History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889, Part 6

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 6
USA > Montana > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 6
USA > Washington > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 6

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).

In the spring of 1853 the brig J. C. Cabot, Dryden master, brought to the island from Portland John Kellogg, James Busby, Thomas Hastie, Henry Ivens, John Dickenson, all of whom had families, Mrs Re- becca Maddox and five children,77 Mrs Grove Terry and daughter Chloe, R. L. Doyle, who married Miss Terry, Nelson Basil, and A. Woodard, who subse- quently went to Olympia. Others who settled on Whidbey Island in 1853 were Edward Barrington,78 Robert C. Hill, Charles H. Miller, Nelson Miller, Captain Thomas Coupe, who founded Coupeville, John Kenneth, Isaac Powers, Captain William Rob-

74 Richard Hyatt Lansdale was born in Md in 1812, but bred in Ohio, and removed to Ind., theu to Ill., and finally to Mo. in 1846. In 1849 he came to Or. via Cal., entering the Columbia in Oct. He was first auditor of Clarke co., and first postmaster north of the Columbia. He purchased half of Short's town site at Vancouver, which he lost and abandoned.

75 Walter Crockett, Sen., died Nov. 25, 1864, aged 83 years. Seattle Intel- ligencer, Dec. 6, 1869.

76 Nathaniel D. Hill was born in Pa in 1824, and came to Cal. in 1850; was employed in the S. F. custom-house; went to the mines and on a farm in So- noma Valley, but finally embarked with his brothers for Puget Sound, and settled on Whidbey Island. Wash. Sketches, MS., 79-81.

77 Mrs Maddox married L. M. Ford of Skagit River in November 1855. Id., 41.

78 Edward Barrington died in Jan. 1883. Port Townsend Argus, Jan. 26, 1883. Coupe died in 1877.

BELLINGHAM BAY.

ertson,79 Charles Seybert, Thomas Lyle, all of whom had families, Henry McClurg, Captain B. P. Barstow, Edward Grut, Lawrence Grenman, Marshall Camp- bell, Jacob S. Hindbaugh, George W. Ebey, and Charles Thompson.

When I have added the names of Samuel Hancock, John Y. Sewell, Thomas Cramey, John M. Izeth, Dana H. Porter,80 Winfield S. Ebey, and George W. Beam, who settled the following year, I have enu- merated most of the men who at any time have long resided upon Whidbey Island, so quickly were its lands taken up, and so constant have been its first settlers.

Settlement was extended in 1852 to Bellingham Bay. William Pattle, while looking for spar timber among the islands of the Fuca sea, landed in this bay, and while encamped upon the beach observed frag- ments of coal, which led to the discovery of a deposit. Pattle posted the usual notice of a claim, and went away to make arrangements for opening his coal mine. During his absence Henry Roder,81 who was looking

79 Robertson was born in Norfolk, Va in 1809. At the age of 27 he began sea-going, and first came to S. F. in command of the bark Creole. He was afterward in command of the brig Tarquina, which he owned, and which brought him to Puget Sound in 1852. Taking a claim on Whidbey Island, he continued to trade to S. F. until 1855, when he sent his vessel to the S. I. in charge of his first officer, who sold her and poeketed the proceeds. Roh- ertson lost $30,000 by this transaction, but had a competency remaining. He was first keeper of the light erected in 1860 on Admiralty Head, on the west coast of the island. Id., 30-1.

80 Porter was inspector of spars at Port Ludlow some years later. He died in March 1880.

81 Roder was a native of Ohio, and came to Cal. in 1850. His partner, R. V. Peabody, and himself had the usual adventures in the mines, narrowly escaping death at the hands of the famous Joaquin Murieta. After spending two years in mining and trading, Roder and Peabody went to Or. City to engage in salmon-fishing, but were diverted from their purpose by the high price of lumber consequent upon the great fire in S. F., and determined to build a saw-mill. Visiting Puget Sound with this object in view, they were led by information obtained at Port Townsend to erect their mill at Belling- ham Bay, on a stream which dried up as soon as the winter rains were over, a misfortune which, added to a fall in the price of lumber, nearly ruined Roder and Peabody. These facts, with a general account of the history of the lower sound and Bellingham Bay, are obtained from Roder's Bellingham Bay, MS., an excellent authority, and also from a well-written autograph Sketch by Edward Eldridge, who settled at the same time with Roder. Roder,

THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.

for a place to establish a saw-mill, arrived from San Francisco on the schooner William Allen, with R. V. Peabody, Edward Eldridge,82 H. C. Page, and Wil- liam Utter, Henry Hewitt and William Brown. Roder, Peabody, and a millwright named Brown, whom they found at Olympia, formed the Whatcom Milling Company, taking the Indian name of the place where their mill was situated as a designation. Hewitt and William Brown, who were engaged in getting out logs for the mill, in the summer of 1853, discovered coal on the land adjoining Pattle's claim, and sold their discovery for $18,000, Roder and Pea- body having just abandoned this claim for one more heavily timbered.83 About the same time came L. N. Collins, Alexander McLean, Mr Roberts, and Mr Lyle, with their families, which completes the catalogue of American settlers in this region in 1853.

In the autumn of 1852, on account of devastating fires in California, and the great immigration of that year to Oregon, a milling fever possessed men of a speculative turn, and led to the erection of several saw-mills besides those at Seattle and Bellingham Bay. In March 1853 the Port Ludlow mill was erected by W. T. Sayward 84 on a claim taken up by J. K. Thorndike the previous year. It was followed the same season by the Port Gamble mill at the Eldridge, and Peabody still reside at Whatcom on Bellinghamn Bay. Roder married Elizabeth Austin of Ohio.

82 Eldridge was a sea-faring man, and shipped at N. Y. for S. F., where he arrived in 1849, and went to the mines. Not making the expected fortune, he joined the P. M. Steamshin Tennessee in 1850, but married and returned to mining, which he followed for a year, when on going to S. F. to take pas- sage to Australia he met Roder, a former acquaintance, and was persuaded to accompany him to Puget Sound. Mrs Eldridge was the first white woman in the Bellingham Bay settlement. Eldridge has occupied some official posi- tions, and was a member of the constitutional convention of 1978.

83 In a chapter on minerals, I shall give this history more particularly.

84 Sayward was a native of Maine. He came to Cal. via Mexico, arriving in the spring of 1849. The narrative of his business experience in 1849-51 forms a story of unusual interest, which is contained in a manuscript by him- sclf called Pioneer Remeniscences, very little of which, however, relates to Washington. The mill which he built was leased in 1858 to Amos Phinney & Co., who subsequently purchased it. See also Sylvester's Olympia, MS., 21, and Wash. Sketches, MS., 42.

CHINOOK AND BAKER CITY.

entrance to Hood Canal, erected by the Puget Mill Company, the site being selected by A. J. Talbot. Almost simultaneously Port Madisonand Port Blakely were taken up for mill sites, and somewhat earlier C. C. Terry and William H. Renton erected a mill at Alki, which was removed two or three years later to Port Orchard.85

From 1847 to 1853 there had been a steady if slow march of improvement in that portion of the terri- tory adjacent to the Columbia and Cowlitz rivers and the Pacific ocean. A few families had settled on Lewis River, among whom was Columbia Lancaster, whom Governor Abernethy had appointed supreme judge of Oregon in 1847, vice Thornton, resigned, but who removed from Oregon City to the north side of the Columbia in 1849. In the extreme south-west corner of what is now Pacific county were settled in 1848 John Edmunds, an American, James Scar- borough, an Englishman, John E. Pinknell, and a Cap- tain Johnson; nor does it appear that there were any other residents before the returning gold-miners- being detained now and then at Baker Bay, or com- ing by mistake into Shoalwater Bay-discovered the advantages which these places offered for business. William McCarty had a fishery and a good zinc house at Chinook in 1852; and Washington Hall was post- master at that place in the same year, and it is probable they settled there somewhat earlier. In 1850, the fame of these places having begun to spread, Elijah White, who had returned to the Pacific coast, essayed to build upon Baker Bay a town which he named Pacific City, but which enjoyed an existence86 of only a year or two.

