History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889, Part 5

Author: Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918; Victor, Frances Fuller, 1826-1902
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: San Francisco : History Co.
Number of Pages: 880


USA > Idaho > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 5
USA > Montana > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 5
USA > Washington > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 5


Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).


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54 John N. Low was born in Ohio in 1820. He removed to Ill., where he married, in 1848, L dia Colburn, born in Penn. Low brought to Or. a herd of choice stock for dairy purposes, which were the first selected Ameri- can cattle taken to the Sound country, and seems to have had a more definite purpose in emigrating than many who came to the Pacific coast at that period. Morse's Wash. Ter., MS., i. 118-19. Charles Carroll Terry was a native of New York state.


55 I follow the account of Mrs Abby J. Hanford, who, in a manuscript giving an account of the Settlement of Seattle and the Indian War, makes this positive statement concerning Holgate's visit. Mrs Hanford was a sister of Holgate, whose family came to Or. in 1853, and to Wash. in 1854. Mrs Elizabeth Holgate, mother of Mrs Hanford, was born at Middleton, Ct, in 1796; was married at Pittsburg, Pa, in 1818, to A. L. Holgate, who died in 1847, and accompanied her children to Or. She died in Jan. 1880, at the house of her daughter, whose husband's land adjoined that of J. C. Holgate. Seattle Intelligencer, Jan. 24, 1880.


56 The river system of this region is peculiar; for example, White River and Cedar River both rise in the Cascade Mountains and have a north-west course. Cedar flows into Lake Washington, from which by the same mouth but a different channel it runs out again in a south-west course, called Black River,


22


THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.


returned to Portland, Collins, Henry Van Assalt, and Jacob and Samuel Maple arrived and settled upon the Dwamish, where they had previously taken claims.57


Leaving their house half built, the settlers at Alki Point returned to Portland, where Low had left his wife and four children. Here they found Arthur A. Denny, also from Illinois, although born in Indiana, with a wife and two children; William N. Bell, a na- tive of Illinois, with a wife and two children; and C. D. Borem, with a wife and child; besides David T. Denny, unmarried-who were willing to accept their statement that they had discovered the choicest spot for a great city to be found in the north-west.


On the 5th of November this company took pas- sage on the schooner Exact, Captain Folger, which had been chartered to carry a party of gold-hunters to Queen Charlotte Island, and Low's party with a few others to Puget Sound. The Alki Point settlers ar- rived at their destination on the 13th, and were dis- embarked at low tide, spending the dull November afternoon in carrying their goods by hand out of the reach of high water, assisted by the women and chil- dren. "And then," says Bell, artlessly, in an auto- graph letter, "the women sat down and cried."59 Poor women! Is it any wonder? Think of it: the long jour-


into White River, joining the two by a link little more than two miles long. Below this junction White River is called Dwamish, with no better reason than that the Indians gave that name to a section of the stream where they resided. There is a link by creeks and marshes between White River and the Puyallup, and the whole eastern shore of the Sound is a network of rivers, lakes, creeks, and swales, the soil of the bottom-lands being very rich, but overgrown with trees of the water-loving species. Prairie openings occur at intervals, on which the settlements were made.


57 I am thus particular in the matter of priority, because there is a slight but perceptible jealousy evident in my authorities as to the claim to prece- dence in settlement. From the weight of testimony, I think it may be fairly said that the Dwamish Valley was settled before Alki Point. Jacob Maple was born on the Monongehela River, Green county, Pennsylvania, 1798. His father removed to Jefferson county, Ohio, in 1800, and died in 1812. The family subsequently lived in southern Iowa, from which they emigrated to Oregon by the way of California, arriving in 1851. Morse's Wash. Ter., MS., ii. 8. Another settler claiming priority is Martin Tafteson, who took a claim on Oak Harbor in 1851. Morse's Wash. Ter., MS., xxi. 43-5.


68 I have a valuable dictation by Mr Bell, entitled the Settlement of Seattle, MS., in which many historical facts are set forth in an interesting manner.


