Whitesel family collection

Collection

Identifier: 1000-010

Scope and Contents

This collection includes materials related to Jack H. Whitesel including his high school and college diplomas, fishing awards, clippings from his wedding to Maxine Mewborn and employment records and applications related to his career at Boeing. The collection also includes items related to the history of the Whitesel family including obituaries and funeral notices, early photographs in tintype and cabinet card format and other ephemera.

Dates

Creation: circa 1870-1981

Creator

Whitesel, Jack H. (Jack Harry), 1908-2003 (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open and available for use.

Conditions Governing Use

Biographical / Historical

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Jack H. Whitesel (1908-2003) was born in Joplin, Missouri on January 25, 1908 to Harry Howard Whitesel and Alta Margaret Sansom. He graduated from Belmont High School in Los Angeles in 1926 and attended Stanford University where he graduated with a degree in economics in 1930. During the 1930s, he worked in sales and advertising for oil companies including Sunset Pacific Oil in Seattle, the Shell Oil Company and at the Pacific States Oil Company, a California-based business operated by his father, Harry H. Whitesel. Jack Whitesel married Maxine Mewborn (1912-2001) in Los Angeles in 1937. Maxine graduated from Stockton High School, attended business college and worked as a secretary at the time of their marriage in 1937. In 1942 Jack Whitesel began working at Boeing where he held analyst and statistician roles. In 1958, he became assistant to C.B. Gracey, Boeing’s vice president of operations. Whitesel was also an avid angler and outdoorsman. In 1952, he secured a patent for a foldout picnic box. Both the patent and photograph of the invention are located within the collection. Jack Whitesel died in Seattle on March 20, 2003.

Full Extent

.21 Linear Feet (1 box)

Language of Materials

English

Metadata Rights Declarations

License: This record is made available under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Creative Commons license.

Additional Description

Abstract

Clippings, correspondence, photographs and other ephemera pertaining to Jack and Maxine Whitesel and the Whitesel family. Jack and Maxine lived in Seattle for over fifty years and Jack spent many years working at Boeing beginning in 1942.

Arrangement

Items are arranged alphabetically according to material type into the following series: certificates, clippings, correspondence, family history, funeral notices and programs, graduation diplomas and programs, job applications and resumes, miscellaneous notes, patent, photographs and publications. Items within each series are in chronological order when possible.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Collection was purchased in 2016.

Processing Information

Acknowledgement of Harmful Content
The Seattle Public Library Special Collections Department is committed to creating an inclusive archive that documents the history of our diverse communities in a respectful manner. Our collections include historic materials that may contain images and outdated language which can be harmful due to issues such as racism, colonialism, sexism and homophobia. This content can provide important insight into the creator and context of the historic materials but can also reveal hurtful biases and prejudices.

We may decide to use or retain harmful language in our description when the terms have been used by the creator(s) of the materials to describe themselves or their community; when we have reused description created by the donor; when we have transcribed information directly from the materials; and when using national standards such as Library of Congress Subject Headings, which allow for standardized searching and retrieval of records. When including language from the original material in our finding aids or descriptions, we will indicate that this material comes directly from the original item by putting the language in quotes or prefacing it with a note that says the description is transcribed from the item or provided by the creator.

We will continually review our finding aids to identify harmful language and encourage you to contact us at specialcollections@spl.org if you find language that causes concern.