85 Yesler's Wash. Ter., MS., 4-5. Port Orchard was named after an officer of Vancouver's ship Discovery, May 24, 1792. See also Ellicott's Puget Sound, MS .. 24.

86 Lawson. in his Autobiography, MS., 35, gives some account of this enterprise. He says that White was the originator of it. 'I do not know,' he observes, 'whether he made any money out of the scheme, but he did suc- ceed in making a number of dupes, among whom was James D. Holman.' HIST. WASH .- 3

THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.

That great expectations did attach to Pacific City was made apparent by a petition signed by A. A. Skinner and 250 others to have it made a port of entry and delivery.87

About the same time that Pacific City was at its best, Charles J. W. Russell, who was engaged in trade there, settled on Shoalwater Bay, and turned his at- tention to taking oysters, with which the bay was found to be inhabited. In 1851 Russell introduced Shoalwater Bay oysters into the San Francisco mar- ket, carrying them down by the mail-steamer. In the autumn Captain Fieldstead took a load of oysters to San Francisco, which arrived in a damaged condi- tion. Anthony Ludlum then fitted out the schooner Sea Serpent for Shoalwater Bay, which succeeded in saving a cargo, and a company was formed to carry on a trade in oysters, composed of Alexander Hanson, George G. Bartlett, Garrett Tyron, Mark Winant, John Morgan, and Frank Garretson, who purchased the schooner Robert Bruce, after which the town of Bruceport was named,89 and entered into the business of supplying the California market. In the autumn of 1852, besides the above-named persons, there were at Shoalwater Bay Thomas Foster, Richard Hillyer, John W. Champ, Samuel Sweeny, Stephen Marshall,

Holman had expended $28,000 in erecting and furnishing a hotel. White represented that there might be found at Pacific City a park filled with deer, school-houses, handsome residences, and other attractions. A newspaper was to be started there by a Mr Shephard; a Mr Hopkins was engaged to teach in the imaginary school-house, and others victimized in a similar manner. Holman, who was the most severe sufferer, vacated the hotel and took a claim in the neighborhood, which the government subsequently reserved for military purposes. Twenty-nine years afterward Holman received $25,000 for his claim, and had land enough left to lay out a sea-side resort, which he called Ilwaco. Sac. Transcript, June 29, 1850; Or. Spectator, Aug. 22, 1850; U. S. Statutes at Large, xx. 604. Holman was born in Ky in 1814, bred in Tenn., and came to Or. in 1846. Morse's Wash. Ter., MS., ii. 88-9.

87 Or. Statesman, April 4, 1850; S. F. Pacific News, Aug. 1, 1850; S. F. Courier, Sept. 21 and Oct. 2, 1850.

88 I take this account from an article published in the S. F. Bulletin, where it is said the schooner was burned while lying at her landing, and the com- pany forced to go ashore, where they encamped on the south side of North Bay, and from being known as the Bruce company, gave that name to the place as it grew up. Evans' Ilist. Mem., 21; Pac. R. R. Reports, i. 465.

1216705

SHOALWATER BAY.

Charles W. Deuter, Richard J. Milward, A. E. St John, Walter Lynde, and James G. Swan.89

A transient company of five men were at the same time engaged in cutting a cargo of piles for San Fran- cisco, and during the autumn Joel L. Brown, Samuel Woodward, J. Henry Whitcomb, Charles Stuart, Joel and Mark Bullard, and Captain Jackson, of the immi- gration of that year, settled on the bay. Brown's party cut a wagon-road across the portage between Baker and Shoalwater bays. Brown intended erect- ing a trading-house and laying out a town, but died before he had fairly got to work,90 at his house on the Palux River. Later in the same season Charles Stuart took a claim on the Willopah River; and David K. Weldon and family from San Francisco- Mrs Weldon being the first white woman in this set- tlement-built a residence and trading-house at the mouth of the Necomanche or North River, besides

