Bigelow House Museum

Olympia's oldest surviving residence, built in 1854 by the 'Father of Washington Territory' who hauled his Harvard law books and walnut desk across the Oregon Trail. Susan B. Anthony dined here in 1871; the chair she sat in is still in the parlor, and museum staff closing up at night see a distinguished gentleman in period attire methodically inspecting the displays before vanishing.

Susan B. Anthony wrote in her diary on October 18, 1871: "Dine at Judge Bigelow's, his wife splendid." She was in Olympia to become the first woman to address the Washington Territorial Legislature. The next day, she spoke to a packed chamber. Daniel Bigelow himself had introduced the bill allowing women to vote. The armchair she sat in is still in the Bigelow House Museum parlor. So, staff believe, is Daniel.

The house is the oldest surviving residence in Olympia, built in 1854 by Daniel Richardson Bigelow and his wife Ann Elizabeth White. Bigelow was born in 1824 in Ellisburg, New York, graduated from Union College in 1846, studied law at Harvard, and crossed the Oregon Trail in 1851 with his law books and a massive walnut desk loaded onto the covered wagon. After deciding Portland already had enough lawyers, he sailed north on the schooner Exact to the new settlement at Olympia and filed a land claim on 160 acres east of town near an artesian spring overlooking Budd Inlet on Puget Sound.

His July 4, 1852 speech helped galvanize the movement to separate Washington Territory from Oregon. He drew up the territorial constitution at that same walnut desk he'd hauled across the continent. Locals called him "Father of Washington Territory."

The two-story Carpenter Gothic house was built on a foundation of whole cedar logs charred to sixteen to eighteen inches in diameter, a technique borrowed from Northwest Native peoples who used fire-hardened wood for canoe construction. Daniel and Ann Elizabeth raised eight children here. Ruth, born in the house in 1860, lived there for her entire 90 years until her death in 1950. She knew no other address. Evaline lived to 102. Three generations of Bigelows occupied the house continuously from the 1850s until 2005, when the final descendants departed and it opened as a museum, still furnished almost entirely with original family belongings.

Daniel died on September 15, 1905, at 81, the last surviving member of Washington's first territorial legislature. Ann Elizabeth, who managed the family's extensive land holdings, lived until 1926. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

The ghost story is modest compared to some of Washington's other haunted sites, but it has a specific quality that makes it worth paying attention to. Museum staff closing the building at night describe a distinguished gentleman in period attire who appears to be scrutinizing the displays with intense concentration. He examines artifacts methodically, moving from case to case as if inspecting whether each item has been properly preserved. The moment anyone approaches, he vanishes. Visitors touring the museum have heard footsteps in rooms confirmed to be empty.

The consensus is that it's Daniel. The Harvard-educated lawyer who spent over fifty years in the house, whose desk, books, and personal effects fill its rooms, still checking on things. Given that the same family was born, lived, and died within these walls for over 150 years, the attachment makes a certain kind of sense.

The Bigelow House Museum is open for guided tours through the Olympia Historical Society. The Library of Congress holds detailed HABS documentation of the house. The walnut desk Daniel hauled across the Oregon Trail in 1851 is right where he left it.