National Park Service, Historic Resources Study, Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve (2005)

Prepared for the Park Service by Gail E. H. Evans-Hatch and Michael Evans-Hatch (the cover is dated 2003). Read 13 Oct 2026 in the scan at npshistory.com.

The Holbrook letter. It quotes, from the WPA's Told by the Pioneers vol. 2, pp. 153-154 (1938), the letter written from Penn Cove in January 1854 by "E. Holbrook," brother of Capt. Richard B. Holbrook, to his mother in Massachusetts. The study's quotations are loose ("log cabin" for "log house," "31 vessels" where the letter has 31 sawmills and "about 30 vessels"); the letter itself is Told by the Pioneers: Reminiscences of Pioneer Life in Washington, vol. 2 (WPA, 1938).

The sea captains of Penn Cove.

• P. 82: in 1852 Thomas Coupe claimed land on Penn Cove; "Future Penn Cove settlers, Captains James Henry Swift and Richard Holbrook also arrived by ship and claimed land on the cove around the same time."
• Pp. 141-142: "Penn Cove residents Richard B. Holbrook and Eli Hathaway were among the first ship captains involved in Pacific Coast commerce. In March 1852, when Holbrook claimed land at the west end of the cove, the two sea captains were shipping spars from Puget Sound" (citing Cahail, Sea Captains of Whidby Island). Coupe "first came to Penn Cove in 1852 in the bark Success to load a cargo of piles for transport to San Francisco." "Prairie settlers heard countless stories of commercial sailing adventures told by ship captains who had decided to settle on Penn Cove when not at sea."
• P. 175: "The head of Penn Cove served as the original port used by several sea captains who loaded timber (poles, piles, and spars) in the shallow waters of this protected cove. Captains James Henry Swift, Eli Hathaway, Samuel Libbey, H. B. Lovejoy, Richard Holbrook, Benjamin Barstow, and William Robertson all engaged in this timber trade and filed for donation land claims ... and settled on land near the head of Penn Cove," where Dr. Richard C. Lansdale had platted the townsite of Coveland in the spring of 1852.

The farm. In June 1860 a few farmers on the prairies round Penn Cove, John Kellogg, Richard B. Holbrook and Nathaniel D. Hill, had "farming implements and machinery" worth $500 to $550, from the census. A General Land Office survey map of 1858 shows the Penn's Cove Military Reservation, ordered in February 1854 at the head of the cove, "occupied by buildings (probably homes) and improved farmland belonging to Robert [sic] Holbrook, S.D. Howe, 'M. Shove' (or 'Show'), and Smith, Allen, and T. Hartie"; the reserve was given up on 31 Aug 1866.

The war years. In early November 1855, "when the threat of Indian attack first seemed possible," the farmers round Penn Cove built blockhouses and stockades; inside the Crocketts', "all the neighboring families took up residence each night and returned to their homes during the day to carry on with farm work" (pp. 88-89). In the dark early morning of 11 Aug 1857 Isaac Ebey was killed outside his house by raiders from the north, while his wife and children escaped through a window into the woods (pp. 90-91).