An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington, Part 50

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.)
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1172

USA > Washington > Skagit County > An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 50
USA > Washington > Snohomish County > An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 50

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In the spring of 1856. Fort Ebey was abandoned. Many of the men who had constituted its garrison.

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SNOHOMISH COUNTY

enlisted in Captain Smalley's company, which was then being raised at Port Townsend and Dunginess, and which, with Captain Samuel Howe's Whidby island company and Captain Peabody's Whatcom county volunteers, constituted the Northern battal- ion. Colonel Ebey. the leader of the expedition, re- turned to his home on Whidby island, where on the night of the 11th of August, 1851, he was perfid- iously murdered by the dread Northern Indians. The perpetrators of the horrible outrage were a party of Kakes, who dwell as far north as the fifty-eighth parallel. During the day they had re- ceived kind treatment from their intended victim, who, coming out of his house that night in response to their call, was treacherously shot and then be- headed. U. S. Marshal George W. Corliss and his wife were guests in the Ebey home at the time. They escaped while the Indians were parleying, only to fall victims to these or other Northern Indians at a later date.

Quite a number of the Fort Ebey soldiers were so favorably impressed with the Snohomish valley during their winter's stay, that they later returned and became pioneer citizens of the county. There was, however, no permanent settlement by white men until 1859, if we except Rev. E. C. Chirouse's Catholic mission. Harry Spithill was here in 1858, in what is now the Tualco settlement, but he was in no sense a settler at that time, though he has been in the county ever since and is now a resident of Marysville. Others were here even before that (late, three white men being in Snohomish county in 1855.

Without violence to truth it may be said that the real settlement of the county began in 1859, and that its immediate cause was the inception of opera- tions on the proposed military road from Fort Steil- acoom to Fort Bellingham. A number of progress- ive men at the former point, watchful for an oppor- tunity to improve their condition and at the same time build up the country, conceived a plan of build- ing a ferry and a town at the point where the road would cross the Snohomish. Accordingly they formed a species of syndicate, consisting of Rogers & McCaw. Ferguson & Rabbeson and Colonel Wallace, all residents of Steilacoom. E. T. Cady was sent out as the representative of the first two; Hiel Barnes of Ferguson & Rabbeson and E. H. Tucker of Colonel Wallace ; and all were instructed to acquire and hold for their principals squatters' rights to the land in the vicinity of the proposed ferry. Cady took what later became known as the Sinclair portion of the Snohomish town site : Barnes what is now the western part of Snohomish and Tucker the land now known as the Harvey place on the south side of the river.

The military road was extended northward to a point beyond the Stillaguamish in 1859, but the next congress, instead of voting an appropriation for its completion to Fort Bellingham, concluded to abol-

ish both that and the fort at Steilacoom. This action naturally put an end to road building by the govern- ment.

The consequent set-back to the plans of the Steil- acoom syndicate caused all its members to withdraw except Rabbeson & Ferguson, the latter of whom came to the river about the first of March, 1860, and took the place Hiel Barnes had been holding for him and Rabbeson. A few others, mostly young men who had been engaged on the military road, settled on the river.

About simultaneous with the settlement of Cady, Barnes and Tucker at Snohomish City, was the founding of Mukilteo by Morris H. Frost, collector of customs at Port Townsend, who formed a partner- ship with J. D. Fowler, and sent him to that point with lumber and other materials for the purpose of building a store and hotel. For many years this was the only store on the sound between Seattle and Utsalady. The proprietors enjoyed a very large trade with Indians and settlers, and it was the hope of the friends of Mukilteo during the early days that, owing to its excellent location, it would de- velop into one of the leading commercial centers of the sound. But circumstances were against it ; its trade was drawn to other points and eventually the store was closed, though the hotel continued to be a favorite winter resort for loggers.

At the time of its first settlement the territory now constituting Snohomish county was included in Island county. E. C. Ferguson hunted up for the writer a copy of the returns of an election held in Snohomish City, July 9, 1860, in which seven- teen votes were polled, the names of the voters being as follows: Z. F. Wheat. John Cochrane, A. J. Bailey, Andrew Johnson, Jacob Summers, John C. Riley, T. P. Carter, Patrick Doyle, Salem Woods, Hiel Barnes, H. McClurg, Benjamin Young, George Allen, William Hawkins, Francis Dolan, Charles Short and E. C. Ferguson. It is believed that owing to the difficulty of reaching the island. the ballots of these men were never sent in to the county seat and never included in the official re- turns.

