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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1891 | 7 |
| 1892 | 9 |
16 stories matching settler
- Settlers Beat the State to the Best School Lands
Washington's land commissioners say squatters are claiming the best parcels before the state can select them for schools, putting millions at risk.
- A Pioneer's Final Day in Hanaford Valley
Theophilus Hanaford, the first settler of the valley that bears his name, died suddenly while working on his farm.
- The Settler Who Watched Olympia Get Claimed
R. C. Smith, who crossed the plains in 1848, recalls the canoe landing where Edmund Sylvester took the claim that became Olympia.
- The Boat Builder and the Missing Cornerstone
Courtland Ethridge arrived in Olympia in 1851, built some of its earliest landmarks, and left behind a Masonic hall with a mystery buried under it.
- A Mountain Fell Into the Columbia
Twin earthquakes rattle Oregon and the Yakima agency — and old settlers recall 1874, when sixty-four shocks tore a mountainside into the great river and buried Chief Wapato John's ranch.
- Benefit Concert to Build Schoolhouse for Sherman Valley Settlers
Olympia's musical talent rallies to fund a school for rural children in Sherman Valley.
- The Valley Nobody Surveyed: Pioneers Wait for a Government Pen
A settlers' advocate returns from the surveyor-general with promises and a rapturous account of a hidden valley where poor young farmers are hewing homes out of the forest without so much as a title to their land.
- The State Can't Find Its Land — and Timber Companies Got There First
A state land cruiser reports that Washington's 670,000-acre capitol grant is mostly poor land already claimed by squatters working for big lumber outfits.
- The Claim-Jumper Who Hired a Man to Sleep on His Land
A wanted land locater near South Bend left his wife and children on a contested homestead and used a hired sleeper to guard three other claims—until neighbors called his bluff.
- A Customs House Boss and the Fight to Run Washington
A federal deputy collector resigns in Seattle and accuses the custom house crowd of building a machine for Senator Squire.
- The Mountain Tacoma Tried to Take
A railroad president's marketing decree put 'Tacoma' on maps of the great peak across the East — while Seattle refused to surrender the name of a British admiral who never saw it.
- The Chief's Daughter in the Shadow of the City Named for Her Father
A San Francisco Chronicle correspondent visits Princess Angeline in her Seattle shack and finds the city proudly carving her father's face on a new business block while his daughter lives on charity.
- A Beardless Boy's 1855 Passage Through Puget Sound—and the Death of Abe Moses
A reminiscence from the Montesano Vidette recalls Olympia as a village in the woods, a kindness in Steilacoom, and a fatal ambush during Washington's early Indian wars.
- The Town Where Horses Wore Wooden Shoes
La Conner grew slowly on a rocky knoll in the Skagit delta, diked its tidal flats, and shipped out hay by the ton—while its horses clumped through spring mud in wooden moccasins.
- The Ox-Yoke Judge Who Kept Olympia the Capital
O. C. Hewitt, Lincoln’s chief justice of Washington Territory and the father of Odd Fellowship in the state, died at 82 in East Tumwater after a frontier life that included burying massacre victims, winning a Supreme Court case, and saving Olympia’s capital status.
- He Kept a Dead Man's Skull as a Souvenir — and the Paper Printed the Story
Writing from North Yakima in 1892, Milburn G. Wills recalls the 1855 volunteer campaign that broke the Yakama resistance — the forced marches, the starving commands, the men shot beside him, and the trophy he carried home.