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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1876 | 14 |
| 1877 | 4 |
18 stories matching work
- The First Scythes: Makah Men Arrive in Port Townsend Looking for Work
Five men from Neah Bay came to town in 1876 to hire themselves out as mowers. A local editor praised their tools—and exposed the era's patronizing ideas about 'civilizing' Native people.
- Robert Ingersoll’s Warning to the Washington Clerk
The famous orator and freethinker warns young men against the soul-crushing nature of government bureaucracy in Washington D.C.
- The Revivalist Who Left Discord Behind
A traveling evangelist spent a summer working Puget Sound's Baptist pulpits — and the association's verdict was blunt: imposter.
- The S'Klallam Village That Bought Its Own Ground on Dungeness Bay
A traveler describes Jamestown, a community of young Clallam Indians who pooled their earnings to buy a 160-acre farm and built an orderly village beside the logging railway.
- A Crew Called the Iona Unseaworthy. The Cutter Called It Mutiny.
Before the Italian bark Iona could leave Port Townsend, its sailors refused to sail. A survey said the ship was sound; a revenue cutter's officer put the men in irons and warned them of a mutiny trial.
- The Preacher Who Turned 170 Acres of Wilderness Into a Home
When Port Townsend could not pay its Methodist minister enough to live on, Rev. Laubach moved to Discovery Bay and built a farm — house, fences, orchard and skiff — with his own hands.
- The Railroad Buys the Coalfields: Northern Pacific Moves on the Puyallup
Poised to grade its Pacific Division with a large crew of Chinese laborers, the Northern Pacific quietly consolidates the coal lands north of Tacoma—and the finest coalfield on the coast.
- Three Days Adrift: A Ferryman's Rescue Off Point Wilson
A German sailor in an open skiff, barely able to speak or move, is pulled from the water by Mr. Benson and brought to Port Townsend.
- Nine Good Men Never Came Home From the Seal Grounds
A hurricane off Cape Flattery swallows three canoes full of the strongest seal hunters of the tribe, all in the perilous work of gathering furs.
- A Seven-Day Ordeal at Sea: The City of Panama Limps into Port Townsend
A midnight collision with a lumber schooner, a hurricane off the Oregon coast, and a pointed comparison to the steamer Pacific — which went down with more than 200 souls aboard.
- Fatal Wharfside Shooting Leaves Town in Uproar
A long-standing feud ends in murder on Union Wharf, with the suspect fleeing by boat as the community demands accountability from local law enforcement.
- The Parade Ground Is Now a Ward: A Visitor Walks the Territory's Asylum
Where the 4th Infantry once drilled to fife and drum, a correspondent finds sagging fences, two overworked keepers to a men's ward, and a lone matron holding the women's department — all on an appropriation he calls 'a shame to our people.'
- Port Discovery’s Busy Wharves and the Mill That Ran Full Time
A short steamer voyage from Port Townsend in 1876 found new wharves, a bigger engine house, and a lumber mill employing about 100 men.
- The Night Port Townsend Refused a Boatload of Strikebreakers
Twenty-eight destitute men from a Nanaimo miners' strike were shipped to Port Townsend aboard the North Pacific. Sheriff Miller met them at the wharf and said they could not land.
- Old Yank, the Sequim Inventor Who Rigged His Counter to Sting Thieves
A correspondent visits Professor Watkins of Sequim Prairie, an eccentric mechanic whose inventions ranged from a needle-spring burglar trap to a wooden mowing machine and a windmill made to grind the prairie's wheat.
- The Log Jam That Held Back a Valley: Skagit Settlers Propose a DIY River Clearance
With a massive log jam blocking navigation on the Skagit River, a settler proposes that landowners take matters into their own hands rather than wait for Congress.
- Port Ludlow Wakes Up: New Boilers, a New Schooner, and a Boom in Houses
A correspondent's New Year letter from the sawmill town: the mill comes back to life after three dark weeks, a 140-foot vessel rises on the Hall ways for the Coos Bay coal trade, and even the hotelkeeper is building himself a house.
- A Potlatch at Neah Bay: Blankets, Money, and a Makah Celebration
A newspaper correspondent visits a Makah potlatch and finds hundreds gathered, a wealthy widow, and gifts of cash and blankets distributed to friends and relations.