Autograph Book of Genette May
Genette May was born December 4, 1862 in Douglas County, Oregon to Thomas and Martha May. When she was 8, her parents sold their farm in Oregon and moved to Washington Territory. They homesteaded on Rock Creek in Whitman County in an area known as the Palouse. In the spring of 1876, the Mays sold out again and settled in Thorn Hollow, a valley about five miles northwest of the town of Dayton, in Columbia County.
Genette became a school teacher and was 25 when she married Arthur Clayton Thorpe on June 5, 1888. She began collecting the signatures of family, friends, and neighbors in January of 1886. The last autograph in her book is dated September 19, 1888.