The Pioneer Squabble
A meeting of the Washington Pioneer Association turns tense as members clash over whether their organization exists to boost the city or preserve the past.
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.
The annual reunion of Washington pioneers began in Seattle today. King County pioneers met at the Chamber of Commerce yesterday, and those who opposed the trip to Everett were out in force. Amasa Miller and M. W. Willis moved to reconsider the planned excursion. Miller stated he was not in the business of booming Everett. Orange Jacobs countered that the pioneers were not brought here to boom Seattle either; that they were Washington, not Seattle, pioneers. 'Once let the idea get out,' he said, 'that the pioneers are being worked for advertising any place and that will end the Pioneer Association.' After further debate, the motion was dropped, though the tension between the boosters and the historians remained palpable.
“Once let the idea get out that the pioneers are being worked for advertising any place and that will end the Pioneer Association.”
The 1893 debate over whether the Pioneer Association was a historical society or a front for real estate promotion feels remarkably contemporary. Seattle has long wrestled with the tension between our civic identity as a place of rapid, lucrative growth and the desire to honor the people who were here before the skyscraper boom.
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