Gustafson Homestead History
Page 6 From THE KITSAP HISTORIAN
use your scroll bar to see all of the picture. Ber's comments are in
parenthesis. Berry and Irina Ball
are the present owners of this homestead. Ber's update of what has happened to
the place since
1943 is included below also.
(The house almost still looks the same as in this picture except what you see as
front porch was
made into part of the living room during the second remodel in the 1980's as the
porch faces south
and was too hot in the afternoons to be usable. The upstairs window is now a 4'
x 4' added on as part of the master bedroom remodel where the two small bedrooms
upstairs were made into one large one.
The small fruit trees you see in the pic are now very large and the fir trees in
the background are now just humungous. The barn in the background doesn't exist
today as it was replaced by a much larger barn a little more than 100' away from
the house, probably in the 1890's. Maybe it burned down, I don't know, but the
garage that is there today has the roof north to south, not east-west as in this
picture. But it's just as old and has about seen it's better day and needs
replacing. In the background where Mrs. Gustafson is sitting on the buggy can be
seen the bunkhouse that is still there today where their daughter was raised.
Kitsap Pioneers: The Gustafson
Family by Claudia Hunt
Photo: KCHS Archives, Gift of Norma Gustafson Card
Clais and Augusta Gustafson at their homestead in Silverdale,
circa 1902 -1904.
Gustafson Road in Silverdale is
named for the Swedish pioneer family that
settled there in
the late 1800s. The following history is
compiled from information graciously provided
to
the Kitsap County Historical Society by Norma
Card, granddaughter of those pioneers.
Kitsap County homesteader Clais Wilhelm
Gustafson was born in Sweden in
1864. At
the age of 23, he emigrated to St.
Paul, Minnesota, but soon moved to Seattle
to escape
a typhoid epidemic. On March 1,
1894, renouncing allegiance to all
foreign sovereignties,
and particularly to the King of
Sweden and Norway, he became a
citizen of the US.
Meanwhile, Linda Johnson,
born in Sweden the same year as
Clais, crossed the Atlantic in
1882 and landed in Sioux City,
Iowa, where she most likely worked as
a seamstress. She
found her way to Seattle and met
Clais at the Swedish Tabernacle,
later known as the
Swedish Mission Covenant Church,
where they were both charter
members. They were
married on August 29, 1895. (probably 1885??). The couple crossed
Puget Sound to
Kitsap County in November 1889 and
homesteaded two and one-half miles
north of Silverdale
near the Clear Creek valley, where
a road in the area still bears the
Gustafson family name.
(During the first remodel of the home, we found a poster on the inside
wall behind the wall
paper, dated 1889. We still have that poster mounted on a board)
A parcel of the Trident Submarine Missile Base
is located on the former family homestead.
Until he finished building their home,
Clais (“C.W.”) slept in trees on his homestead,
fearing
the many bears in the valley. Their
first home was made of logs, which
Clais later finished
with lumber inside and out. (The
main part of the house is still vertical logs like a fort, with
siding on one side, insulation stuffed in the empty spaces and sheetrock now on
the inside).
He would row to Waterman in Port
Orchard to obtain bricks for the
chimney, then row back,
load the bricks into a wheelbarrow,
and tote them home. (The old bricks
from the original
chimney were cleaned and reused in the new fireplaces and chimney that was part
of the
1974 remodel where a full basement was put under the house instead of the house
sitting
on stumps and rocks).
Although there was an 18-foot well on
the property that never went dry (this was filled in
many years ago) , the Gustafsons
added a 40-acre parcel to the original
160-acre homestead
in order to have access to a creek.
When a neighbor sadly was unable to
stand the loneliness
and ended his life, Clais purchased his 40 acres
for $165.
(More on the water situation)
The creek mentioned is one of the two
forks of the west fork of Clear Creek. The other portion
of the west fork comes out of Bangor Trident Submarine Base and crosses under
Trigger avenue
a few hundred feet from where Old Frontier road now ends. This creek runs under
Old Frontier
Road at the Trigger Avenue entrance. Clais
built a small concrete dam on this small creek, about
three feet deep is all, to supply a wooden pipe that fed a Ram pump which pumped
water by
mechanical means up a long hill and into a water tank in a tower located about
15' above ground
near the barn. When I was 13 to 15 years old I used to play in this small pond
and cleaned all the
silt out of it and tried to raise trout in it but wasn't too successful as silt
kept coming into the pond
and filling it up. I found two 30" in diameter by 36" high concrete
cylinders in a well near the dam.