The pioneer settlers of the Snohomish and Sky- komish valleys early determined to seek a remedy for the inconvenience of their situation at such a great distance from their county seat. In the fall of 1860, a petition was circulated and received the signatures of twenty-five persons, praying that all that portion of Island county situated on the main- land between King and Whatcom counties (there was no Skagit county then) should be organized into a separate county to be known as Snohomish. While the bearer of this petition was on his way to Olympia he learned that the prayer of the petition- ers had already been granted. The facts were that potential political influences had been at work to secure a larger representation in the legislature for the northwestern part of the territory; therefore

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an act creating Snohomish county was readily passed. The date of its approval by the governor is January 14, 1861. Its full text is as follows :

AN ACT

TO CREATE AND ORGANIZE SNOHOMISHI COUNTY.

The Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Washing- ton do Enact as Follows :

Section 1. The boundaries of the county of Snoho- mish shall be as follows: Beginning at the southwest corner of the county of King, being at the point where township line north of township No. 26 strikes Puget sound waters, thence running due east, by said north line to township 26, to the summit of the Cascade mountains, thence northerly, by the said summit, till it strikes the easterly continuation of the eighth standard parallel, thence due west, by the said parallel, till it strikes the channel of the waters near the mouth and southward of the Skagit river, thence by the channel, running eastward of Camano or McDonald's island, and through Port Susan bay, and leaving Gedney's island to the east, thence southerly to the place of beginning.

Sec. 2. The county seat of said county shall be and remain at Muckelteo (or Point Elliot), in said county : Provided. That a majority of the legal voters of said county may locate their county seat at any other point in said county at the next general election.

Sec. 3. The following named officers of said county are hereby authorized and empowered to fulfill the various duties authorized by law. after being duly qualified ; to-wit : Sheriff. Jacob Summers; county commissioners, E. C. Ferguson, Henry MeClurg, John Harvey; auditor, J. D. Fowler: judge of probate, Charles Short; treasurer, John Harvey; and they shall continue to fulfill the said duties until the next general election and their successors become qualified. Passed January 14, 1861.

LYMAN SHAFFER,

Speaker of the House of Representatives. PAUL K. HUBBS, President of the Council.

A census of legal voters in the county in 1861 is now in the possession of E. C. Ferguson, who kindly loaned it to the writer. As there were no white women and children in the county at this time, all the residents were legal voters, and a list of them, if complete, would constitute a list of the earliest pioneers of Snohomish. These men were: H. McClurg, a farmer ; George Kelsey, farmer ; George Rouse, farmer; Henry Beachman, farmer : James Hayes, blacksmith ; Benjamin Young, farmer ; J. Bott, farmer : George Allen, farmer : William Haw- kins, farmer; George Walker. farmer: Francis Dolan, cabinet maker ; F. Fisher, farmer; George Saunders, carpenter : John Richard, farmer; Jacob Wilson, farmer ; Charles Short, farmer ; William Pollard, sailor : Samuel Howe, farmer: John Har- vey, farmer; J. P. Voisard, farmer ; E. T. Cady, machinist ; E. C. Ferguson, carpenter ; John Alex- ander, carpenter: Charles Thompson, farmer : A. Davis, farmer, and James Long, farmer. Of these E. C. Ferguson. George Kelsey, James Haves, George Saunders, George Walker, and William Hawkins are still in Snohomish county ; H. McClurg is in British Columbia and John Alexander is a resident of King county. The whereabouts of some

of the others are unknown, but the majority have been gathered unto their fathers.

This list. although purporting to cover the county, seems not to include the residents of Mukil- teo precinct, who, in the election of July 8, 1861, cast ten votes, the voters being Nicholas Nelson, Peter Landervale, H. D. Morgan, William King, Thomas Dickson, J. F. Guerin, J. D. Fowler, P. H. Ewell, Eugene Jasper and C. M. Stillwell.

As in most other parts of the Northwest so in the Puget sound country, the discoveries of the indomi- table prospector had an important influence upon early history. Late in the fifties, gold had been found in the Fraser river country of British Col- umbia. A rush followed bringing Whatcom county, Washington, into immediate prominence and causing a town of ten thousand inhabitants to spring up in a few months. The boom proved very ephemeral, however and the town disappeared as quickly as it had arisen, but thousands of disappointed fortune hunters were cast adrift, and many of them became citizens of the various counties of Puget sound.

A little later came the Similkameen excitement, also in British Columbia, which received not a little attention from the Puget sound settlements, includ- ing those on the Snohomish river. Late in the fall of 1859. E. C. Ferguson and others sent E. T. Cady and a man named Parsons up the Snohomish and Skykomish to spy out a trail across the mountains toward the new Mecca of the gold-hunting pil- grims. When they reached the summit of the range they returned, it being very late in the season and the snow too deep for the further pursuit of their project. The pass they visited has ever since been known as Cady's pass.

