Rothschild House State Park Heritage Area History

“…it still looks the same as it did when I came here to visit 70 years ago…” --Dorette Rothschild Lemon, 2010

Rothschild House State Park Heritage Site preserves a vignette, seemingly frozen in time, of the life of a moderately prosperous Washington family in the late 1800s. This home’s sturdy, but not ostentatious design and untouched décor speak volumes about the family’s value of living a good life with frugality and purpose. Their story abounds with moments of joy and love, and also includes some heartbreak and tragedy, as do most human endeavors.

The site features the home and its well-preserved pieces with direct connections to the Rothschild’s lives. It also has sweeping vistas of the islands, waterways and mountain ranges that have attracted people here for millennia.

Indigenous Lands

This park’s location in the city of Port Townsend lies within the traditional territories of Coast Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, Lummi Nation, Tulalip Tribes, Suquamish Tribe, Quileute Tribe, and Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. For thousands of years this area and the waters of Admiralty Inlet have provided a habitat for a diverse community of life that forms the basis of their cultures. A long-established natural portage route across the Quimper Peninsula was used by Indigenous travelers to avoid challenging currents and waves at the tip of Point Wilson when passing from North Beach to village sites at the south end of Port Townsend.

Local tribes ceded ownership of the area to the US federal government under duress in the Treaty of Point No Point in 1855, keeping rights to harvest natural resources in their usual and accustomed places, including the lands and waters around Quimper Peninsula.

Even before the treaty had been discussed and signed, the US Congress authorized US Citizens to claim unceded Indigenous lands in Washington Territory with the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850.

The Birth of Port Townsend

Alfred A. Plummer emigrated from Maine to California during the 1849 gold rush and continued to today’s Washington one year later. On April 24, 1851, he landed a canoe at Port Townsend and claimed a parcel of nearly 160 acres under terms of the Donation Land Claim Act. Joined by others later that year, Plummer proceeded to plat the town of Port Townsend and quickly profited from the town’s growth into a primary port of entry into Washington Territory. The export of lumber from Port Townsend to the burgeoning metropolis of San Francisco fueled its rise to become the largest city in Washington Territory by 1870.

D.C.H. Rothschild—Territorial Middle-class

David Charles Henry Rothschild also emigrated to California in the gold rush, from Bavaria. His path to Port Townsend was more circuitous, and he did not arrive there until 1858, after working for various mining businesses and travel to several parts of Asia and Australia. Rothschild purchased property in Alfred Plummer’s townsite and soon opened a store, “The Kentucky Store,” on a pier that ran out into the waters of Port Townsend Bay. The store provided mercantile goods as well as provisions for ships that called at Port Townsend. Period notices advertised that the store carried everything “from a needle to an anchor.”

Once settled in his business, Rothschild paid the passage for Dorette Hartung, an associate’s sister, to voyage from Germany to Port Townsend. On January 6, 1860, 16-year-old Dorette was a passenger on the Northerner, a steamship northbound from San Francisco. The ship hit a submerged rock a few miles south of Humboldt Bay, CA, and sank. Dorette was one of 41 passengers to survive the wreck. Dorette and D.C.H. were married in 1863, and the couple started their family while still living in rooms above the store.

The Rothschild family occupied a middle-class niche in American society. As the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s brought about rapid economic growth in the United States, merchants and skilled artisans emerged as a new social class. However, lacking the security of inherited wealth or a social safety net, middle-class families worried (with reason) that an unfortunate turn might cause them to lose their situation, forcing them to rely on poorly paid labor to survive. Middle-class families worked hard to maintain their status and improve the lives of their children.

Discipline, morality, hard work, education, and good manners were esteemed; middle-class children were encouraged to excel in school and improve themselves by reading classical literature and acquiring skills such as learning to play the piano or other musical instruments, often at significant expense to the family. The Mason-Hamlin piano in the house was purchased new in 1886 and shipped to Port Townsend.

Farm families and urban working-class families benefited from having lots of children who could contribute to family subsistence. In the new middle-class families, children no longer contributed economically, and family size diminished. Many employed immigrants as housekeepers and cooks.