23


FOUNDING OF SEATTLE.


ney overland, the wearisome detention in Portland, the sea-voyage in the little schooner, and all to be set down on the beach of this lonely inland sea, at the beginning of a long winter, without a shelter from the never-ceasing rains for themselves or their babes. It did not make it any easier that nobody was to blame, and that in this way only could their husbands take their choice of the government's bounty to them. It was hard, but it is good to know that they survived it, and that a house was erected during the winter which was in a measure comfortable.59


Low and Terry laid out a town at Alki Point, call- ing it New York, and offering lots to those members of the company who would remain and build upon them. But the Indians in the vicinity had given in- formation during the winter concerning a pass in the Cascade Range which induced the majority to remove in the spring of 1852 to the east side of the bay, where they founded a town of their own, which they called Seattle, after a chief of the Dwamish tribe residing in the vicinity, who stood high in the estimation of the American settlers. 60


D. T. Denny, W. N. Bell, A. A. Denny, and C. D. Boren took claims in the order mentioned on the east shore, D. T. Denny's being farthest north, and Boren's adjoining on the south a claim mnade at the


59 Bell's house was constructed of cedar planks split out of the tree, the Oregon cedar having a straight grain. These planks were made smoother with carpenter's tools, and were joined neatly in the flooring. Some window- sash were obtained from Olympia, and the 'first house in King county' (I quote Bell) was after all a decent enough domicile when it was completed.


60 Seattle is described as a dignified and venerable personage, whose car- riage reminded the western men of Senator Benton; but I doubt if the Mis- souri senator would have recognized himself, except by a very great stretch of imagination, in this naked savage who conversed only in signs and grunts. It is said that Seattle professed to remember Vancouver-another stretch of the imagination. See Olympia Wash. Standard, April 25, 1868; Richardson's Missis., 416. It is well known that the Indians north of the Columbia change their names when a relative dies, Swan's N. W. Coast, 189, from a belief that the spirits of the dead will return on hearing these familiar names. Seattle, on hearing that a town was called by his name, and foreseeing that it would be a disturbance to his ghost when he should pass away, made this a ground for levying a tax on the citizens while living, taking his pay beforehand for the inconvenience he expected to suffer from the use of his name after death. Yesler's Wash. Ter., MS., 6; Murphy, iu Appleton's Journal, 11. 1877.


24


THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.


same time by D. S. Maynard from Olympia, who in turn adjoined Holgate, and who kept the first trading- house in the town. Seattle was laid off upon the water-front from about the middle of Maynard's claim, a larger one than either of the others,61 and on which the first house was built, to the north line of Bell's claim. Then in the autumn came Henry L. Yesler, who was looking for a mill site, and who was admitted to the water-front by a re-arrangement of the contig- uous boundaries of Boren and Maynard. 62


61 Maynard came to Or. in Sept. 1850, and took his claim under the dona- tion law as a married man, and as a resident prior to Dec. 1850, which would have entitled him to 640 acres. But on the 22d of Dec., 1852, he obtained from the Or. leg. a divorce from Lydia A. Maynard, whom he had married in Vt, on the 28th of August, 1828, and left in Ohio when he emigrated. In Jan. 1853 he married Catherine Broshears, and soon after gave the required notice of settlement on his claim, acknowledging his previous marriage, but asserting that his first wife died Dec. 24, 1852. In due course a certificate was issued to Maynard and wife, giving the west half of the claim to the hus- band and the east half to the wife .. But the commissioner of the general land- office held that the heirs of Lydia A. Maynard should have had the east half, she being his wife when he settled on the land, and until the following Dec. These matters coming to the ears of the first Mrs Maynard and her two sons, they appeared and laid claim to the land, and the case being considered upon the proofs, neither Lydia A. Maynard nor Catherine Maynard received any part of the land, the claim of the first being rejected because she had acquired no rights by her presence in the country previous to the divorce, nor could she inherit as a widow after the divorce-an iniquitous decision, by the way, where no notice has been served-and the claim of the second being rejected because she was not the wife of Maynard on the Ist of Dec., 1850, nor within one year thereafter. The 320 acres which should have belonged to one of these women reverted to the government. Maynard died in 1873. Puget Sound Dispatch, March 14 and April 18, 1872; Seattle Intelligencer, March 17, 1873, Feb. 10, 1877; S. F. Alta, March 2, 1873.


62 Yesler was a native of Maryland; went to Ohio in 1832, and emigrated thence in 1851 to Or., intending to put up a saw-mill at Portland; hut the wreck of the General Warren at the mouth of the river and other fancied drawbacks caused him to go to Cal. and to look around for some land in that state; but meeting a sailing-master who had been in Puget Sound, he learned enough of the advantages of this region for a lumbering establishment to de- cide him to go there, and to settle at Seattle. Yesler's was the first of the saw-mills put up with a design to establish a trade with S. F., and being also at a central point on the Sound, became historically important. The cook- house belonging to it, though only a 'dingy-looking hewed-log building about 25 feet square, a little more than one story high with a shed addition on the rear,' was for a number of years the only place along the cast shore of the Sound where comfortable entertainment could be had. 'Many an old l'uget Sounder,' aays a correspondent of the Puget Sound Weekly, 1866, 'remembers the happy hours, jolly nights, strange encounters, and wild scenes he has enjoyed around the broad fireplace and hospitable board of Yesler's cook- house.' During the Indian war it was a rendezvous for the volunteers; it was a resort of naval officers; a judge-Lander-had his office in a corner of it; for a time the county auditor'a office was there; it had served for town-hall, court-house, jail, military headquarters, storehouse, hotel, and church. Elec-


25


DECADENCE OF NEW YORK.


