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The Dougherty House in Duvall, Washington, was almost the O’Leary House—save for a failed engagement. James O’Leary built the house for his bride-to-be in 1888, but apparently she changed her mind. After being jilted, O’Leary never lived in the house. Instead, he sold it, along with 160 acres, to John and Kate Dougherty. Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the house is maintained by the Duvall Historical Society, which has refurbished the home and yard back to its former glory.

The home was initially built in an area called Cherry Valley. It had four bedrooms upstairs and one bathroom downstairs. John died in 1903 at the age of fifty, leaving Kate to raise eight children. A Duvall tutor would have come in handy back then for Kate!

Second Location
When railroads came through the area, the house had to be moved; its flat plot was ideal for railroad tracks. Rolled on logs and pulled by horses and mules, the house was moved to a hillside in 1910, where it overlooked the river and provided a view of the valley, the river, and, on clear days, Mount Baker.

A Working Family
The entire family had to pitch in with chores, especially after John’s death. Cows needed to be milked twice a day and cream sold to a creamery; the plum and apple orchards needed tending. Kate boarded eight loggers in a bunkhouse and ran the Duvall Post Office out of her home. Her children helped her and were also responsible for, among other tasks, swinging the bridge across the Snoqualmie River so riverboats could pass underneath.

Steps Toward Preservation
After the 1983 death of Leo Dougherty, the last-surviving of Kate’s sons, the Duvall Historical Society, King County, the city of Duvall, and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle entered into discussions about the property. After years of verbal wrangling, they finally penned a deal. Leo had willed the remaining forty acres and the house to the archdiocese, and the historical society had been leasing the home from them and was already rebuilding portions, reroofing, repainting, and removing masses of blackberry vines. It wasn’t till 1996 that the historical society learned the archdiocese had decided to give the house, outbuildings, and more than twenty acres for a park to the city. Volunteers continued to invest hundreds of hours into the preservation effort, and with the help of grant money and labor from Eagle Scouts, the home was restored and ready for the public to see.

The house is truly a gem—a unique representation of a nineteenth-century farmhouse with original walls, doors, windows, woodwork, staircase, and exterior siding. Visitors to the property can also see the bunkhouse, milk barn, and the pioneer cemetery nearby. Duvall tutors and teachers who come to learn can share much with their students about life on the farm in the late 1900s.