In keeping with his family’s status, D.C.H. Rothschild arranged for the construction of a substantial house for his family in 1868.

The House

Rothschild purchased Lot 89 of Alfred A. Plummer’s Port Townsend plat for $800 and engaged a Mr. Tucker to build the house. It is built on a foot-thick stone foundation that insulates a cool basement cellar with space to hang meat, racks for wine storage, fruit bins, and large crocks for curing sauerkraut.

The upstairs features four bedrooms; downstairs includes an additional bedroom, dining room, parlor, and a kitchen with attached washroom.

The hallway that connects the home’s two floors features scroll-motif wallpaper hung in 1891 for the wedding of daughter Regina to William W. Jones. Wallpaper exploded in popularity among middle-class homeowners of the time, as an economical way to bring art into the home. The hallway woodwork is Douglas-fir (inexpensively obtained locally), hand-grained to give the appearance of stained oak (expensive to import from far away). Hand-graining was accomplished by applying a thick light-colored coat of paint to the wood, followed by a stained varnish that was patterned by hand with brushes, feathers, combs and fingers.

The stairway banister is solid Honduran mahogany. Its curves were made by the slow process of steaming the wood while slowly bending it. Generations of children were thrilled to slide down it!

The house was heated with fireplaces, including a distinctive back-to-back fireplace warming the dining room and parlor.

The Rothschild Children

On April 24, 1886, Port Townsend was “thrown into a commotion” by news that D.C.H. Rothschild had taken his own life on the beach at the town’s waterfront.

Local news reports detailed Rothschild’s struggle with mental illness, stating: “He had been subject to periodical fits of nervous depression and despondency” linked to business challenges stemming from a five-year national recession, and the impact of the Northern Pacific Railway’s decision to locate its west coast terminus at Tacoma, rather than Port Townsend. In a time when mental illness carried a stigma and treatments were often ineffective or harmful, Rothschild’s condition ended in tragedy.

Dorette continued to live in the house until her death in 1918. Exercising frugality to live on the limited means available to her after her husband’s death, she maintained the house just as it had been built. The house continued to be heated by its fireplaces, lit with gas lamps, and indoor plumbing was installed only in her last days.

The Rothschilds had five children. The eldest sons, Henry and Louis, took over the family business after their father’s death. Daughter Regina married William W. Jones in 1891; Henry, Louis, and William ultimately shifted the business into exclusively maritime services. Their successful company continues to this day as Jones Stevedoring Company, with operations at most Pacific Northwest ports.

Emilie, who became a long-time city librarian, cared for her mother during her final years and continued to live alone in the house for 36 more years until her death in 1954, preserving its character as her mother had done.

“I think it is due to her [Emilie] that the house is here, because she kept everything and she took care of it. It was not just that she stored it away and forgot about it. She would take things out and see that were clean…” –Dorette Rothschild Lemon (Emilie’s niece), 2010

Ernest Eugene left Port Townsend to attend the University of Washington, where he graduated with a B.S. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry in 1908. He worked at a pharmaceutical business in West Seattle. As the last surviving child, he inherited the house. He did not wish to leave his home in Seattle but felt that the house should be preserved.

Becoming a State Park

On December 13, 1957, members of the Advisory Board on Historic Sites (predecessor of today’s Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation) visited the house at the invitation of Eugene Rothschild to assess its value for preservation. They agreed that it warranted preservation, noting “the home’s importance, historically, will grow from generation to generation.” They also urged setting a precedent of preserving historic properties “before the most interesting and important buildings are lost.”

Eugene Rothschild donated the property to the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) on February 4, 1959. Restoration began the same year, funded in part by a grant from the Jefferson County Historical Society. Due to the excellent care of the property by Emilie Rothschild throughout her lifetime, only limited roofing repairs, exterior painting, fencing and landscaping in the yard were required. Agreements with local docents allowed the home to be opened to the public in 1962. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 29, 1970. Currently the Jefferson County Historical Society maintains the exhibits and artifacts within the home, as well as greeting visitors and offering tours of the home.