Before proceeding to these decisive measures, the town-site company made a careful hydrographic sur- vey of the bay, Bell and Boren paddling the canoe while Denny took the soundings. On the 23d of May, 1853, the town plat was filed for record,63 Bell keep- ing his claim separate, from which it was long called Belltown. Being really well situated, and midway between Port Townsend and Olympia, it rewarded its founders by a steady growth and by becoming the county seat of King county. Its population in 1855 was about three hundred.


The embryo city of New York never advanced be- yond a chrysalidecondition; but after having achieved a steam saw-mill, a public house, and two or three stores, and after having changed its name to Alki, an Indian word signifying in the future, or by and by, which was both name and motto, it gave way to its more fortunate rival. It had a better landing than Seattle at that time, but a harbor that was ex- posed to the winds, where vessels were sometimes blown ashore, and was otherwise inferior in position.64 Terry, at the end of two years, removed to Seattle, where he died in 1867.65 Low went to California and the east, but finally returned to Puget Sound and settled in Seattle.


In the spring of 1853 there arrived from the Wil- lamette, where they had wintered, David Phillips 66


tions, social parties, and religious services were held under its roof. The first sermon preached in King co. was delivered there by Clark, and the first suit at law, which was the case of the mate of the Franklin Adams for selling the ship's stores on his own account, was held here before Justice Maynard, who dis- charged the accused with an admonition to keep his accounts more correctly thereafter. For all these memories the old building was regretted when in 1865 it was demolished to make room for more elegant structures. Yesler's Wash. Ter., MS., 13. D. S. Smith of Seattle is, though not the first scttler at that place, the first of the men who finally settled there to have visited the place, on a whaling-vessel which entered the Sound in 1837. Seattle Pac. Tribune, June 24, 1877; Puget Sound Dispatch, July 8, 1876.


63 Morse's Wash. Ter., MS., ii. 6.


64 Ellicott's Puget Sound, MS., 19.


65 Terry had a trading-post at Alki, as well as Low and S. M. Holderness. In 1856 he married Mary J. Russell, daughter of S. W. Russell, of the White River settlement. After her husband's death in 1873, Mrs Terry married W. H. Gilliam, but died in 1875.


66 Phillips was a native of Penn., but for some years anterior to 1852


26


THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.


and F. Matthias from Pennsylvania, Dexter Horton and Hannah E., his wife, and Thomas Mercer, from Princetown, Illinois,67 S. W. Russell, T. S. Russell, Hillery Butler, E. M. Smithers, John Thomas, and H. A. Smith. They came by the way of the Cowlitz and Olympia, whence they were carried down the Sound on board the schooner Sarah Stone, which landed at Alki, where the six last mentioned re- mained for the summer, removing to Seattle in the autumn. J. R. Williamson, George Buckley, Charles Kennedy, and G. N. McConaha and family, also arrived about this period, and settled at Seattle. A daughter born to Mrs McConaha in September was the first white native of King county.


There settled in the Dwamish or White River Valley, not far from the spring of 1853, William Ballston, D. A. Neely, J. Buckley, A. Hogine, J. Harvey, William Brown, a Mr. Nelson, and on Lake Washington 68 E. A. Clark.


The pursuits of the first settlers of Seattle and the adjacent country were in no wise different from those of Olympia, Steilacoom, and Port Townsend. Tim- ber was the most available product of this region, and to getting out a cargo the settlers on the Dwamish River first applied themselves. Oxen being scarce in the new settlements previous to the opening of a


resided in Iowa. He went into mercantile business in partnership with Horton, having a branch house in Olympia. They dissolved in 1861, and Phillips took the Olympia business. In 1870 they reunited in a banking establishment in Seattle. In the mean time Phillips was elected to several county offices, and 3 times to a seat in the legislature of Wash. He was at the time of his death, March 1872, president of the pioneer society of W. T. Olympia Transcript, March 9, 1872; Seattle Intelligencer, March 11, 1872.