From original documents, it appears that no little interest was manifested in this scheme of building a trail across the mountains. A subscrip- tion dated February 29, 1860, in which the signers agreed to pay E. C. Ferguson and S. McCraw the sums set opposite their names to be applied to the opening of this trans-Cascade road, was signed by the following persons: W. H. Wallace, A. B. Rab- beson, S. McCraw & Rogers, Egbert H. Tucker, E. C. Ferguson, D. V. Waldron, A. F. Byrd and John H. Scranton, and the sums subscribed ranged from fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars and aggre- gated eleven hundred dollars. Another subscrip- tion to the same project was circulated in Port Townsend and received twenty-nine signatures, the pledges aggregating over nine hundred and eighty dollars in cash and property of various kinds. A long list of men, including three Indians, worked on the road from three to sixty-eight days. In Au- gust. 1860. Ferguson and Cady started for the mines with pack animals. Going over the mountains by Cady pass, they descended the Wenatchee river to the Columbia, and went up that to the Okanogan river, which they ascended to the vicinity of Okano- gan lake. They then crossed into the Kettle river

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country of British Columbia, and surveyed the min- ing situation. Finding the prospects rather dis- couraging, they soon returned. That ended the trail proposition.

In 1862 another census of Snohomish county was taken by Salem A. Woods, the sheriff, which showed the status of the county's population to be as follows :

NAME NATIVITY AGE

Frank Dolan, Albany, N. Y. 25

George Allen .. Mt. Rose, Scotland .35

Patrick MeDoyle,. Norfolk, Va. .33

Andrew Johnson, Sweden 33

William Hawkins, Vermillion 24

George Kelsey, L. I., N. Y. 33

George Rouse,

Ypsilanti, Mich. .25

Frank Buck, . Pennsylvania 27

Peter Voisard,

. Stark county, Ohio

.31

Charles Short, .St. Louis, Mo. 36

John Harvey Devonshire, England .30

George Walteer, .Cambridge Port, Mass ... 33

E. F. Cady,* . Utica, N. Y. .34

D. W. Browning, Holland 40

Jas. Hayes,

Liverpool, England .34

P. J. Fields,. .Franklin county, Mass ... 30

George Saunders, England .30

George Fisher Utica, N. Y. .39

John Richards,

France

George Walker, .39

John Faust,. . Holland .30

E. H. Thompson, Wisconsin .32

Rev. E. C. Chirouse,. . . France .40

George Blanchard,

France

.42

John Gould,.

New Jersey

.38

Thomas Dixon, Iowa

P. G. Landerville, Montreal, Canada 58

D. Brigham,

Waster county, Mass

.55

New York .55 M. H. Frost,

J. D. Fowler, New York 24

Thos. Hare,. . New York 33

Thos. Ermine, New York 17

Jas. A. Gilliland, Charleston, S. C. 25

P. H. Ewell, Missouri 23

C. M. Stillwell, Massachusetts .38 P. Golascher,. Massachusetts .40 A. Davis,. Franklin county, N. Y .... 34

E. C. Ferguson, New York City 29 Henry McClurg Pennsylvania 29 John Cochrane,. Westfield, N. Y. 31

Benj. Young, South Carolina 36

William McDonald, .Scotland 49

S. A. Woods,

Fredonia, N. Y.

.31

Jas. Long,

Baltimore, Md.

.28

Charles Taylor,.

Maine

.30

*Initials should be E. T.

It will be observed that the name of not one woman or child appears on the list. Family ties were unknown in Snohomish county at the time,

and there were no social organizations such as ob- tain in older and more civilized communities. The country was still practically in the hands of the aboriginal savages, and of the forty-four pioneers of civilization whose names appear on the census roll of 1862, quite a number had been constrained to adopt some of the customs and habits of their Indian neighbors. The great timber resources of the county had not yet begun to be developed ; agriculture on any considerable scale was out of the question as the country was covered with a dense forest, and there was little to attract men and families. The single men who were here obtained a livelihood by clearing up small traets of river bot- tom land and raising vegetables, chiefly potatoes thereon. Their products were transported by sail boats, scows and various kinds of primitive craft to Port Gamble, where the saw-mills afforded a market for them. The canoe was the great agent of short distance locomotion, and continued to be for many years afterward.

