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By Richard Hao, Youth Director At Large Edited by Laura Lee Bennett, Executive Vice President Brian Casserly, PhD, Professor of History, Department chair, Bellevue College On February 14th, the Redmond Historical Society kicks off its 2026 Saturday Speaker Series with Brian Casserly, PhD, History Professor and Department Chair at Bellevue College, who will give a talk on “Leaving Home, Building a Future: The Immigration Story of the Pacific Northwest.” An Irish immigrant him

By Richard Hao, Youth Director At Large Edited by Laura Lee Bennett, Executive Vice President On November 8th, the Redmond Historical Society welcomed Dr. Ed Sobey for his presentation, “Northwest Passage–The Challenge, the Suffering, the Discovery,” at the Old Redmond Schoolhouse. He outlined the long search for a shorter route to Asia, begun after Magellan’s impractical passage. Thousands tried to force a northern route through Arctic ice, and Dr. Sobey traced both their st

By Paige Norman Anthony Mathew Emmanuel was born June 6, 1924, in Pennsylvania, to Joseph and Mary Emmanuel, their fourth son and seventh child. By 1930, the family had moved to California. After serving on an aircraft carrier during World War II, Tony  returned to California and married Betty (Wing) in 1954, moving to Washington in the 1960s. He was a field representative and store designer for Bel-Square Equipment Company in Seattle, and worked with Duane Isackson at Duane

By Richard Hao, Youth Director At Large Edited by Laura Lee Bennett, Executive Vice President On October 11th, the Redmond Historical Society welcomed Ray Larson, Associate Director and Curator of Living Collections & the Otis Douglas Hyde Herbarium at the University of Washington Botanic Gardens. He took the audience back in time to pre-industrial Seattle with his presentation, “The Flora of Seattle in 1850: Major Species and Landscapes Prior to Urbanization.” Based on Ray’s