67 Mercer, in Wash. Ter. Sketches, MS., 1-3.


68 At this time the lakes iu the vicinity of Seattle were not named. In 1854 the settlers held an informal meeting and decided to call the larger one Washington and the smaller Union, because it united at times the former with the bay. Mercer, in Wash. Ter. Sketches, MS., 6. It is not improbable, says Murphy, in Appleton's Journal, 11, 1877, that the government will open a canal between lake Washington and the Sound, which could be done for $1,000,000, in order to make the lake a naval station. It is 25 miles long, 3 to 5 miles wide, an altitude above sea-level of 18 feet, sufficient depth to float the heaviest ships, and is surrounded by timber, iron, and coal, which natural advantages it is believed will sooner or later make it of importance to the United States. Puget Sound Dispatch, July 8, 1876; Victor's Or. and Wash., 246.


27


NEW DUNGENESS.


road from Walla Walla over the Cascade Mountains, there was much difficulty in loading vessels, the crew using a block and tackle to draw the timber to the landing.69


They cultivated enough land to insure a plentiful food supply, and looked elsewhere for their profits, a policy which the inhabitants of the Puget Sound region continued to pursue for a longer period than wisdom would seem to dictate. Many were engaged in a petty trade, which they preferred to agriculture, and especially the eastern-born men, who were nearly all traders. To this preference, more than to any other cause, should be attributed the insignificant improve- ments in the country for several years.


About the time that Seattle was founded, B. I. Mad- ison settled at New Dungeness, near the mouth of the Dungeness River. He was a trader in Indian goods and contraband whiskey, and I fear had many imi- tators. His trade did not prevent him from taking a land-claim. Soon afterward came D. F. Brown- field, who located next to Madison. During the sum- mer, John Thornton, Joseph Leary, George B. Moore, John Donnell, J. C. Brown, and E. H. McAlmond set- tled in the immediate vicinity of New Dungeness, and engaged in cutting timber to load vessels. They had four yokes of oxen, and were therefore equipped for the business. That season, also, George H. Ger- rish located himself near this point, and kept a trad- ing-post for the sale of Indian goods.


In the following spring came the first family, Thomas Abernethey and wife. C. M. Bradshaw 70 and


69 The first vessel loaded at the head of Elliott Bay was the Leonesa, which took a cargo in the winter of 1851-2. I have among my historical correspond- ence a letter written by Eli B. Maple concerning the first settlement of King county, who says that his brother Samuel helped to load this vessel in Gig Harbor, which he thinks was the first one loaded on the Sound, in which he is mistaken, as I have shown. This member of the Maple family did not arrive until the autumn of 1852, when he joined his father and brother in the Dwamish Valley.


TU Charles M. Bradshaw was born in Penn., came to Or. with the immigra- tion of 1852, and settled soon afterward near New Dungeness, on Squim's prairie,


28


THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.


several other single men followed, namely, S. S. Ir- vine, Joseph Leighton, Eliot Cline, John Bell, and E. Price. Irvine and Leighton settled east of New Dungeness on Squim Bay. The second family in the vicinity was that of J. J. Barrow, who first settled on Port Discovery Bay in 1852, but removed after a year or two to Dungeness. Port Discovery had other settlers in 1852-3, namely, James Kaymer, John E. Burns, John F. Tukey, Benjamin Gibbs, Richard Gibbs, James Tucker," Mr Boswell, and Mr Gallagher.


There was also one settler on Protection Island in 1853, James Whitcom, who, however, abandoned his claim after a few months of lonely occupation.72 Chi- macum Valley had also one settler, R. S. Robinson, in 1853.


There was no part of the country on the Sound that settled up so rapidly during the period of which I am speaking as Whidbey Island. This preference was


where he remained until 1867, when he removed to Port Townsend. He studied law, and was admitted to practice in 1864, after which he was several times elected to the legislature, and twice made attorney of the 3d judicial district, as well as member of the constitutional convention in 1878. Hash. Sketches, MS., 59.


71 Tucker was murdered in 1863. It will appear in the course of this his- tory that murders were very frequent. Many of them were committed hy the Indians from the northern coast, who came up the strait in their canocs, and cruising about, either attacked isolated settlements at night, or seized and killed white men travelling about the Sound in canoes. The first vessel that came into the harbor of New Dungeness for a cargo was the John Adams, in the spring of 1853. Jewell, her master, started with his steward to go to Port Townsend in a small boat, and never was seen again. The Indians ad- mitted that two of their people had murdered the two men, but as it could not be shown that they were dead, the accused were never tried. McAlmond, who was a competent ship-iraster, sailed the vessel to S. F. An eccentric man, who obtained the soubriquet of Arkansaw Traveller by his peregrinations in the region of Dungeness in 1854, was shot and killed by Indians while alone in his canoe. The crime came to light, and the criminals were tried and sentenced; but one of them died of disease, and the other escaped by an error in the entry of judgment. Bradshaw, in Wash. Sketches, MS., 65-6.