89 Author of The North-west Coast, or Three Years' Residence in Washington Territory, which, besides being an entertaining narrative, is a valuable an- thority on Indian customs and ethnology. Swan was born in Medford, Mass., Jan. 11, 1818; a son of Samuel Swan, an East Indian trader, who was lost on Minot's ledge, Cohasset, Mass., in 1823, while on his homeward voyage from the west African coast with a cargo of palm-oil, ivory, and gold-dust, in the brig Hope Still of Boston. His maternal uncle, William Tufts, was super- cargo for Theodore Lyman of Boston, in the ship Guatimozin, in 1806, and was wrecked on Seven Mile beach, New Jersey, on his return, Feb. 3, 1810. Stories of the Nootka, Neal Bay, and Chinook chiefs were familiar to him in his childhood, and his interest in the aboriginal inhabitants was greater than that of a casual observer, as his remarks are more happily descriptive or scientific. He left Boston in the winter of 1849, in the ship Rob Roy, Thomas Holt, arriving in S. F. in the spring of 1850, where he bought an interest in the steamboat T'ehama, running to Marysville, acting as purser of the boat. He was concerned in other enterprises with Farwell and Curtis, until becom- ing acquainted with C. J. W. Russell, who invited him to make a visit to Shoalwater Bay, he determined to remain, and take a claim at the mouth of the Querquelin Creek, where he resided until 1856, when he went east and published his hook, returning in 1859 to Port Townsend. In 1862 be was appointed teacher to the Makah Indians at Neah Bay, and filled that position for four years, when he again went east and published a second book on the Makah Indians, with a treatise on their language, which was issued as authoritative by the Smithsonian Institution in 1869, as was also another paper on the Haidah Indians of Queen Charlotte Island. In 1875 Swan was ap- pointed commissioner to collect articles of Indian manufacture for the national museum, which were exhibited at the great exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia, besides having occupied many public places of more honor than profit. He was later a practising lawyer of Port Townsend. These facts, with much more for which I have not space, I find in his autograph Sketches of Washington Territory, MS., in my collection.

90 Swan's N. W. Coast, 64.

THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.

which he erected, in company with George Watkins, the first saw-mill in this part of the territory in 1852-3. Woodward settled on the Willopah River, ten miles from its mouth, being the first to locate on that stream.º1 Whitcom was the second,92 followed by William Cushing, Gardiner Crocker, Soule, Christian, and Geisy.

On the Boisfort prairie, previously settled by Pierre Chelle, a Canadian half-breed, C. F. White was the first American settler in 1852.93 From 1851 to 1853 near Claquato settled H. N. Stearns, H. Buchanan, Albert Purcell, A. F. Tullis, L. A. Davis, Cyrus White, and Simeon Bush.

In the winter of 1850-1 John Butler Chapman, from the south side of the Columbia, made a settle- ment on Gray Harbor, and laid out the town of Che- halis City. But the undertaking languished, getting no further than the erection of one house, when Chap- man, finding himself too remote from affairs in which he was interested, removed to the Sound, and with his son, John M. Chapman, took a claim adjoining Balch at Steilacoom, and competed with him for the dis- tinction of founding a city at this point, his claim finally relapsing to the condition of a farmn. In 1852 J. L. Scammon, from Maine by way of California, set- tled several miles up the Chehalis from Gray Harbor, where Montesano later was placed, with four others

91 Morse's Wash. Ter., MS., ii. 74; Swan's N. W. Coast, 65.

92 J. H. Whitcom was born in Vt in 1824, removed to Ohio at the age of 13 years, married in that state, and went to Ill. in 1845, whence he came to Or. in 1847, and to Shoalwater Bay in 1852. Morse, who has expended much labor in searching out pioneer families, says that in 1854 S. P. Soule, S. A. Soule, E. Soule, Charles Soule, Christian, and Geisy settled in the vicinity of Shoalwater Bay. The Geisy families, of which there were two, were mem- bers of the communistic association of Pennsylvania farmers, who had emi- grated to Wisconsin; but being dissatisfied, had sent this Geisy as agent to look out lands in Or. or Wash. He selected land on the Boisfort prairie, near Bul- lard, Crocker, and Woodward, and soon after brought out 40 families. The Geisy families, however, having met with several losses by death from acci- dent and natural causes, and being unable to gain control of Woodward's landing on the river, which they desired for their community purposes, be- came discouraged and left the country.