So far as known the first white woman who ever remained for any considerable length of time in Snohomish county was Mrs. Thompson, who with her husband and family abode for a while at the home of E. C. Ferguson. A little later J. L. Clark, with his wife and family, settled about a mile below Snohomish City, on what was after- ward known as the Little place, but the first white woman to establish a permanent residence in the county was Mrs. W. B. Sinclair. She is still one of its esteemed citizens, her home having been in Snohomish City continually since the spring of 1865, when she and Mrs. Isaac Ellis came on the steamer Mary Woodruff from Port Madison. The husbands of these ladies had made their way to Snohomish in December, 1864, Mr. Ellis to give inception to the logging industry in the vicinity of Snohomish City, as superintendent for Amos Phin- ney & Company of Port Ludlow. The Sinclair family bought from a squatter the land upon which E. T. Cady had first located, and which is now a part of the Snohomish city town site.

Up to 1864, settlement in the county was limited to the valley of the Snohomish and Skykomish rivers and the vicinity of Mukilteo, but in the fall of this year, began the settlement and subjuga- tion of lands contiguous to the other important waterway of the county, the Stillaguamish river. The honor of pioneership in this locality is thought to belong to Henry Marshall, but he was very soon followed by a number of others. Gardner Goodrich states that when he came in the fall of 1864 to cruise the country in search of a satis- factory logging site, he found on the river Henry Marshall. Captain Daniel Marvin, George Nevels, Willard Sly, a Portuguese known as John Silva, and on Hatt slough a man named Cummings. These men were all cither single or married to Indian women, except Captain Marvin, to whose

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SETTLEMENT AND ORGANIZATION

wife, Mrs. Maria L. Marvin, belongs the honor of being the first white woman to settle perma- nently upon the Stillaguamish. She says that she and her husband and son, Frank, accompanied by Willard Sly, arrived from Port Madison about the first of November, 1864, having come in a scow which the captain had built for the purpose of transporting them. They made their home in the scow until a little shack could be erected for their accommodation. Fortunately, the Indians were friendly.

Captain Marvin and family settled about four miles above the mouth of the Stillaguamish. Owing to the captain's ill health, the burdens and priva- tions of pioneer life rested still more heavily upon his courageous helpmeet than they otherwise would. Mrs. Marvin was compelled to remain at home constantly, and for three years she saw not the face of a single white woman. Late in the fall of 1867 her isolation from persons of her own color and sex was temporarily relieved by the arrival from Utsalady for a visit of Alexander Graham and his white wife. The next spring this family settled near the Marvins, and a few months later Daniel Thurston and family came, swelling the number of white women on the Stillaguamish to three. As long as they stayed Mrs. Marvin had congenial company of her own sex, but the Thurs- tons eventually moved away and the Grahams took up their residence on Hatt slough, leaving her again isolated. True there were by this time white women on the flats at the mouth of the river, but Mrs. Marvin seldom saw them, as her house- hold duties and the additional responsibilities growing out of her husband's illness made it im- possible to visit them often. For the honor of pioneership she paid most dearly in the sacrifice of almost all social pleasures, but she bore her privations heroically and is deserving the highest respect and commendation.

For a number of years after the first settlers arrived, the population of the Stillaguamish val- ley increased very slowly, but a settler or two arrived almost every year. With Mr. Goodrich in 1864 came James H. Perkins, who bought Henry Marshall's right to the first claim staked out in the Stillaguamish country. For a number of vears he was engaged in logging and general trading. Eventually he embarked in a hotel and saloon business in Florence, and he is thus engaged at this date. In 1865 or '6, Robert Fulton settled about a mile up the river from the old Marshall place. Later he squatted on the island opposite Stanwood, putting up a small saloon there, which he soon sold to John Gould, who in turn was succeeded by George Kyle. When Centerville postoffice, the first in the valley, was established Kyle was appointed postmaster.

Other settlers of the middle and late sixties were James Cuthbert, who located just above the

Goodrich place; Thomas S. Adams, on the river above Martin's; P. A. Peterson, just above the present Florence, and John and Robert Robb, also above Florence. About 1870, Gardner Kellogg, a Seattle druggist, settled on Hatt slough, staking out his claim in the night to get ahead of some other would-be squatter. At this time railroads were first talked of, and as many thought the road from the east must pass through the Stillaguamish valley, a new interest was taken in that part of Snohomish county. In 1870, or thereabout, Peter Wilkinson, John McDonald, William Hunt, William B. Moore, Frank H. Hancock, Bradley and Thomas Ovenell settled on the flats. These combined and gave inception to the diking in- dustry by building a long fortification against the sea. The practicability and profit of oat raising on tide-marsh lands had been already demonstrated in what is now Skagit county, so all the settlers on the Stillaguamish flats began cultivating this erop as soon as their diked lands were in readiness.