72 Protection Island was so named by Vancouver because it lay in front of and protected l'ort Discovery from the north-west winds. The first actual or permanent settlers on this island were Winfield Ebey, brother of I. N. Ebey, and George Ebey, his cousin, who took elaims there in 1834. Ebey's Journal, MS. Whitcom was a native of Ottawa, Canada, who came to Puget Sound in 1852, and first located himself on the Port Gamble side of Foul- weather Bluff -- also named by Vancouver-in the service of the milling com- pany at that place, putting the first fire under the boilers of Port Gamble mill. Hc left the Sound in 1834, but returned in 1872.


29


WHIDBEY ISLAND SETTLEMENT.


owing to the fact that the island contained about six thousand acres of excellent prairie land, and that the western men, who located on farms, were accustomed to an open country. No matter how rich the river- bottoms or poor the plains, they chose the plains rather than clear the river-bottoms of the tangled jungles which oppressed them. Whidbey Island pos- sessed, besides its open lands, many charms of scenery and excellences of climate, together with favorable position; and hither came so many of the first agri- culturalists that it was the custom to speak of the island as the garden of Puget Sound. Its first per- manent settlers were, as I have mentioned, Isaac N. Ebey and R. H. Lansdale.73


Lansdale first fixed his choice upon Oak Harbor, but removed to Penn Cove in the spring of 1852. The legislature of 1852-3 organized Island county, and fixed the county seat at Coveland, on Lansdale's claim. He continued to reside there, practising med- icine, until he was made Indian agent, in December 1854, when his duties took him east of the Cascade


73 I. N. Ebey was from Mo., and came to Or. in 1848 just in time to join the first gold-hunters in Cal., where he was moderately successful. His wife, Rebecca Whitby, née Davis, came to join her husband, bringing with her their two sons, Eason and Ellison, in 1851, in company with the Crockett family. Mrs Ebey, a beautiful and refined lady, was the first white woman ou Whid- bey Island. A danghter was born to her there. She died of consumption Sept. 29, 1853, and Ebey married for his second wife Mrs Emily A. Sconee. In 1853 George W. Ebey, a young man and cousin to I. N., immigrated to Puget Sound in company with other cousins named Royal. In 1834 came Jacob Ebey, father of I. N., his mother, whose maiden name was Sarah Blue, born in Va, his brother Winfield Scott Ebey, two sisters, Mrs Mary Wright and Ruth Ebey, two children of Mrs Wright, whose husband was in Cal., and George W. Beam, who afterward married the daughter, later Mrs Almira N. Enos of S. F. Mrs Enos bas placed in my hands a series of journals kept by members of her family, covering a period between April 1854 and April 1864, in which year Winfield died of consumption. Jacob Ebey, who died in Feb. 1862, was born in Penn. Oct. 22, 1793. He served in the war of 1812, under Gen. Harrison. He emigrated to Ill. in 1832, and in the Black Hawk war commanded a company in the same battalion with Captain Abraham Lin- coln. Subsequently he removed to Adair county, Missouri, whence the fam- ily came to Washington. The death of his wife, which occurred in 1859, was hastened by the shocking fate of her son, Isaac N., who was murdered at his own home by the Haidah Indians, in one of their mysterious ineursions, in the summer of 1857, concerning which I shall have more to say in another place. George W. Beam died in 1866. This series of deaths makes the history of this pioneer family as remarkable as it is melancholy.


30


THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.


Mountains, where he remained for some years.™4 The other settlers of 1851 were Uric Friend, Martin Taft- son, William Wallace and family, James Mounts, Milton Mounts, Robert S. Bailey, Patrick Doyle, and G. W. Sumner. In 1852 came Walter Crock- ett,75 with his son John and family, and five other children, Samuel, Hugh, Charles, Susan, and Wal- ter, Jr, Judah Church, John Chondra, Benjamin Welcher, Lewis Welcher, Joseph S. Smith and fam- ily, S. D. Howe, G. W. L. Allen, Richard B. Hol- brook, born and bred near Plymouth Rock, George Bell, Thomas S. Davis, John Davis, John Alexander and family, Mr Bonswell and family, N. D. Hill,75 Humphrey Hill, W. B. Engle, Samuel Maylor, Thomas Maylor, Samuel Libbey, Captain Eli Hatha- way, and Mr Baltic.




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