A Night to Remember in Old Steilacoom
A dusty invitation to a long-forgotten ball reveals the social life of Washington Territory 25 years prior, documenting the vanishings of a frontier community.
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.
An invitation to a ball given at Steilacoom a quarter of a century ago was left at this office by a visitor yesterday. The ball was given February 10th, 1860, when the Territory of Washington was four times as large as it is now, and when the population of the whole Territory was about as great as that now of the county of Pierce, of which Steilacoom was then the county seat, and the brightest and best town on Puget Sound. The ball was given by the Dashaways, a flourishing temperance society of that time. The place of dancing was McCarty’s building, the first brick business house in the county, and for that matter, the only one ever put up in the town of Steilacoom. The committee of arrangements was comprised of Messrs. McLane Chambers, Dr. T.B. Webber, E.C. Ferguson, E.K. Rogers, John Phillips and N.H. Cunningham. Dr. Webber died at Steilacoom five years later. N.H. Cunningham went to Cariboo and never returned. E.C. Ferguson is a prominent citizen of Snohomish. McLane Chambers moved to Thurston County, and what became of John Phillips is unknown. E.K. Rogers is the only one of the committee remaining in Steilacoom. The floor managers were O.C. Shorey, now of Seattle, then a young cabinet maker of Steilacoom, and D.V. Waldron, who left that town when it went into decline over twenty years ago. The music was furnished by J.H. Sanborn, J. Walravan, L.M. Mason, Dr. A. Eggers and John Yantis. The invitations were printed in the Pioneer and Democrat office at Olympia. At that time there were but two small weekly newspapers in the Territory.
“The ball was given by the Dashaways, a flourishing temperance society of that time.”
This 1885 reflection on an 1860 dance highlights how rapidly Washington's urban centers like Steilacoom—once the regional hub—could fade while others boomed. Much like today's rapid gentrification and displacement, this piece serves as a reminder that the 'brightest and best' towns of one generation often become the forgotten footnotes of the next.
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