The Battle for Burke’s Second Addition
A legal dispute over property ownership pulls in dozens of local residents and sets the city's legal community against one another.
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.
A suit was commenced in the District Court yesterday by Messrs. White & Munday and A. W. Thompson, attorneys for Sarah E. Bourn, of San Francisco, against Angus Mackintosh and 84 others. The suit is brought to recover from the defendants the entire tract of land known as Burke’s Second Addition to the city of Seattle. The suit claims that the plaintiff is the surviving legatee of Wm. B. Bourn, deceased; that prior to his death, he employed W. H. Patterson as his confidential agent, and that property patents were issued in Patterson's name as trustee. The suit alleges that in 1880, while Patterson was mentally incapacitated, he deeded the entire tract to Angus Mackintosh for $200, despite the property being worth ten thousand dollars at the time. Angus Mackintosh stated to a reporter that the records show the title was absolutely in Patterson, that his mind was perfectly sound at the time of the deed, and that he only became physically broken down years later. Because every person who purchased property in Burke’s Second Addition is made a defendant, nearly every lawyer in town has been employed in the case.
“Every person who has bought property in Burke's Second Addition is made a defendant in the action, and the result is, nearly every lawyer in town has been employed in the case.”
The growth of Seattle was often built on complex, high-stakes land title claims that defined the city’s early geography. This legal battle over Burke's Second Addition highlights how property rights and agency were fiercely contested in a developing frontier city, a tension that still echoes in modern debates over development and real estate ownership.
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