Grace Seminary Artifacts, Found During Excavation, Unveiled

An intimate gathering of community stakeholders attended Tuesday night’s grand opening of the Grace Seminary Exhibit at the Lewis County Historical Museum in Chehalis, where the museum celebrated the discovery of recently unearthed artifacts from the turn of the 19th Century. 

Corinne Barker, an environmental specialist from the Washington Military Department, introduced the audience to a host of contributors who all played a role in making the new glass-cased arrangement of relics at the local museum a reality. 

The artifacts, records and collection of memories, she recounted, were the result of a 2017 excavation that saw military personnel accidentally stumble upon the buried antique pieces at the Army National Guard Armory on Seminary Hill in Centralia. 

The unearthing of those items, she said, prompted archaeologists from the Willamette Cultural Resource Associates to conduct field work to study the fragmented artifacts in greater detail. 

What they found underneath the parking facility were several catalogs, booklets, old bottles and glass fragments that were once housed in the Centralia’s Grace Seminary, a towering three-story structure that once served as a school from 1890-1905, and in Centralia General Hospital that served the community from 1905-1919. 

Among the several archaeologists who analyzed the site, located at 1720 Gold St., was Burke Museum of Natural History’s Archaeology Collections Manager Laura Phillips, who characterized the undertaking as the kind of project where science opens the door to a city’s uncharted past. 

“We get very myopically focused on our projects and it’s easy to forget how important they are for our community. Really, the reason why we do archeology is to help us understand the past and look at the past to understand the future,” noted Phillips, who’s been with the Seattle-based Burke Museum for 25 years. 

She publicly thanked graduate assistant Courtney Sprague from the University of Washington — who was also in attendance — for her efforts in ensuring the safety and presentation of the historical objects.

After brief commentary from Lewis County Historical Museum Executive Director Jason Mattson and Barker’s chronological rundown of how the Seminary Hill property was used over the years, Brian Mittge took the podium to thank the state Military Department reps for their work in facilitating the intensive archival work that went into gathering data on the showcased archives. 

Mittge — president of the The Friends of the Seminary Hill Natural Area — filled in listeners on a recently published book about Centralia’s founding father, George Washington and how he and his wife, Mary donated money to the seminary in the late 1800s after they sold the land it was built on for $1. 

“The thing that came to my mind is how history can help us understand ourselves, the present and the future. When you look at this site, we can go back to the very founding of Centralia. It’s deep roots of education and pioneers who wanted to build a place of culture, a high place of culture up on the hill with this beautiful building,” he said. 

For more information, go to www.lewiscountymuseum.org.