“Agnes Knutsen, born in 1913 in the United States to Norwegian parents, was raised there by her aunt and two uncles on a 66-acre farm.
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The home is said to be one of the houses ordered through the Sears-Roebuck catalog and was assembled on the property that the family paid an astounding price of $2 an acre.
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In 1942, a new home was built only a few hundred feet west and the old place was rented out. In the late 1950s, Harry and Lena Reed with children Harry, Stanley, Ann and Janet moved in and the elder Reeds stayed until the end of their lives.”

“We moved there when I was in the third or fourth grade, about 1956. My youngest sister was born while we lived there.

It was owned by Agnes Knutsen who inherited after her two uncles died. I believe they were Peter and John. They built the house in 1901. Prior to building the house they lived in a big log cabin that eventually became part of the barn. One brother had worked in the local mills, the other had a farm somewhere toward P.A. They built the house together and started farming there.

Agnes came from the ‘old country’ as a young girl and was raised in the house. She taught the 3rd grade in Sequim for many years. I think our rent was $10 when we moved in and I remember when it was raised to $15. That was about normal for the time. No one had lived in the house for a number of years before us. The weeds were very thick and high. We put a lot of work into getting it in shape. My brother was in his early teens, big and strong. He worked very hard for many hours pruning trees, clearing brush, cutting the weeds down by hand so the ‘lawn’ could be mowed.

There was one light and plug-in in each room. Dad was an electrician and over the years he added plug-ins, rebuilt the water pump several times, and put on the shake roof you see today. Agnes was concerned about improvements raising the taxes so held him back sometimes. When the well went dry my brother went down inside the concrete well casing and hand dug it deeper until we had lots of water again. I remember looking down at him and being terrified he would get trapped down there!

The ceilings are 9′ high, lathe and plaster walls, no insulation anywhere. There was a wood heater stove in the living room and a wood cook stove in the kitchen. Looking up from the hand dug partial basement/fruit cellar you could see that the floor was just 1″ by 6″ boards under the linoleum. There is no foundation, it rests on big cedar blocks. There are three bedrooms upstairs. There is one downstairs and the living room, bathroom, kitchen and dining room. The place got cold on winter nights! There were several pear and apple trees, one cherry and one apricot. There was a smoke house, carriage shed with tack room, calf shed, and milk house with concrete water cooler to stand milk cans in until picked up by the creamery truck.

We kids lived there until shortly after we each graduated. Mom and Dad lived there until they moved into Sequim in the late1980s. The house has been vacant since then. I have lots of great memories of growing up in that old house!”