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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1888 | 1 |
| 1889 | 2 |
| 1891 | 1 |
| 1892 | 5 |
| 1893 | 3 |
| 1894 | 6 |
| 1895 | 6 |
24 stories matching patch
- Seattle's Potato-Patch Plan for the Unemployed
Seattle's charity board proposes turning vacant city land into potato patches for jobless men, borrowing a Detroit relief experiment that fed nearly a thousand families.
- Who Killed Zens Mayeda? The Footprints in the Potato Patch
A Japanese man is found murdered in Seattle. A sullen suspect gives little away, and a deputy sheriff finds three sets of hurried footprints — one pair barefoot — leading away from the house.
- The Shortest Divorce Case on Record
Following a tragic loss in the family, a quarreling couple returns to court to finalize their separation with surprising speed.
- The Pants Politics of the Leban Schoolhouse
Farmers gather at a rural schoolhouse to discuss a new cooperative creamery, with one speaker humorously suggesting the project might cure the town's 'Democratic' rags.
- The Man Who Defended His Roof
An indignant Seattle resident threatens to prosecute a mysterious stranger who attempted to arrest him for working on his roof on a Sunday.
- A Bloody Collision at the Ballpark
A brutal outfield collision between two Seattle players leaves them both senseless and costs the team the game against Tacoma.
- A Deadly Hole on Pioneer Place
A routine street crossing turns fatal when rotten wooden planks give way under a carriage horse.
- The Great Garden Plague of 1889
A voracious 'brown worm' army descends on Seattle, wiping out local vegetable patches and leaving residents desperate for a solution.
- The UW Eleven Triumphs in the Mud
A scrappy University of Washington team secures a 14-0 shutout victory against the Seattle Athletic Club on the sodden grounds of Madiera Park.
- The Electric Quack of the Arlington Hotel
An elderly traveler narrowly escapes a predatory ‘doctor’ who attempted to encase her in ‘electric’ metal shields under the guise of a miracle cure.
- The Yellow Church the Neighbors Want Gone
A Renton Addition resident airs a neighborhood feud over a 'mission church' on Hyde and Filbert streets that blocks the view, lowers property values — and that its owner refuses to move, even at the neighbors' expense.
- The Jailer and the Cell: A Brutal Scuffle in 1891
A repeat offender turns the city jail into a ring for a violent, bloody showdown with his longtime adversary, the jailer.
- The Great Courthouse Debate
A citizen weighs in on the bitter feud over where to build King County's new courthouse, pitting the convenience of the downtown business district against the grandeur of the hill.
- The Drunken Rampage of a North Seattle Man
After a mysterious tumble down a steep Seattle staircase, a local man terrorized his neighborhood until police intervention.
- They Would Rather Grow Than Beg: Seattle’s Unemployed Turned Vacant Lots Into Potato Patches
In the depression year of 1893, nearly 200 Seattle men—most with families—were given free seed, tools and borrowed city lots through the Pingree plan and the Co-operative Industrial Society.
- Seattle's Jobless Are Handed Potato Patches
A citizens' committee working out of a Railroad Avenue office gives out vacant land, seed and tools to more than twenty families in a single day — one of them has fourteen children.
- The Sheriff's Deadline: 'I Will Be Compelled to Hang Him'
C. W. Nordstrom has until August 31 to appeal his murder conviction, but with no money for lawyers, the King County sheriff is already building a portable gallows outside the jail.
- A Deadly Encounter on Beacon Hill
A nineteen-year-old hotel worker miraculously survives a point-blank shooting after refusing to surrender to a highwayman in the dark cuts of early Seattle.
- When Seattle's Library Ran Out of Money
A $65 February appropriation against $400 in monthly expenses forces the library commission to close the circulating department and beg city council for relief.
- The Dolly Varden Ticket: Seattle's 1894 Scheme to Stitch Together a Political Frankenstein
Disgruntled Republicans and Democrats met in downtown Seattle to plan a hybrid 'taxpayers' ticket aimed at beating the regular Republican slate—if they could keep the seams from splitting.
- The Potato Patch That Fed 387 People: Seattle's Pingree Plan
In the hard year of 1895, a committee of Seattle citizens handed out seeds and tools to 141 unemployed families — and the city's charity rolls fell. The organizer wanted City Hall to run it.
- A Wall of Smoke and Flame Across Puget Sound
Forest fires from Hood Canal to the Nooksack Valley left dozens of families homeless in 1894, while smoke turned steamboat travel blind and daily life in Seattle into a gray haze.
- Seven Months at Sea: The State of Maine’s Ordeal
The State of Maine left New York in July 1892 and reached Seattle 201 days later, her crew disabled by saltwater boils, her water spoiled, and her captain forced to beat men to the pumps.
- The Beating of Henry Brown: A Runaway Elevator Boy and a Family's Violent Secret
A 14-year-old black elevator operator flees his home after a savage whipping by his father, revealing a tangled story of poverty, pride, and punishment in 1894 Seattle.