Seattle's Beverly Kirk Gayton, left, found family photos and memorabilia of interest to the new Northwest African American Museum.

And inside the boxes, gathering dust, were the old photographs and family papers her mother had left when she died. Nothing that seemed worthy of being unpacked, much less being in a museum.

But as the curators of the new Northwest African American Museum go about starting a collection from scratch, before March's opening, they've contacted African American churches and organizations, asking people to dig through their things. From storage, units, closets and basements, gems with stories to tell have been emerging.

Like a photograph of Gayton's father, James Green Kirk, circa 1935, in the starched white uniform of a railroad car worker.

Kirk's story was emblematic of how the history of African Americans in the Northwest is tied to the idea of journey -- first in chains from Africa, then in a migration from the South to the Northwest. Even today, the idea of journey is reflected in the arrival of immigrants from Ethiopia and other East African countries, said Barbara Thomas, the museum's curator.

In Kirk's case, he was born the son of a former slave in Mississippi, before migrating to Oregon and eventually to Seattle, where he found work as a waiter in a dining car on the Burlington Northern Railroad.

One is the photo of her father, James Green Kirk, second from right, shown circa 1935, in the uniform of a railroad car worker. Kirk, the son of a former slave in Mississippi, migrated to Seattle, where he found work as a waiter in a dining car.

It was a life, Kirk had recalled in "Seven Stars & Orion: Reflections of the Past," a 1986 collection of transcribed oral histories of eight African Americans in Seattle.

"During Prohibition, I used to do a little bootlegging myself," recalled Kirk, who died in 1990. "Some of our trips were to Canada. We'd bring liquor out of Canada."

Kirk said he'd hide pints of liquor in the train ventilator. "You could look up here and see all those bottles lined up along the glass."

The work on the trains was long.

"The day usually began about 6 o'clock in the morning, and they'd work you a whole day, maybe up to 10, 11, 12 o'clock at night, on your feet most of the time. ... You slept right down in the dining car at that time. ... You'd put your bed -- a kind of a cot concern -- across two chairs and you slept like that.

"You didn't have no days off at the end of the line in Montana. ... Didn't have no layover at all at the end of the line."

The artifacts -- photographs of fathers and grandmothers, uniforms of relatives departed -- tell more than the stories of African Americans.

For Gayton, the memorabilia recalled her father's long trips on the rail. Digging through the box in search of African American history brought her own history to life.

"There were these old pictures of my mother as a child that I'd never seen," she said. "There was a picture of the house her father had built in Green Lake in 1920."

She seemed taken aback by the museum's attention.

"It's an honor," she said. "My dad was just a regular guy." Rochelle Shinoda had thought the same about her father, Floyd Standifer, who died in January at the age of 78.

"He'd say things like, 'I'm a pretty big deal," Shinoda said. "All of us kids would be like, 'Aww Dad, yeah, right.' "

She didn't realize how big a deal until his memorial service, when she heard the stories of his place in the old Jackson Street jazz scene of the '40s and '50s, when he played the trumpet with the likes of Ray Charles and Quincy Jones.

And then the museum called, asking for the trumpets she kept in the closet.

Esther Mumford, the historian who wrote "Seven Stars & Orion: Reflections of the Past," knew what was in her basement for about 25 years. A member of Mount Zion Baptist Church had saved the church's doors, when it was replaced. The church member had kept them in her house until she decided to downsize and asked Mumford to take them. The doors have been in Mumford's basement, not even visible without moving other things out of the way.

"I wanted to make sure (the doors) were saved. When people die or move to smaller place, so many things get lost," she said.

ARTIFACTS SOUGHT

The museum is still collecting artifacts. Of particular interest are letters from the late 19th century or the early 20th century, written by African Americans in Washington describing life here.

For more information, go to naamnw.org or call 206-267-1823