He dug another two cylinder well closer to the bottom of the long hill just
before it started climbing.
I used my tripod and engine hoist to remove one of the cylinders from the well
near the pond
and installed it in the two cylinder well closer to the long hill. Digging out
the bottom to sink the
cylinders was very difficult as water percolated into the bottom sands very
rapidly. For many
years, from 1951 when dad purchased the place for $6000 up until 1968 when I
took over, we
used a pump from this 3 cylinder well (used to be two cylinders at that time)
and pumped water
up into the tower and wooden storage tank near the barn. But it started leaking
and the timbers
supporting the tank were rotting so I dug out a place for a 1000 gal concrete
storage tank on the
east side of the barn. You could buy dynamite back then and I used quarter
sticks purchased
from Mr. Howerton at the Howerton dump which is now a soccer field on Dickey Rd.
We pumped
water from the three cylinder well into that storage tank using a float and
switch setup which
started and turned off the pump in the three cylinder well, and then used
another pump and
pressure tank set up to pressurize water to the house. That 1000 gal concrete
tank still exists
inside the wellhouse next to the barn but is no longer used.
In the 70's when Bangor Trident Submarine Base was going in, they put in a storm
run off facility
this side of Trigger Avenue across the fence and close to where our three
cylinder well was.
They put drainage pumps in and drained the water away. We no longer had water.
After litigation
and a couple years of hauling us water Bangor finally paid for a 90' drilled
well which produces
25+ gpm and I swear is the best tasting water in Kitsap County and it comes from
the largest
aquifer in the county which is the Bangor aquifer, which is where the creek and
lower well came
from also I believe. The present well has two large pressure tanks inside
the small wellhouse
along with the 1000 gal cistern which is now not used, and a 1 1/2" line to
the house to feed
the fire sprinkler system in the house. The house is now sprinklered.
Two Gustafson children
died at birth, but two daughters
grew to adulthood. Helen Elvera was
born in 1897, and Agnes Victoria in
1899. Clais had to row from
Silverdale to Port Orchard to
get the doctor when the children
were born. Agnes’s birth
was difficult. Clais could only
locate
a veterinarian to provide assistance, and
Agnes was developmentally disabled.
Helen attended
Clear Creek School (now the Clear
Creek Community Center) from 1904
to 1912. After her
mother died on December 29, 1904,
she helped at home and took care of
her sister, even taking
her to school with her, until Agnes died
in 1924. For a time the family had a
housekeeper named
“Tillie,” who may have set her
eye on the widower Clais. When
Tillie returned to Sweden for
medical care, she was requested not to return.
In 1919 Clais married
Augusta Anderson, another Swedish
immigrant and friend from the
Mission Covenant Church in Seattle.
Augusta had attended a Bible
Institute in Minnesota in
preparation for the foreign
missionary field until her study
was interrupted when she was
needed in Sweden to care for her aged mother.
As a stepmother to Clais’s girls, she
was
not as frightening as “Tillie,” but she
was harsh. Augusta loved beautiful clothes
and was
also deeply religious. When she
discovered moth damage in her
treasured wardrobe she felt
the Lord had sent the moths to
punish her for vanity.
Clais and Augusta farmed
until 1943, when they sold their
homestead to a family named Burns,
and moved to Ebenezer Home in
Poulsbo, now known as Martha and
Mary. Clais died in 1946
and Augusta a year later. Helen was
deeded a small piece of land, which
she eventually sold. She
was dismayed to find out it became
the home of Whispering Firs, a
nudist camp, which was said
to still be in existence in 1967-68. (I can confirm that as it was still in
existence when I went to
high school at Central Kitsap High School in the early sixties and even after I
married my first
wife which was in 1968. She used to sneak her family members visiting through
the back woods
to spy on the nudists).
Helen died in 1979. Her
daughter, Norma, resides in
Silverdale. I have spoken with Norma.
The original family homestead continues to be a residence on Gustafson
Road. All of the
barn structure remains as well, evocative
of the Swedish pioneers who cleared
the land and
made a life there.
Further history by Berry Ball, current owner.
After Burns bought the place from Gustafson in 1943, they sold it to a family
named Peoples
(maybe Peebles?) in 1949. Peebles sold it to my father William Berry Ball
in 1951 for $6000.
The property was 57 acres at that time. We raised chickens, ducks, geese,
pheasants, beef and
dairy cows on the place. Dad was a retired Navy chief and worked at Puget Sound
Naval Shipyard
as a shipkeeper on the old world war II ships.
