The Perilous Seat of the Customs Collector
A history of the Puget Sound customs office reveals a chronicle of smugglers, political infighting, and violent tragedies.
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.
James C. Saunders has succeeded Andrew Wasson as collector of customs of the Puget Sound district. Mr. Saunders is the seventeenth collector since the organization of the district in October, 1851. The history of the office is filled with turbulent events. In the early 1850s, collector Simpson P. Moses faced hostile conditions and had to arm his inspectors to counter the smuggling of the Hudson Bay Company. Colonel John S. Ebey, who succeeded Moses in 1853, faced such a lack of funding that he had to borrow his own money to keep the government running. Tragedy struck the office repeatedly: Colonel Ebey was killed by northern Indians in 1856, and two customs officers, Anderson and Goodell, were killed in a catastrophic landslide and flood at Port Angeles in 1863. The office has been moved, contested by armed revenue cutters, and subjected to endless political patronage and removal, with many collectors meeting sudden ends or bitter political defeats.
“Although Ebey was a Democrat, he retained a number of Whigs in office, and, as is usual in such cases, the Democracy raised a howl and tried to have him removed.”
This deep dive into the history of the Port Townsend and Seattle customs offices highlights how vital Pacific Northwest maritime commerce was to the early territorial economy. Today, the Port of Seattle remains a massive center for international trade, but the office of the Customs Collector has evolved from a frontier post prone to bloodshed and smuggling into a complex federal operation.
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