World and other publications, but hardly became rich in the process.
“Twenty-five bucks a photo and sometimes he’d throw in a freebie,” Hughes remembered. Another son, Greg, took over the studio operation upon his dad’s retirement. But Greg’s premature death in 2003 (Bill Jones died in 2010) resulted in the closure of the business and clouded the future of the collection that Bill had meticulously assembled.
That’s when Anderson & Middleton, the family-owned Hoquiam-based timber company that was one of Jones’ clients, figuratively entered the picture. Company executives (and cousins) Jim and Rick Middleton approached Bill Jones and convinced him to sell the collection.
“We didn’t buy it as a profit-making operation, but as a community service,” current CEO Rick Middleton explained. “The goal was to get it online, where somebody could access it.”
“The bottom line was that Jim Middleton so loved Harbor history that he wasn’t going to let the Jones collection be sold off piecemeal or otherwise leave the Harbor,” Hughes asserted. “I remember that vividly from my own conversations with him.”
Jim Middleton, who died in 2009, was a somewhat improbable advocate of turning the collection into a digitized online service.
“He was a big proponent of it,” Rick Middleton said of his cousin. “It’s ironic, because he didn’t use e-mail and he wasn’t online. But he wanted it online so people could access it. Jim did not want it where the only people who could access it were academics.”
The Middletons hired Howard Giske, the respected photo archivist for Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry, to oversee the team that assembled and digitized the collection. The online operation began in 2006.
According to Terri Middleton (Jim’s daughter), the collection currently contains some 8,500 photos — spanning the period from the 1890s through the 1980s. It includes some of William Lloyd Jones’ early work in Oregon and a large assortment of Olympic Peninsula aerial photos taken by legendary California-based photographer Stan Spiegel.
By following instructions included on the website, specific photos may be ordered for varying fees. But the price is truly right for those wishing to use the photos to illustrate a school project or a non-profit historical enterprise.
“Licensing is usually free, since most uses are not for profit,” Terri Middleton said. “We have charged a fee when the photos are used for books that are meant for commercial sale for profit. There is a licensing agreement to be signed that specifically (details) what use is permitted.”
The cultural benefit of the Jones Photo Historic Collection is impossible to measure.
“The fact that it is a free resource makes it incredibly valuable,” John Larson said.
“I couldn’t put a value on it,” Grays Harbor Port Commissioner and Harbor historian Tom Quigg added. “It can’t be replaced.”