#3 North Pacific Coast, Jan. 15, 1880.

WARBASSPORT AND CASCADE.

who did not remain. In the two succeeding years the lesser Chehalis Valley was settled up rapidly, connecting with the settlements on the upper Che- halis made at an earlier period by H. N. Stearns, H. Buchanan, Albert Purcell, A. F. Tullis, and L. A. Davis; and the Cowlitz Valley, which was also being settled, but more slowly.

Jonathan Burbee, who removed to the mouth of the Cowlitz in 1848, was drowned on the Columbia bar in the winter of 1851-2, when a schooner which he had loaded with potatoes for California94 was lost; but his family remained. Next after him came, in 1849, H. D. Huntington, Nathaniel Stone, Seth Catlin, David Stone, James Redpath, James Porter, and R. C. Smith, the three first named having large families, now well-known in Oregon and Washington. Their claims extended from near the mouth of the Cowlitz on the west side for a distance of two or three miles.

The next settlement was at Cowlitz landing, made by E. D. Warbass,95 in July 1850, when Warbassport was founded by laying off a town and opening a trading- house. About the same time a settlement was made on the north side of the Columbia at the lower cas- cades, by George Drew, who had a town surveyed called Cascade, where a trading-house was established by George L. and George W. Johnson, F. A. Chenoweth and T. B. Pierce. Contemporaneously, at the upper cascades, Daniel F. and Putnam Bradford, B. B. Bishop, Lawrence W. Coe, and others had settled,

94 Swan says that Captain Johnson, John Dawson, and another man were drowned together while erossing the Columbia in a boat; that before this, McCarty was drowned while crossing the Wallaeut River, returning from a visit to Johnson, and that Scarborough died before Johnson at his home. This was all previous to 1854.

93 Warbass was born in N. J. in 1825, came to Cal. in 1849, where he was an auctioneer at Sac., but his health failing there, he visited Or., and ended by settling on the Cowlitz, though he explored the Snohomish and Snoqualimich rivers in 1851, and in 1853 assisted Howard to explore for coal. He was post- master under postal agent Coe in that year, and continued to reside on the Cowlitz until 1855, when he volunteered as captain of a company to fight the Indians. He became a post sutler afterward at Bellingham Bay and San Juan Island, where he then resided, and was county auditor and member of the legislature from San Juan county. Morse's Wash. Ter., MS., ii. 54; Alta California, Nov. 2, 1852.

THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS.

and the Bradfords had also established a place of trade.96

These were the people, together with some who have yet to be mentioned, and others who may never be mentioned, who had spread themselves over the western portion of Washington previous to its organ- ization as a territory, concerning which I shall speak presently.97

96 Or. Spectator, Aug. 28, 1850; Coke's Ride, 319.

97 I have gathered the following names of the pioneers of 1852 not men- tioned in the foregoing pages: Rev. Daniel Bagley, Rev. D. R. McMillan, R. M. Hathaway, Smith Hays, Logan Hays, Gilmore Hays, Stephen Hodgdon, Samuel Holmes, John Harvey, Richard B. Holbrook (married Mer's Sylvester, née Lowe, of Maine), John Hogue, Levi L. Gates, Charles Graham, William H. Gillan and family, Daniel B. Fales, wife and children, Felt, Cortland Etheridge, W. B. Engle, Shirley Ensign, Joel Clayton, Joseph Cushman, Levi Douthitt, Frank P. Dugan, Gideon Bromfield, George A. Barnes and wife, Anna, Thomas Briggs, J. C. Brown, John Buckley, James Allen, G. W. L. Allen, W. B. D. Newman, William Jarmin, Daniel Kaiser, A. W. Moore, John W. McAllister, Caleb Miller, Thomas Monroe, Stephen P. McDonald, Joseph Mace, William Metcalfe, Samuel McCaw, F. McNatt, Abner Martin, Asa W. Pierce, F. K. Perkins, James Riley, B. Ross and family, Daniel Stewart, Samuel D. Smith, David Shelton and wife, Christina, M. C. Sim- mons, James Taylor, Thomas Tallentire and family, Amos F. Tullis, J. K. Thorndyke, William Turnbull, J. S. Turner, John Vail, Charles Vail, D. K. Welden, H. R. Woodward, G. K. Willard, Benjamin Welcher, Lewis Welcher, William C. Webster and family, Samuel Woodward, John Walker, James R. Watson, B. F. Yantis, Judah Church, from Pontiac, Michigan, died in 1853, aged 60 years. William Rutledge, who settled on Black River, near Lake Washington, was also an immigrant of 1852. He died June 1, 1872, aged 78 years.

