Search for a Missing Railway Clerk
A man vanishes while working on the Great Northern rail grade, leaving his brother to scour Seattle for answers.
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.
There is a search being made for O. O. Andrews, who was a clerk for Henry & Balch this spring on the Great Northern grade work but who has disappeared from view. He is described as 47 years old, five feet eight inches in height and weighs 140 pounds. For any information, address J. A. Andrews, care of the Great Northern railway office, Seattle.
“He has disappeared from view.”
Disappearances of migrant laborers and rail workers were common in the brutal, high-turnover environment of late-19th-century infrastructure construction. This brief notice is a rare, personal window into a life that likely would have otherwise gone unrecorded.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.