The Skagit River Snag-Clearer's Defense
After volunteers broke their backs clearing river jams, a community organizer had to fight off accusations of embezzlement.
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.
I desire to correct certain false insinuations, reflecting upon my honesty, that appeared in a recent number of the Daily Intelligencer. Having resided a long time adjacent to the Skagit river settlement, where all my interests are centered, and being actuated by a generous desire to assist my neighbors to prosper and to render whatever enterprising aid I could to open up our section of the country to settlement, meeting some of the party at Seattle, I volunteered to visit some of the towns on the Sound to solicit what aid I could for the benefit of those men who voluntarily undertook to cut out the jams in the Skagit river. The first donations I received, consisting of money, tools, clothing and provisions, I turned over to them in Seattle as soon as I received them, they being highly pleased with this unexpected gratuity. Continuing my canvass about two weeks longer, much to the neglect of my own business at home, and defraying most of my traveling expenses out of my own money, I returned home, when I was taken down with a cold which soon settled into pleurisy, confining me to my house for over two weeks, during which time that unjust and malicious rumor was started. As quick as I was able to go about again I called upon one of the party and gave him all the funds remaining in my possession, that I had procured since my former payment, receiving their receipt in full, relieving me from any and all liabilities to them.
“I volunteered to visit some of the towns on the Sound to solicit what aid I could for the benefit of those men who voluntarily undertook to cut out the jams in the Skagit river.”
Community-led infrastructure projects—like clearing the Skagit of logjams in the 1870s—often faced the same scrutiny and suspicion that modern community mutual aid efforts encounter today. Managing shared resources in a booming, pre-regulatory frontier required a precarious mix of social trust and public accountability.
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