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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1891 | 31 |
| 1892 | 21 |
52 stories matching small
- A Confessed Killer, a Small-Town Jail, and a Mob Talked Down
Robert Day, held for murder near Woodland, is spared a lynching by 'cooler heads' at a Kerns mass meeting — but Cowlitz County's anger is barely contained.
- Tacoma's Fire Chief and Driver Crash on Their Way to a Blaze
A small house fire on Hood Street led to a collision at Pacific Avenue that cost driver H. M. Packenham his arm and left Chief Lillis with a possible brain injury.
- Armed Robbers Hit the Kitsap Pacific Train at Shelton
Two men boarded the morning train at Shelton, broke into the express car, and held up the messenger and a passenger, making off with money and jewelry.
- A Family's Desperate Winter
A local family faces extreme poverty and illness, highlighting the precarious nature of life in the territory.
- The Capital's Election Was Run by the Old Rules
A Walla Walla editor notes the irony: Olympia used the old ballot form after the legislature changed the law, and now the election's legality is in doubt.
- Rainier’s Shingle Boom and the Road Olympia Forgot
A Rainier correspondent reports new shingle mills and warns that Olympia merchants are losing rural trade to Tacoma by ignoring the roads that feed the city.
- Smuggling Ring Uncovered in Olympia
Inspectors capture six men allegedly smuggled into the city via a Canadian steamer, highlighting the ongoing enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
- Deserters on the Cow Paths: Three British Sailors Slip Into Blaine
Three sailors flee the British warships at Esquimalt, stealing down the east coast of Vancouver Island by night to cross into American soil at Blaine.
- A Tramp's Alibi: Thirty Tumwater Witnesses and a Murder Conviction Undone
A poor itinerant tinker was jailed for a Tacoma murder until residents of a small Thurston County hotel town swore he was miles away. The state Supreme Court ordered a new trial.
- They Burned Letters to the Dead on Ayer's Hill
Olympia's Chinese community gathered at a hillside cemetery in 1891 to honor eight departed countrymen with roast pork, red candles, wine and paper messages sent into the next world.
- Caught in the Dynamo: A Tacoma Worker Squeezed to Death at His Post
Edward H. Curran was at his station in the Tacoma Light and Water Company's electric plant when the machinery pulled him through a gap far too small for a man, breaking nearly every bone in his body.
- A Fortune in Strawberries: The Grower Who Says Thurston County Is Sleeping on Its Own Soil
Olympia closed the fruit season with its biggest shipments yet, but veteran orchardman George B. Hartman says the county's trees are thriving on forty years of neglect — and that proper cultivation could out-earn Oregon and California combined.
- She Owned Her Own Bedding: A Hoquiam Wife's Public Reckoning
When W. E. Ulmer filed notice that he would no longer pay his wife's bills, Ida V. Ulmer went straight to the paper — to point out that he had never paid them in the first place.
- The Newspaper Owner Who Was Supposed to Run Seattle
A New York interview made real-estate investor Hunt sound like a political kingmaker; Olympia's Tribune said the boast was mostly hot air.
- A Quack, a $125 Bill, and a Prosecution That Cost the County More Than It Recovered
A Thurston County letter-writer asks why commissioners and the county attorney spent the public's money to convict an irregular doctor over a small bill — and got nothing back.
- The 15-Cent Street Signs That Became a Graft Scandal
A councilman nicknamed 'Boss' hands out a street-sign contract on his own authority, and the town asks why it is buying throwaway tin markers instead of signs that last — at the people's expense.
- A Newspaper Opens a Fund So Poor Men Can Afford the Keeley Cure
The Tribune sets a contribution box at Main and Fourth for Olympia residents too poor to pay for the Keeley Institute's addiction treatment, seeding the fund with $5 and naming a committee to vet applicants.
- The Night the Wind Shook Olympia
A gale worse than any since 1882 tore through Olympia, sinking the steamer Colby at Horr's dock, blocking the Northern Pacific, and bringing trees down across the city.
- A Bishop Claimed 430 Acres of a Federal Military Reservation
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Nesqually went to the U.S. Supreme Court to secure title to the Vancouver military reservation, setting church, Crown-era permission, and federal ownership against one another.
- 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.
- A Sick Child, an Empty Cupboard, and $22 in the Collection Plate
A Unitarian minister in Tacoma argues that charity is only a bandage, and that a man who works hard and still cannot feed his family is the church's real problem to solve.
- The $31.15 in a Drowned Man's Pocket
When Charles Honick's body washed up near Priest Point, Olympia wondered if he had been murdered. The cash still in his clothes told a different story.
- Olympia’s Paper Cheers a Harsher Chinese Exclusion Act — and Calls for Expulsion
The Olympia Tribune backs a federal bill barring Chinese merchants and artisans, then goes further: deport every Chinese resident to “give work to better people.”
- A Civil War Veteran Vanishes Between Saloon and Lodging
Charles Honige, a 71-year-old Olympia character known for selling hot weinerwurst after dark, left Hosneider's saloon at 10 p.m. and was never seen again.
- A Storm Cuts the Northern Pacific and Strands the Capital
A weekend storm washes out the Northern Pacific, cuts telegraph lines, and leaves travelers—and would-be supreme court attorneys—stuck between Tacoma, Olympia and Montesano.