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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1862 | 1 |
| 1872 | 1 |
| 1876 | 2 |
| 1877 | 2 |
| 1878 | 3 |
| 1880 | 1 |
| 1883 | 3 |
| 1885 | 5 |
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95 stories matching chapter
- The Strict Rules of Territorial Ballot Boxes
Before the secret ballot was standardized, Washington Territory enacted stern penalties to prevent election-day fraud, coercion, and liquor-fueled chaos.
- The Last Chapter at 1344 C Street
After her abusive husband hanged himself in the Tacoma city jail, a Swedish-born woman shot herself—and the policeman who had tried to save her stayed at her bedside until the end.
- The Courthouse Standoff
A local treasurer defies a court order to pay city school warrants, deepening a long-running legal feud over the Tourist Hotel site.
- The Territory's Legislative Snake
A scathing critique from 1877 exposes the 'headless and tailless' chaos of newly minted Washington tax laws, exposing a system designed to strip residents of their property through administrative incompetence.
- The Temperance Union’s Grand Flower Festival
As Seattle grew, the local chapter of the W.C.T.U. organized elaborate civic events, revealing the powerful social network of women shaping the city's public life.
- The Unlucky Lothario of Walla Walla
A serial deserter and bigamist finds his romantic escapades lead him from the barracks to the Seattle police station.
- A Tenant's Barn, a Landlord's Lot, and a Judge's Line
Judge Robinson ruled that a contractor's lien for an unpaid Olympia livery stable could reach the building and leasehold—but not the owner's land.
- The Broomstick Revolver: How a Seattle Inmate Whitted a Pistol in His Cell
Behind bars in the Seattle city jail, prisoner Henry Blanck carved a convincing revolver from a broom handle, stove wood and tobacco foil — a jailhouse bluff that detectives called a new chapter in the city's criminal history.
- The Romantic Ruin of a Seattle Dreamer
A young woman in 1878 Seattle finds her intellectual ambitions derailed by a fleeting, unequal affair with a local 'villain.'
- The Missing Girl and the Tacoma Conspiracy
A habeas corpus hearing in Seattle fails to prove Mrs. Ryther took Katie Hackworth, but Judge Langley scolds her and suggests Tacoma women engineered the girl's disappearance.
- Who Owns the Water? Marcus Grants 25-Year Private Franchise
Stevens County commissioners hand a sweeping water system monopoly to a group of investors, with a two-year deadline to build or lose the right.
- Sixty Armed Men Took the Jail at Dayton
A convicted murderer was hauled out of the Columbia County jail and strangled from a rope in the public square — the coroner's jury named no killers, and the local editor scolded lynch law while calling the mob 'cool and systematic.'
- An Engineer Bets Newport Could Rival Spokane
A Spokane mining engineer reports on the Bead Lake and Conquest claims, arguing that capital, a concentrator and a five-mile rail spur could turn a dormant district into Newport’s future.
- The Taxpayer Who Couldn’t Sue the State
Washington’s Supreme Court dismisses the Agricultural College case, ruling that a private resident cannot halt state spending in equity—only the attorney general can.
- England Wants Glacier Bay: A Seattle Miner’s Alaska Warning
Miner W. Bruce tells Seattle that Britain’s boundary claim would seize the Lynn Canal trail and Glacier Bay—and hand the Alaska tourist trade to Canadian Pacific steamers.
- King County Auditor Accused of Padding His Salary with Extra Jobs
A letter to the editor details how Auditor Frank Twichell drew extra pay as purchasing agent, building-fund agent, and legislative lobbyist—all while collecting his regular salary.
- A Hanging in the Armory: The Unpopular Corporal and the Men Who Stuffed His Uniform
Company E turned a grudge into theatre — an effigy rigged with an electric-light wire, a pair of odd-coloured glasses and a chalked gravestone — and a military court may follow.
- A 'Close Combination' at the Courthouse: Surveyor Accuses King County's Ring of Self-Dealing
King County's surveyor says commissioners paid the prosecuting attorney's rent to their own chairman's Union Block while refusing to cover his office — and he names the men he says run the courthouse for themselves.
- A Chinese Student's 1929 Speech Named the Racism Washington Tried to Forget
At the University of Washington's Cosmopolitan Club, Wesley Kai Hwa Kwang catalogued a century of anti-Chinese violence — including the 1885 killings in Squak Valley and the burning of Tacoma's Chinatown — and asked a white audience to account for it.
- The First Teachers’ Institute: A Battle for Seattle’s Soul
In September 1872, the Territory’s top educators gathered in Seattle to debate everything from corporal punishment to the role of women in teaching, laying the groundwork for public education in Washington.