Pioneer spirit lives on in Sammamish cabin
August 8, 2008
By Phil Dougherty
Bengston Cabin is oldest standing pioneer structure in Sammamish
This week is the second portion of an article about the Bengston Cabin, the oldest extant pioneer structure in Sammamish.
Last week, The Bengstons, Swedes who met in Germany, made their way to the plateau and built the log cabin.
By Phil Dougherty
For many decades, an orchard of pear and apple trees thrived in front of the Bengston cabin (two of the pear trees still survive). And for many years, the cabin had a small, open lean-to in the back.
This lean-to, part of which is clearly visible in a 1940 picture of the cabin that accompanies this article, stretched along the entire back side of the cabin.
Johanna did much of her cooking on a small cookstove in the northern end of the lean-to during the summer months, as it was much cooler than cooking in the cabin. The lean-to was separated into two parts connected by a small door; Johanna used the southern part of the lean-to as a porch.
The Bengstons got their water from a well located about 200 feet from the cabin. There was a barn and chicken house (bigger than the cabin itself) behind the cabin, and an outhouse was located roughly between these two buildings.
Johanna also had a small root cellar, used for storing canned goods, dug into an earthen bank next to the well. At one time, there was a small cupboard built on the outside of the northeast corner of the cabin, where Johanna stored milk. However, none of these appurtenant structures survive today.
Tragedy struck not long after the Bengstons built their cabin. James was cutting a tree which fell on him and broke his back, leaving him unable to walk. He could still use his arms, and he and Johanna managed to build a system of ropes that they attached to the cabin’s interior to help him move around.
They had no children, but their relatives, the Isacksons, did, and the family story passed down through the years holds that James Bengston survived for seven years after he broke his back before dying in October 1896.
This would mean that he broke his back in 1889. But there are presently no known documents that conclusively establish where either Bengston was during the first half of the 1890s.
They don’t appear in the 1892 King County census, though that doesn’t necessarily mean they weren’t here then. (Unfortunately, most United States census records from the decennial 1890 census were destroyed in a fire in the early 1920s, which makes further research into this question difficult.
A “J. Bengston” shown in the 1892 King County census, living in nearby Tolt, appears – for several reasons – to be a different Bengston than either James or Johanna).
Duane Isackson believes the Bengstons built their cabin in the late winter or early spring of 1888, as a few of the cabin’s logs still have some bark on them. Bark is difficult to remove from felled trees during the winter, but these trees could have easily been stripped had they been felled during the dryer summer months, and doing so would have made building the cabin easier.
Johanna Bengston outlived James Bengston by half a century. She remarried briefly but had the marriage annulled. She lived the rest of her life quietly, living off of her garden and a small dairy farm. She sold eggs to make money.
In the last year or two of her life, she moved in with her nephew, Henry Isackson, who had a home just down the hill (north) from her cabin. She died at 94 in July 1946.
A few people lived in the cabin during the 1950s, but since that time it has sat vacant.
Today the cabin is still mostly intact, though slowly deteriorating. Duane Isackson does what he can to prevent this unique testament to Sammamish’s early history from disappearing entirely.
Sources: Phil Dougherty interview of Lorraine Mills and Duane and Lloyd Isackson, July 16, 2008, Sammamish, Washington; Charles Isackson obituary, Sammamish Valley News, n.d. (July 1954).
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