The passing of a pioneer dentist
Dr. John Colburn Grasse, an early resident of Seattle and a founder of the State Dental Association, dies at home.
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.
Dr. J. C. Grasse, one of the best-known residents of the city and a pioneer in the profession of dentistry, died at his home on the northeast corner of Front and Pine streets at 1:30 o'clock this morning. He had been seriously ill with dropsy and a complication of troubles for nearly a month. Dr. John Colburn Grasse was born at Kingston, Ontario, in December, 1844. He came to Seattle in 1871 on the same steamer that brought the Remington and Osgood party. Dr. Grasse opened a dentist's office in the old Occidental Hotel. He was a genial, warm-hearted man and was the dentist of oldest standing in the state of Washington, and one of the organizers and the first president of the Washington State Dental Association.
“He was a genial, warm-hearted man and made many friends.”
Front and Pine, once the quiet site of a pioneer dentist's home, is now the heart of the frantic, hyper-commercial Pike Place Market district. The physical transformation of the waterfront landscape is so extreme that the memory of a house standing there feels like a ghost story.
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