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| Year | Stories |
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| 1858 | 1 |
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99 stories matching bless
- The Orphan’s Plea: A Poem That Moved Seattle to Tears on Decoration Day
As the city honored Civil War dead with solemn processions and speeches, a young girl’s grief over her father’s unmarked grave brought the Grand Marshal to tears.
- The Priest Writes Back: A Territorial Feud Over 'Romanism'
A Methodist minister's warning in Olympia draws a sharp reply from the Catholic missionary he accused.
- The Runaway Romance of Spokane’s High Society
A teenage bride and her bookkeeper groom flee to Idaho to escape her wealthy father’s disapproval, settling into a Seattle hotel for their honeymoon.
- The Price of Discontent: A Warning from the 1877 Panic
While Seattle thrives on the steady hum of mills and logging camps, a Seattle editor warns citizens against petty grievances by recounting the harrowing hunger and unemployment plaguing the rest of the country.
- The Silent Killer in the Boarding House
An 1878 editorial warns Seattle residents that the city's obsession with airtight rooms and coal stoves is fueling a tuberculosis epidemic.
- A Night of Music for the Baptist Church
Fairhaven's local talent shines in a successful benefit performance at the Prosser house.
- Kennewick's Close Encounter with the Great War
An editorial reflecting on the sudden, violent onset of World War I and the fear of its reach into a small Washington town.
- The Secret in the Express Office
A rough, sullen express worker's life is transformed when he uncovers a personal relic inside a lost package.
- The Dentist and the Cat
After a cruel beating left a local cat unable to feed itself, a sympathetic neighborhood dentist crafted a set of false teeth to save the animal.
- The Struggle for the Curb: Seattle's 1892 Market Fight
A local letter to the editor highlights the class divide between city planners and the peddlers struggling to feed the city's residents.
- The Horseshoe Curse: A 1880 Seattle Fable of Fortune
In the pages of the Seattle Intelligencer, a cautionary rhyme warns that even the smallest superstitions can wreak havoc on a settler’s homestead.
- The Sudden Passing of Captain E. A. Starr
A beloved community leader and steamship captain dies suddenly under mysterious circumstances.
- The Tragedy at the Medicine Bottle: A Seattle Child’s Fatal Mistake
In a heartbreaking incident that has gripped the community, three-year-old Howard Pontius drank from what he thought was a treat, but was actually his mother’s morphine prescription for a cold.
- Three and a Half Years in a Cell, Then a Date With the Rope
Charles Nordstrom crept up to William Mason's cabin at Cedar Mountain and shot him dead at supper over an old grudge. This week a Seattle judge named August 31 as the day the state will hang him — unless the U.S. Supreme Court steps in.
- The Wild West of Snohomish City Hall
A small town descends into administrative chaos as rival marshals, contested elections, and judicial flip-flops leave residents wondering who is in charge.
- The Day Fall City Danced: A July 4th Celebration in the Shadow of War
While General Howard debated tactics against Native tribes elsewhere in Washington Territory, residents of Fall City gathered in a cedar grove to celebrate the nation's birthday with speeches, picnics, and swings.
- A Sharp Critique of Christian Patriarchy
A biting anonymous editorial lampoons the hypocrisy of Seattle’s clergy regarding women’s rights.
- The Bonfire of the Vanities on Occidental Square
Months after a jubilant, torch-lit victory party in Seattle, the city’s new power-brokers were left holding the bag as lawlessness and economic despair gripped the town.
- A 'Model School' at Tulalip—and the Assimilation It Celebrated
A visiting booster praised the Sisters of Providence for teaching Native children manners, work and obedience—a revealing snapshot of assimilation policy in Washington Territory.
- Washington's House Votes to Ban Cigarettes — and the Tobacco Trust Moves In
In 1893 the state House passed a prohibition on cigarette sales after a debate that mixed moral reform, monopoly fears and anti-Chinese prejudice. Lobbyists were already working the Senate.
- The Unsung Pioneers Clearing the Skagit River
While the territory hailed the opening of the Skagit Valley to navigation, the men bankrolling the arduous labor of clearing the massive log jam were left bankrupt.
- Three Bad Years of Hops, and a Trainload of Sheep Pointing the Way Out
Yakima County's hop growers have lost money three seasons running. The remedy, this farm editor argues, is to stop shipping raw hay out of the valley and start feeding it to cattle, hogs and sheep here — as forty carloads bound for Montana just proved.
- The Day the Cardinal Rode Through the Mud: A Historic Union of Northern and Southern Presbyterians
In a rare moment of post-Civil War reconciliation, thousands gathered in Seattle to witness the historic meeting of two Presbyterian Assemblies that had been divided by the Mason-Dixon line for decades.
- The Iron-Molded Suit: When Tailors Pressed Clothes Onto Your Body
A bizarre new fashion trend in Seattle has women wrapping themselves in hot irons to 'mold' their suits into shape.
- The Night Seattle Danced Until Two: A Steamer Excursion from Steilacoom
In July 1859, the steamer Julia carried Olympia and Steilacoom society across the Sound to Seattle, where three supper tables and a hall full of dancers made territorial news.