A Claim to the Shingle Throne
A Ballard man challenges the history books, asserting he invented the sawed shingle in King County in 1874.
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. W. Hight, of Ballard, a veteran shingle manufacturer, noticed the statement of ex-Gov. Eugene Semple that he introduced sawed shingles into this country in 1882, and says: 'Ex-Gov. Eugene Semple is not the pioneer manufacturer of sawed shingles on this coast, and Oregon cannot claim the honor. If sawed shingles were not manufactured on this coast prior to 1882, I am the pioneer. In 1874 I had a small sawmill, Krumm's mill, near what is now called Springbrook, north of Orillia. It was a water-power mill, and besides sawing lumber I made broom handles and sawed shingles. The first sawed shingles were made in the early part of the summer of 1874. I rigged an attachment to my broom handle lathe and sawed shingles enough to cover the addition to a school house up the White river.'
“Ex-Gov. Eugene Semple is not the pioneer manufacturer of sawed shingles on this Coast.”
This reflects the fierce pride of Seattle's early timber industry. The shingle mills were once the lifeblood of towns like Ballard, marking a shift from small-scale water-powered operations to the massive industrial scale that defined the region.
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