The first Filipino woman in Washington state, Rufina Clemente Jenkins, arrived in Seattle with her husband and children in 1909. Rufina, a Spanish-American War bride, met her husband Frank Jenkins while he was stationed in the Philippines.
Unlike the Chinese, the Japanese were permitted to bring women to America and started families in the early 1900s. Many of these women came as "picture brides," wed to men they had never met.
Kee Chinn, one of the first Chinese interpreters hired in Washington state by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, worked in Port Townshend, an early port of entry for the Chinese. He eventually settled in Seattle and is pictured with his…
In 1937, Soo Hong (Gregory) Chew returned to his village in Toison County to marry Wee Gam Har. However, due to restrictions against immigration of Chinese women, she did not join her husband in the U.S. until 1950, seven years after the repeal of…
Pictured here is Maria Mahoy, a daughter of Bill Mahoy, one of the early Hawaiian laborers who worked for the Hudson's Bay Company. She was born in Goldstream, British Columbia in 1857, and passed away in 1936.
Many Hawaiian men married Native American women and settled in Kanka Bay (False Bay) on San Juan Island. John Kahana is pictured with his Lummi Indian wife, Mary Skualup, and stepson, Robert Bull on San Juan Island.
Many of the Mein, a hill tribe in Laos, came here to escape the terror of war in Southeast Asia. Pictured at left is Cheng Chinag Saechao and her children, Chaiwat (left) and Chansook in Seatlte, 1980.
