This is the 1953 Seattle Times special section cover that included an image of Beverly (Jensen) Judson.
Beverly Judson holds the laminated cover featuring her holding the flag.
Nearly 65 years ago, the Centralia school superintendent’s secretary unexpectedly called freshman Beverly Jensen from her class.
“I’m going, ‘Oh, geez, I must have really messed up,’” recalled Beverly (Jensen) Judson, 79, Centralia.
It turned out photographer Roy Scully from The Seattle Times simply wanted to take her photo holding the Washington state flag.
When he learned the photographers sought a descendant of local pioneers, Chehalis City Commissioner Robert Gandy checked with city hall, where the young girl’s aunt worked. She recommended they photograph Jensen, the great-great-granddaughter of Schuyler and Eliza Saunders, who homesteaded where Chehalis now sits.
Fortunately, Beverly had just changed back into her clothes after physical education class.
The occasion marked the centennial celebration of Washington’s designation as a territory separate from Oregon, which occurred March 2, 1853. The special centennial Color Rotogravure Pictorial Section, with Beverly Jensen’s photo on the cover, was published May 17, 1953. A headline across the top blared “Yes, We Have a State Flag!”
In fact, Washington didn’t adopt an official state flag until 1923, more than three decades after becoming a state in 1889. However, until then, many cities and towns had flown a military flag with George Washington’s profile in gold on blue bunting, according to the Secretary of State’s office. Another version featured a gold state seal on a purple or green background.
The Legislature approved the design saying the state flag “shall be of dark green silk or bunting, bearing in its center a reproduction of the seal of the state of Washington,” and stipulated two years later that the fringe, if used, should be gold.
Olympia jeweler Charles Talcott designed the state seal in 1889 using an ink bottle and silver dollar to draw the rings of the seal and a postage stamp in the center for the picture of George Washington. His brother L. Grant Talcott wrote the words, “The Seal of the State of Washington 1889” while another brother, G.N. Talcott, cut the printing dye, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
On the cover of the Times’ centennial special section, the caption stated that “Washingtonians are becoming better acquainted with their state flag this year through its use in Territorial Centennial decorations. Beverly Jensen, of Centralia, great-granddaughter of S.S. Saunders, who staked a claim at Chehalis in 1852, holds one of the banners.” Jensen is actually the great-great-granddaughter of Schuyler and Eliza (Tynan) Saunders, who settled in Lewis County in 1851.
Eliza, an Irish immigrant who landed in New York with her sister, Julia, in about 1845, traveled around Cape Horn in 1850 and waited tables at Fort Vancouver, where she met Schuyler Stuart Saunders, a New York native and well-educated farmer whose wife and two daughters left him to follow Joseph Smith Jr. He followed them west but never found them, mined for gold in California, and traveled to the Northwest. He and Eliza married in 1851 and homesteaded 639 acres on what later became known as Saunders Bottom.
They had four sons — James, William, Alfred and Joseph, who was Beverly’s great-grandfather— and a daughter, Mary, who died young.
Judson recalls her great-grandfather Joseph as a thin little wiry character who spoke in short clipped words and, for his 90th birthday, flew in a small airplane.
When he died Jan. 28, 1952, at 92, Joseph Saunders was the city’s oldest native son, having been born in April 1859 on the homestead near where the old Chehalis High School sat.
He had been a farmer, livery stable operator and saloonkeeper. He and his wife, Sarah, who died in 1932, had four daughters — Ethel, Lotty, Gladys, and Madeline, who married James Alfred Jensen. His parents, Hans and Kirstin Jensen, had emigrated from Denmark and homesteaded in 1890 at the corner of North Fork and Centralia Alpha roads.
Madeline and Alfred Jensen’s children included Kenneth, Beverly’s father, who worked 33 years for Burlington Northern as a brakeman. He and his two sisters seldom spoke of their connection to the pioneer Saunders family after kids at school ridiculed them, she said. So Beverly seldom mentioned her historic family roots either.
Beverly and her husband, Bob Judson, who is descended from the French family that settled near Grand Mound, were both born in the basement of Dr. Sweet’s hospital on First Street in Centralia, a big brick building across from Edison Elementary School. They met at Centralia High School, where he graduated in 1955 and she in 1956. They married in 1957 and raised three children — Ed, Roberta Jo and Pam. Bob, like his father before him, worked 40 years for The Chronicle. Beverly drove a Centralia school bus for 28 years. Bob passed away June 26, 2014. She has five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Bob and Beverly both served on the Lewis County Historical Museum board, proud of their links to pioneers who settled Southwest Washington.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com. He column appears in The Chronicle each Tuesday.
