The Cattle Swindler of Jackson Street
A crafty imposter poses as a logging tycoon to steal three pairs of oxen, only to be caught when the victim spots his stolen livestock at the local stockyards.
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.
Charles Tromley, a rancher living on the east shore of Lake Washington, brought three pairs of oxen into the city last Monday, intending to sell them. They were placed in A.J. Quikabush's barn at the corner of Jackson and Eleventh streets, where a man identifying himself as Thomas H. Henderson located them. Henderson claimed he was preparing to open a logging camp in Skagit County and needed more oxen. The price was settled at $875, with Henderson offering a mortgage on property as security. Tromley later discovered the cattle had been taken out of the barn and driven to the Best Transfer stock yards at River Park. It turned out the man was actually C. McAdam, who had been trying to sell the animals to Frye & Bruhn. The police were alerted, and while McAdam escaped, his partner, McLean, was detained with a forged receipt in his possession. Tromley eventually recovered his oxen.
“Tromley went to the stock yards and took possession of his oxen, remarking as he did so that he preferred that currency to legal paper.”
The intersection of Jackson and 11th remains a bustling part of Seattle's Central District, though today it is lined with apartment complexes and transit lines rather than barns and ox-trading swindlers. The story captures the rapid, often lawless atmosphere of late 1880s Seattle, where high-stakes commerce and petty grift existed side-by-side during the city's building boom.
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