Owing to a fortunate circumstance it is possi- ble to enumerate practically all those who settled in the Stillaguamish country prior to 1873, thus pre- serving the names of those earliest pioneers. For the purpose of avoiding disputes among themselves over lines, boundaries of claims, etc., the settlers paid three dollars each to S. M. Morgan, C. E., to make a map of the country, which should be filed in the land office at Olympia. A copy of this map is still in the possession of Gardner Good- rich. It shows that claims were taken on the north side of the river by J. Hicks, A. L. Densmore, T. J. Moores, A. H. Moores, W. B. Moore, Wil- liam Hunt, J. Gage Green, John McDonald, Thomas Ovenell, Peter Wilkinson, Robert Freeman, Henry Oliver, J. H. Irwin, James Calden, J. A. Palmer, N. Perfield, Charles Palmer, William Butler, John Silva, Peter Harvey, Captain Daniel Marvin, George Nevels. John Brady, John Gilchrist. C. Livingston, P. A. Peterson, Dr. Rhodes, C. J. Low, and one other whose name is illegible on the map, and whom nobody seems able to remember. On the south side were George Kyle, William Kyle, David Kellogg, Gardner Goodrich, J. Crebs,

Anderson, Gardner Kellogg. James Cuthbert, Willard Sly, E. Graham, J. H. Perkins, John Dymont and H. G. Dewey. South of Hatt's slough were William Douglass. James Hatt, James Long, Thomas Adam, George Belden, John Le Ballister, J. W. Fendlason, A. Grant, David Munson, Peter M. Smith, Ross P. Shoecraft, a surveyor, on Lake Howard, and Martin Woolsey, near Lake Shoecraft. This inchided every settler north of the reservation line.

The master industry of Snohomish county, namely the appropriation and elaboration of its timber, had its beginning at a very early date. The first saw mill within its borders, that now in use by the Tulalip agency, has already been men-

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SNOHOMISH COUNTY

tioned. The nomadic hand logger also began his operations early, and sometime in 1862 Smith & Wilson started to log with oxen on Brown's bay, two miles north of Edmonds. To the best of Mr. Smith's knowledge and belief this was the first camp of any magnitude and the first in which oxen were employed on the Snohomish coast. This firm used ten oxen and about fifteen men.

In September, 1863, Smith & Wilson moved to the site of Lowell, where they found two squatters named Frederick Dunbar and Burlingham Brown, the former of whom had an Indian wife. These men had settled on their claims about 1861. They sold their rights to the loggers, who forth- with commenced operations, becoming the pioneers of the industry on the Snohomish river. In 1865, Mr. Smith bought out his partner, Wilson. Ile logged uninterruptedly on the sites of Lowell, Ever- ett and Marysville, and on various parts of Ebey slough until 1891, when he sold his interests. From the shores of Ebey slough he took one hundred million feet of logs.

The next outfit on the lower river, to the best of Mr. Smith's recollection, was that of James Long and Alexander Spithill, who operated on Spithill's slough for a number of years. In 1864, also, George and Perrin Preston, brothers, com- menced logging a mile below Snohomish City, and late the same year the Ellis camp, previously re- ferred to, began operations. The Prestons took land at Blackman's point after Spithill left. Run- nels & Duvall followed Long and Spithill on the slough, establishing their camp at a place known as Hog 'Em, three miles up from Marysville, where they remained from about 1864 to 1866, moving then to the Stillaguamish. Jerome Berry, Arthur, Steven and William McLean, M. T. White and others soon after established camps on the river, slough and reservation, and when the wealth of timber in the country became generally known. other camps came in fast. Ulmer Stinson, E. C. Ferguson, Isaac Cathcart, James Duvall, John Elwell and Ross Brothers were among the first on the river above Lowell, and camps were early cstab- lished as high up as the Snoqualmie and Skykom- ish rivers. The price of logs in the early days ranged from five to ten dollars a thousand. Oxen were used exclusively for power. and camps having ten or twelve of them expected to put in about three millions a year. The average output of the county from 1863 to 1820 was probably thirty millions annually, though during the first two or three years it was probably between ten and fifteen millions.

Though Frost & Fowler's hotel and trading station was established at Mukilteo at a very early date, and though it soon became a popular resort for loggers, the lumbering industry seems not to have gained a foothold there as early as on Ebey slough, and the Snohomish and Stillaguamish rivers.

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An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington, Part 50

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.) Publication date: 1906 Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company Number of Pages: 1172

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.)
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1172