According to Washington - A Guide to the Evergreen State, American Guide Series, c. 1941, p. 287,
COVINGTON HOUSE, 39th and Main Sts., at the SW Corner of the park, the oldest house in the State, was built by Richard Covington between 1840 and 1845 on his homestead about a mile north of what is now Orchards. In 1931 the house was taken down, each piece numbered, and the whole rebuilt on its present site. The house, of roughly squared logs dovetailed at the corners, is covered with clapboard siding and has a sharply gabled roof. The Covingtons kept a kind of boarding school, and their home, containing the first piano in the region, was a social center for young Army officers and trading company officials in the early days.
Richard Covington was born in London, England about 1820. His wife, Anna "Ann," was born in London in 1825. In 1846, Richard and Anna Covington came from England to Fort Vancouver to teach the children of the Hudson’s Bay Company employees. On their way here they stopped briefly in the Hawaiian Islands. They brought musical instruments with them from England, including a violin, a guitar, and the first piano, a J. Pleyel of Paris, to be seen in the Pacific Northwest.
Richard was a scholar, a talented artist, an accomplished musician and a map maker. He did a watercolor map, 4 feet long and 2 feet wide, on very thin paper in 1846 showing Fort Vancouver and the adjacent Kanaka Village occupied by fort employees and their families (see "Covington map unfolds Vancouver's story," Columbian, pg. 1, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1989). There is another map in the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company in Winnipeg, Canada. He is credited with other maps, including one of Hawaii. His obituary in 1882 referred to him as "one of the most competent draughtsman in the country."
When the Donation Land Claim law went into effect in 1848, Richard and Anna staked out a claim of 638 [640] acres about five to seven miles northeast of Fort Vancouver (in the center of Sec. 4; 5 and 8; 9 Township 2N Range 2E of Willamette Meridian) at the edge of the primeval forest. They were one of the first to settle well inland from the Columbia River.
Between April 1846 and prior to 1848 Covington built a one-story with a loft frame house of rough logs that sat in a clearing. The front of the house faced east. They established a boarding school run by Anna while Richard ran the farm which he called the Kalsus Farm. The children slept in the loft. The Covington's log cabin was known as a center of hospitality and musical entertainment. They taught music to many of the children in the area.
Covington was elected Clark County school superintendent in 1862 and 1863. In 1867 Richard received an appointment to work in the United States Patent Office, under the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, so he sold their farm to William C. Hazard for $2,100 and moved to Washington, D.C. At the time of their departure, they gave their piano to a friend who, in turn, gave it to Nan Maynard Rice a number of years later. In 1967, Miss Rice gave the piano to the Fort Vancouver Historical Society.
From Washington, D.C. the Covingtons again went west, this time to Victoria, British Columbia, where they remained for about a year. From there they moved to Hawaii, where Richard died on October 25, 1882 in Honolulu. He had been attached to the foundry and then the survey office. The Covingtons had no children.
For many years their old log cabin stood empty, and was even used as a barn at one time. But in 1925 an interested group came together and raised the money needed to save the building. It was in advanced stage of wear - a barren, weathered building with unkempt shingles, and open windows and doors. A small piece of fence sagged dispiritedly in one part of a weed-grown lot. The log cabin was dismantled with the logs numbered and relative positions noted in order to reassemble them at its present site in September 1926. There were several needed additions: new windows, large stone fireplace, lean-to kitchen and a shake roof.
Covington House was listed on the National Register of Historic Sites in 1972 and listed on the Clark County Heritage Register in 1984.
Instructions for logging waymark: A photograph is required that shows you (or your GPS receiver, if you are waymarking solo) and the place.