The Hunt for Seattle’s Teenage Outlaw
A young robbery suspect leads police on a chase through the woods near Lake View Cemetery.
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.
George Williamson, the boy highwayman who took part in the bungling attempt to hold up grocer Allen B. Cole a few days ago and who has eluded the police up to the present time, was in the city yesterday morning. The police received the information too late, for in the meantime young Williamson had gotten something to eat at his home on Brook street, near Lake Union, tied some blankets into a bundle, and started for the woods. Some one who knew the boy yelled to him from a distance: 'You had better give yourself up.' The suggestion acted with such force that Williamson made for the woods near Lake View cemetery as quickly as possible. The police had men on his trail all day, but they did not succeed in locating his retreat.
“Some one who knew the boy yelled to him from a distance: 'You had better give yourself up.' The suggestion acted with such force that Williamson made for the woods.”
The geography of this 1894 manhunt—Lake Union and the area near Lake View Cemetery (on Capitol Hill)—remains core to Seattle's identity. While the 'highwayman' was a teenager in a desperate scrape, the story highlights the city's rapid expansion at the time, as semi-rural forests were still accessible just blocks away from residential streets.
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