{"id":14833,"date":"2014-03-27T18:34:29","date_gmt":"2014-03-27T23:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=14833"},"modified":"2021-11-26T07:51:13","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T12:51:13","slug":"tgif","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/tgif\/","title":{"rendered":"TGIF"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve long wanted to add Washington’s San Juan County to my county counting list<\/a> and maybe someday I’ll succeed. Pondering that eventuality I began to grow increasingly curious about its only incorporated town, Friday Harbor (map<\/a>). Specifically I wondered about the story behind its name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"View<\/a>
View from Friday Harbor House<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It seemed unusual to name a settlement after a day of the week. What confluence of events could lead to something like that? Maybe an early explorer sailed into a harbor on a Friday? Maybe even one of the original Spanish expeditions that charted the archipelago in the late 18th Century? Actually that wasn’t the case at all. The name referred to the day of the week although it happened decades later and indirectly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the San Juan Historical Society<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Friday Harbor was named for a Kanaka \u2014 a Hawaiian named Joseph Poalie Friday, who was employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company to tend sheep on the land overlooking the harbor. His was the only habitation to be seen for miles, and when sailors coming along the coast saw the smoke from his camp, they knew they had reached ‘Friday’s Harbor’ … Poalie is a shortened form of ‘Poalima,’ the Hawaiian word for Friday. Joe might have dropped his native surname in favor of Friday when he came to the Northwest.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That sounded a bit convenient, perhaps apocryphal. I examined the reference using a modern Hawaiian dictionary. It included the word P?’alima<\/a> and confirmed the definition of Friday. The theory wasn’t completely out of the question. Thus Friday Harbor likely derived from a man either with the surname P?’alima or Friday, in either case Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Friday, Texas, USA<\/h2>\n\n\n\n