We thank the owners for letting us in for a rare look into their historic homes.
Attendees got a rare intimate look inside these Swift family homes and were able to hear the Swift family’s tales of Whidbey and the Sea.
Fullington House
Architectural Landmarks
These private log homes are both living architectural artifacts and treasure troves of Washington’s narrative history. Both are landmarks in the Central Whidbey Island National Historic District, and the Fairhaven may be the oldest continually occupied residence in the state of Washington. Yet, as private homes they are rarely open to the public.
Fairhaven House
City of Sea Captains
Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve is best known for its stunning farmlands overlooking mountains and sea, but the Town of Coupeville at its heart was once known as the “City of Sea Captains.” New England mariners were attracted to Penn Cove with its protected anchorage and scenery evocative of the bays and inlets of their native Massachusetts, Maine and New Brunswick.
James Henry Swift
One of these nautical men was Captain James Henry Swift, a long-time whaler out of New Bedford and Fairhaven, Massachusetts, who would sail the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans for over 40 years. Swift first explored Penn Cove in 1855, hauling timber to Europe for spars. Charmed, he bought the Coveland donation land claim and log cabin of Jacob Smith in 1857 for $3,000.
Image courtesy of Island County Historical Society 1967.ATA
Bringing his family out to join him in 1863, they christened the 1852 cabin “Fairhaven” after the family’s home town. Swift continued to sail the North Pacific into the 1870s, but the family turned to farming, eventually raising horses for the Hudson’s Bay Company in Victoria.
Moving from Coveland
Capt. Swift's daughter Hattie, her husband Puget Race, and their descendants owned the “Fairhaven” from the Captain’s death in 1892 until 1993. But in 1928 Hattie and Puget Race moved it to Coupeville, realizing that the amenities of the Town across the Cove had distinct advantages over the rural north shore. Carefully disassembled, each log numbered, it was reassembled on the bluff just west of the Coupeville Wharf.
Maude Fullington, Hattie Swift’s sister, repeated the process at the same time with another Coveland cabin: an 1859 log cabin built by Francis DeLouri near the Swift farm. Naming it the “Anchorage,” she bought it and had it moved in the same fashion to a nearby waterfront Coupeville lot. Today the two cabins flank what is today the Coupeville Town Park – two extremely attractive residences and monuments to Coupeville’s past.
TOUR
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