A Frontier Farewell: The Seattle Pioneers Mourn Hannah Horton
A quiet moment of communal grief in early Seattle as the Pioneers' Association honors the life of a 'noble woman' in 1872.
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.
At a regular meeting of the Washington Territory Pioneers’ Association of Seattle, held on the evening of January 1st, 1872, the following resolution was adopted, and copies ordered to be furnished to the city papers with request to publish: Resolved, That our warmest heartfelt sympathies are extended to our dear brother and fellow-townsman, Dexter Horton, in this his hour of bereavement and affliction. It having pleased our Heavenly Father to call our brother's beloved wife and companion, Hannah E. Horton, we recognize in it an irreparable loss to himself and family—the loss of an exemplary Christian, a kind mother and a noble woman. She has but gone before to await the coming of her earthly friend. There is rest for the weary; there is rest for her.
“She has but gone before to await the coming of her earthly friend. There is rest for the weary; there is rest for her.”
Dexter Horton remains a household name in Seattle, famously associated with the bank he founded that eventually became part of Seafirst. This notice captures a moment of civic intimacy—a time when Seattle's elite and pioneers viewed themselves as a tightly knit, mourning family, a stark contrast to the rapid, impersonal growth of the modern city.
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