William Ball passed away from colon cancer in 1962, the same year I graduated
from high school,
and Agnes Ball, his wife sold off 15 acres on the east side and 5
acres on the west side and bought a place in Bremerton at 114 South Wycoff Ave as
the farm was pretty run down by then and needed lots of repairs, including
scotch broom removal. Just before she passed away in 1968 of emphysema
from smoking all her life and the prednazone the doctors gave her which caused a
heart attack, she quit
claim deeded the property to her daugher Kristina Cullefer (Ball) and her
son Berry Ball by splitting it down the middle with Kristina receiving the west 660'
feet (16.4 acres) and Berry receiving the east 660' (19.2 acres) as the Bangor
fence angles on the north end, with the house and buildings on it being on the east half.
Each got a house as Kristina received the house in Bremerton as well as the land on the farm.
In 1968, Berry married a woman named Pauline Elaine Walker from Hartline in
eastern WA and
they had two sons, William Berry Ball and Benjamin Clayton Ball. In 1974 , when
Bill was born,
the first of three major remodels took place which included a full 1000 sq ft
basement put under
the house , two fireplaces and a third chimney for a woodstove in the upstairs
bedroom, new
cedar shake roof and new septic system. A larger drainfield was added to
the septic system
about 20 years later. The basement includes two 10' x 14' bedrooms, a one end
open woodburning masonry fireplace, a large rec room area with no posts, and a
full small bathroom on the north end.
Berry and Pauline divorced in 1979.
Somewhere in that time frame a 30' x 50' warehouse/shop was constructed
behind the barn and
over the ensuing years three extensions to that were made so there is lots of
covered storage
space as well as overhangs to put equipment and vehicles under.
The second/third remodels occurred in the 80's and included adding the 7' of front
porch into the living
room to have a nice big living room, make the stairway to the upstairs open
instead of behind a wall,
and to remodel the upstairs so instead of two small bedrooms it become one large
master bedroom complete with two sliding door mirror closets and a
toilet and sink on the opposite end of where
the bed is. The upstairs window on the south end was also enlarged to a 4' x 4'
to be able to get
furniture in and out of the bedroom. A large blower fan was installed in the
peak to draw air from
opening the window on the north end near the sink to cool the room on hot summer
nights.
Berry started a heating business in 1977 and outgrew the small 10' x 24' cabin
they kept
Agnes Gustafson in which was his first retail store and a 30' x 22' two
story retail stove shop
was constructed out of rough cut lumber. In the mid 80's a larger office space
became necessary
and the next remodel of the house included a 9' x 24' new office and a 9' x 24'
luxurious bathroom complete with elevated jacuzzi tub and separate corner shower
to appease wife #2, a lady named
Louanne Hayward. Berry and Louanne divorced in about 1991.
Then the new retail stoveshop became too small and a 30' x 15' two story
addition was added to
it on the south end so there was a gas stove section downstairs complete with
radiant heated
floor and a rec room upstairs for the kids. Bill and Ben, Ber's kids from
the first marriage, then
needed to go to college so the 10' x 24' cabin got a full remodel plus a 10' x
24' addition on the
west side so the kids had their own apartment facility complete with stove,
washer, dryer, eating
counter, refrigerator, sink, shower and toilet and the new addition contained
the bedroom and
study area. We called it the bunkhouse. Under the bunkhouse is a root cellar for
storing canned
goods and also contains two working freezers for putting a beef into. Both
Ben and Bill used
the bunkhouse when they went to Olympic college in Bremerton as well as the
kids Aleks and
Jana from Berry's third marriage in 1998 to a Russian beauty named
Irina Nicolaevna Yandukina
whom he met on the internet and had to fly to Russia twice to marry her
there. They are still married
as of 2019.
In 2001 Berry and Irina
closed down the heating business and moved to Mexico to retire. Ber
got tired of threading pipe, doing chimney relines, and installing hydronic
heating systems in the
rain. Retirement didn't really work out that way as they got involved in
the helping others thing,
constructing buildings for Indians and laying hands on the sick and watching
Jesus heal them.
In 2016 they moved to Davenport, WA and
found a just right place on the edge of town bordering
a 640 acre wheatfield for
privacy that came with 6 lots so are developing their own mini farm there.
The move was so they
could be close to Ber's first son Bill, now 42, who heads up the Davenport
School
district's transportation dept and help with the raising of his family.
Berry can be reached at berry@detailshere.com