CHAPTER II.

POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT.

1845-1853.

PUBLIC MEETINGS-SETTLERS VERSUS THE PUGET SOUND ACRICULTURAL COM- PANY-REPRESENTATION IN THE OREGON LEGISLATURE-MOVEMENTS TOWARD THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRITORY OF COLUMBIA- MEMORIAL TO CONGRESS-IF NOT A TERRITORY, THEN A STATE-QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLAND EXPEDITION-THE OREGON LEGISLATURE PETITION CONGRESS FOR A DIVISION OF TERRITORY-CONGRESS GRANTS THE PETI- TON-BUT INSTEAD OF COLUMBIA, THE NEW TERRITORY IS CALLED WASH- INGTON-OFFICERS APPOINTED-ROADS CONSTRUCTED-IMMIGRATION.

IN the previous chapter I have made the reader ac- quainted with the earliest American residents of the territory north of the Columbia, and the methods by which they secured themselves homes and laid the foundations of fortunes by courage, hardihood, fore- sight, by making shingles, bricks, and cradling-ma- chines, by building mills, loading vessels with timber, laying out towns, establishing fisheries, exploring for coal, and mining for gold. But these were private enterprises concerning only individuals, or small groups of men at most, and I come now to consider them as a body politic, with relations to the government of Oregon and to the general government.

The first public meeting recorded concerned claim- jumping, against which it was a protest, and was held in Lewis county, which then comprised all of the ter- ritory north of the Columbia and west of the Cascade Mountains not contained in Clarke county, and prob- ably at the house of John R. Jackson, June 11, 1847. The second was held at Tumwater November 5, 1848,

( 39 )

POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT.

and was called to express the sentiments of the Amer- ican settlers concerning the threatened encroachments of the Puget Sound Agricultural Association. "This fall," says an old settler, "the company conceived the design of making claim under the treaty for the immense tract called the Nisqually claim, lying south of the Nisqually River, and with that view drove a large herd of cattle across the river." The American residents, in a convention called to order by M. T. Simmons and presided over by William Packwood, passed a series of resolutions, a copy of which was pre- sented to W. F. Tolmie, the agent in charge of Fort Nisqually, by I. N. Ebey who had just arrived in the country, and Rabbeson, with the declaration that the Americans demanded the withdrawal of the Hud- son's Bay Company's herds to the north side of the Nisqually within one week from the day the notice was received.

The preamble set forth that the herds of the com- pany would soon consume all the vegetation of the country ranged by them, to the detriment of the set- tlers on the south or west side of the river; and that, as these cattle were wild, if suffered to mix with do- mesticated cattle they would greatly demoralize them. It was thereupon resolved that the Hudson's Bay Company had placed obstacles in the way of the Americans who first designed settling on Puget Sound-referring to the Simmons colony-using mis- representation and fraud to prevent them, and even threatening force; that they held the conduct of Tolmie censurable in endeavoring to prevent settlement by Americans on certain lands which he pretended were reserved by the terms of the treaty of 1846, although he knew they were not; that this assumption of right was only equalled by the baseness of the subterfuge by which the company was attempting to hold other large tracts by an apparent compliance with the organic land law of the territory-that is, by taking claims in the names of servants of the company who

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History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889, Part 6

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

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