The Woodin Founders
In 1871, Ira (age 38) and Susan (age 23) Campbell Woodin and their daughters Helen (age 7) and Mary (age 4) loaded their worldly possessions into an old covered wagon and hauled them over the McGilvra Road in Seattle to Lauralshade on Lake Washington. There they transferred their belongings to a scow and towed with a row boat to the head of Lake Washington where they entered the Sammamish River, then called Squak Slough, the best possible access to this region. They made their way slowly and tediously up-stream to the land that was to be their home (approximately 4 miles as the crow flies – several times that by the winding slough). A son Frank was born in 1878. The Woodin home was the first post office, first school, first Sunday School as well as a half-way house between Seattle and the up-river settlements.
A Town Takes Shape
Their single cabin in the wilderness didn’t retain its isolation long. In 1888, the Seattle-Lake Shore & Eastern Railway arrived and became the main transportation and replaced scows on the slough. The railroad accelerated the development of the Sammamish Valley. In a few years a whole town built up around them and became known as Woodinville. The early businesses evolved around the railroad depot on the southwest side of the slough with homes on the northeast side along NE 175th Street.
The Woodin Children’s Paths
Helen Woodin married Joseph Keller in 1880 and homesteaded land near Redmond, Washington. In 1883, Mary Woodin married Tom Sanders who later became her father’s partner in the first general store in Woodinville. Tom and Mary Sanders moved to Seattle in 1894 and bought the Fremont Milling Company. In 1901, Frank Woodin married Anna Johanna Peterson and entered the logging business with his father-in-law, Nels Peterson. They moved to the Yakima valley in 1915, where they farmed.
A Valley Transformed
During the Woodins lifetime they saw their valley grow from a river community to logging and then to farming. The Woodins gave land for the Woodinville Recessional Memorial Mead. Ira passed away in 1908 and Susan in 1919 and they as well as many other early settlers have been laid to rest in this cemetery.