When I was quite young, just after my first child was born, at St. John's Hospital in Port Townsend, I lived at a small airport located behind where the present day Jefferson County Library is. Being a stay at home mom, the local library was an important part of my life. As a high school student I didn't enjoy history, memorizing all those dates seemed silly and unimportant. Reading novels was another matter. The Port Townsend Librarian, Madge Wallin introduced me to Patricia Campbell's books when I asked if there were any books about our local area. After the first book, "Cedarhaven", I was hooked.

Patricia Piatt Campbell was born in 1901 and reared on Vashon Island at Dilworth Point, which was named for her maternal grandfather, who homesteaded the area in the 1880's.

After graduating from Vashon High School she married William E. Campbell, a state trooper, she had one son, Gordon. The family lived in Port Angeles eventually moving to Port Ludlow where she started her career as an author, she was 47 years old at the time and "Eliza" was her first novel.

The novel was set in the 1870's and Patricia used Port Ludlow and Port Townsend as the location, and actual events of the era; smuggling of Chinese laborers, mutual dislike of Indians and Whites, conflicts of small independent loggers and the big companies, but above all the hardship of living without means of communication, where weeks would pass without hearing another person's voice to tell her story. This theme is followed in all of her books, "Lush Valley", set in the 1880s; "The Dove and the Dart"; pre-first World War, "Cedarhaven" which goes back to the 1880's; "By Sun and Candlelight"; "The Royal Anne Tree", and "Silver Fruit".

These novels all take place in a familiar landscape for anyone who has lived in Jefferson County for any amount of time. They are hard to come by and have been out of print for some time, although the Port Townsend Library has a few. One of her non-fiction books which was originally published in weekly installments in the Peninsula Daily News and later published as a book, "A History of the North Olympic Peninsula" which is a wonderful resource for researchers.

Patricia Campbell was described in a Daily News article at the time of her death, "She was warm and friendly, but not gushy. She was intelligent and witty, but not consumed with herself, she was old and wise, but not infirmed," she was struck by a car and killed in September of 1976 while crossing a street in Port Angeles, she was 74.

I have read all of her novels, and this is where I trace my interest in Jefferson County History. I am sure I am not the only one.