The Strange Disappearance of Ollie Young’s Reputation
A man from the Puyallup Valley confronts the Chief of Police to clear a young woman's name after scandal-filled letters appear in a Tacoma newspaper.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A man named Swim came to the city today from up the valley and hunted up Chief of Police Fuller. He wanted to see those letters, he said, which had been printed in the POST-INTELLIGENCER as having been in the possession of one Reynolds, who was confined for a brief period in the A Street bastile. He explained that Ollie Young, Mrs. Wilcox, and others referred to in the letters are now living a short distance from Puyallup. The reference made in Reynolds' notebook as to Ollie Young having run away with one Hill, and having told her father something about him (Reynolds) which was intended to provoke trouble between them, in the midst of which she was to shoot him (Reynolds), is pronounced the veriest rot by Swim. He says that the family crossed the mountains about the time referred to on their way to the Puyallup valley, and that Hill was a driver of their horses. Swim says that 'Ollie is a good girl, and very much annoyed over the publication of the letters from Fred Martin to herself, and just how Reynolds came to have them she does not know, unless they were letters entrusted to him to deliver to her.' He says further that Reynolds was convicted of stealing Olive's horse; that he was condemned to prison but broke jail at Cheney. Chief Fuller gave Swim the two letters addressed to Ollie, but retained the others. Reynolds, it will be remembered, gave the name of Trainor when arrested.
“The reference made in Reynolds' notebook... is pronounced the veriest rot by Swim.”
The intersection of A Street and the newspaper's coverage of private, character-destroying correspondence echoes today's digital era, where private texts or emails can be weaponized in public forums. It serves as a reminder that the 'scandal' of yesterday was often built on the same shaky, unverified hearsay that drives modern social media cycles.
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