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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1876 | 1 |
| 1877 | 2 |
| 1878 | 3 |
| 1880 | 1 |
| 1882 | 1 |
| 1883 | 2 |
| 1884 | 1 |
| 1885 | 1 |
| 1886 | 1 |
| 1887 | 1 |
| 1889 | 5 |
| 1890 | 1 |
| 1892 | 2 |
| 1893 | 5 |
| 1894 | 6 |
| 1895 | 6 |
| 1899 | 4 |
| 1915 | 1 |
44 stories matching errand
- The Boy Who Swallowed a Peanut: A Two-Month Ordeal
A Seattle teenager’s life hangs in the balance after a gust of wind forces a nut into his lung, leading to a dramatic surgical rescue.
- He Chose the Altar Over the Jail Cell
A seduction warrant, a midnight minister, and a groom who nearly changed his mind.
- Six Italians Escaped a Shanghai Trap on the Port Townsend Waterfront
Lured from a Seattle boarding house with promises of dock work, six Italian laborers found themselves booked for a South American ship—and walked back to Seattle to demand charges.
- The Mail Monopoly Hurting Washington’s Pioneers
Settlers in Snoqualmie and Fall City faced weeks of delays because a contractor prioritized convenience over the needs of isolated rural communities.
- The 'Easy' Job That Wasn't
A classic tale of a hotel proprietor in Snohomish trying to hoodwink a miner into an impossible, unpaid-labor arrangement.
- The Vanishing of Charles Gloystein and the Secret Society That Armed a County
In 1894, a Spokane County man disappeared. Rumor blamed a secret Populist order, and neighbors began answering their doors with shotguns.
- The Boy Who Wanted a Gun: Seattle’s Satirical Take on Sunday School Prizes
A local columnist mocks the absurdity of juvenile weekly papers offering .32-caliber revolvers to boys who recruit eight subscribers, arguing that this 'philanthropy' teaches murder rather than morality.
- One Day Late: The Veto That May Hang a Man
A clerk's date stamp, a messenger who cannot recall which day he ran an errand, and a condemned Italian at Tacoma whose last chance at a new appeal may have expired in the paperwork.
- He Walked Out of the House and Into a Whirlpool of Whispers
A well-liked Spokane County farmer vanishes near Mica, and forty neighbors turn the countryside upside down hunting for him — but the deeper they dig, the stranger the trail becomes.
- A Wooden Pistol Emptied the King County Jail
Thomas Blanck, awaiting appeal for murder, locked the night jailer in a cell and walked out with eight other prisoners—armed with a black wooden fake.
- The Pit and the Claw: A Tacoma Man’s Terrifying Tale of Surviving a Bear Attack
Larsen describes the agony of being pinned in a bear trap, his arm crushed by the beast's jaws, and his desperate fight for survival in the woods near Schomaker.
- Two Dollars a Head: Seattle's Labor Commissioner Takes On the Employment Agencies
Charged with running the city's free employment office as a union errand boy, Commissioner John Lamb answers that the private agencies have been selling men jobs that do not exist.
- The $5,000 Wager That Sent a Man Around the World With Nothing
Paul Jones reaches Seattle with $300 left to earn, a paper suit on his back, and a Boston bet that has already carried him through Japan and the Suez Canal.
- Oregon Officers Cross the Columbia to Arrest Washington Fishermen
Seattle's paper accuses an Astoria judge of sending raiders into Washington waters to kidnap citizens for violating Oregon's salmon laws — an armed invasion of state sovereignty, it charges.
- The Trial of Judge Wickersham: A Tacoma Scandal Over Land, Lies, and 'Delirium'
In February 1889, the trial of a powerful federal judge in Tacoma exposed a web of political corruption, land fraud, and sexual scandal involving a young woman named Sadie Brantner.
- The Missing Will That Would Have Given Seattle a Library
Henry Yesler's widow and two doctors are arrested, accused of burning a will that left the pioneer's fortune—and his mansion—to the city.
- The Beating of Henry Brown: A Runaway Elevator Boy and a Family's Violent Secret
A 14-year-old black elevator operator flees his home after a savage whipping by his father, revealing a tangled story of poverty, pride, and punishment in 1894 Seattle.
- The Blaine Fisherman Who Pulled Seven People Out of the Water and Never Told Anyone
Hans Nielson is 24 years old, slight of build, and has saved seven lives in ten years — two in Denmark, five around Blaine — and calls each rescue a thing 'only incidental to the life of a water toiler.'
- The Man Who Thought He Owned Seattle Died Chasing a Ghost Fortune
Henry Zechow spent nine years and a small army of lawyers trying to claim an uncle's imaginary empire—including a block of downtown Seattle—before his body turned up in the Fraser River.