This photograph of milliner Katherine Eugley Musgrove is one of a series, taken by Robert Esterly around 1914, of local businesses and their owners. Mrs. Musgrove was one of a handful of female proprietors in downtown Olympia. A milliner is a hat maker, an important trade in days when a woman’s hat defined her status in society. Her shop was at the current location of the Hotel Olympian at Legion and Washington.
Robert Esterly photo, circa 1914, courtesy State Capital Museum collection, Washington State Historical Society catalog C1961.1185.15
Text © Deborah Ross and The Olympian 2019