A bell, a quilt, a board game: How will Olympia be represented in America 250?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Washington museums invite public vote to select Olympia objects for America 250.
- Olympia museum finalists: quilt, 1930s board game, camera, bell, suffrage speech.
- Voting open through Jan 31; results will feed a state interactive artifact map.
This year’s Fourth of July will mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, also known as the semiquincentennial. As part of the celebration, Washington museums are asking the public to select a historic artifact that represents the American experience.
Erin Whitesel-Jones, executive director of the Olympia Historical Society & Bigelow House Museum, said the Washington State Historical Society has organized a project for museums across the state to take five objects from their collections and put them on a ballot. Then people can vote online for one of the objects to represent the community.
She said the Olympia museum has chosen a quilt, a Big Business board game from the 1930s, an early home movie camera, a 19th century teacher’s school bell, and a copy of an 1871 speech arguing for women’s voting rights.
According to the museum’s voting webpage, the quilt is around 100 years old and was created by female members of the Bigelow family, who were residents of Olympia and figures in early Washington history.
Whitesel-Jones said the quilt isn’t the oldest in their collection. The museum has three other quilts, including one dating from the 1850s, as well as sewing tools and embroidered tablecloths.
The school bell belonged to Ann Elizabeth White Bigelow. According to the webpage, before she was married at 18 in 1854, she worked as a teacher.
The Big Business board game is a 1937 edition that also belonged to the Bigelow family. The game originally came out at the same time as Monopoly, and both games are based on an earlier money-making board game.
The home movie camera is a Magazine Ciné-Kodak Eight Model 90 introduced in 1940. According to the museum, the camera retailed for $68 in 1940, which is about $1,500 in today’s money. The Bigelow family name is engraved along the top of the camera.
The final artifact is a copy of a speech from Daniel Bigelow, who was an attorney in Olympia and member of the legislature. He spoke in favor of women’s voting rights before the Washington Territory House of Representatives in 1871.
According to the museum, he argued, “... the natural rights of every human being are the same. The desire for liberty and equality or for self-government is also inherent in human nature, never eradicated, however long crushed down and smothered by custom, ignorance, and oppression. It is not confined to races, to classes, or to sex.”
Whitesel-Jones said the objects represent different things to different people, and she personally has a soft spot for the home movie camera.
“To me, that represents American technological innovation, prosperity, family and even Hollywood glamor,” she said. “Some people will say, ‘Well, I’m a teacher, so I have to pick the school bell.’ People who are feeling a little cynical tend to pick the Big Business Board game. And of course, the women’s rights speech is appealing to a lot of people, too.”
Whitesel-Jones said voting is open until Jan. 31 and can be accessed online, as well as on the museum’s social media. There are also opportunities to see the artifacts and vote in person. They will stay on display at the Bigelow House all year.
She said at the end of the month, the votes will be tallied up and sent to the State Historical Society. They will then create an interactive map with the selected artifacts from all the museums across the state. Whitesel-Jones said if you wanted, you could take a road trip to see them all.
“I think this is one of those cases where it’s really more about the journey than about the destination,” she said. “In this case, the journey is that you’re really taking time to look at just a few objects from our collection and really scrutinize them and think about what they have to tell us about the society that created them.”
Visit america250wa.org for more information.
This story was originally published January 25, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
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