A Family’s Quiet Plea for a Daughter
In an era of hard labor and rugged expansion, one Seattle couple sought to expand their home through an adoption request published in the local paper.
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.
The undersigned are desirous of adopting a little girl between the ages of six and ten years, to raise and educate. Our family—two boys—are grown and gone, and a girl would fill the home with joy. A full orphan preferred. Any person having or knowing of such a child can be had will have word left at this office before Friday morning. —Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Armstrong, Seattle, W. T., Dec. 1, 1880.
“Our family—two boys—are grown and gone, and a girl would fill the home with joy.”
This 1880 classified ad offers a window into the private domesticity of early Seattle, a time when the city was a small, tight-knit town of pioneers. While modern adoption is a complex legal and social process, this brief notice reveals the timeless human desire to fill a quiet home with family, even amidst the rough-hewn life of the Washington Territory.
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