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Henry Yesler, Through the Years
On July 11, 1870, Henry Atkins – a pile-driver who helped build docks and wharves – was elected Seattle's first mayor. Until a new city charter was implemented 1890, the city's mayoral elections were held on the second Monday in July and were limited to a term of one year. Early mayors included a stone mason, a doctor, a journalist, and more, but this week HistoryLink remembers mill owner Henry Yesler, who was first elected to the post 150 years ago, on July 13, 1874.
Yesler arrived in Duwamps (the future Seattle) in 1852 and almost immediately began building the small community's first sawmill. For several years he employed almost every male settler in Seattle and a considerable number of Native Americans. Yesler lived in the mill's cookhouse with a Native American woman named Susan (with whom he fathered a daughter, Julia) until he was joined by his wife Sarah in 1858.
The Yeslers were freethinkers who advocated free love in lieu of traditional marriage, and Henry's infidelity appears to have had no effect on Sarah's deep bond with him. Henry proved equally tolerant of Sarah's relationships with other women, at least two of which were intimate and of some duration. Needless to say, this did not sit well with some of the church-going Protestants in town, but it didn’t stop voters from electing him mayor in 1874.
By this time Yesler had seen his fortunes rise and fall from real estate development and other business ventures, and after his one-year term ended he was deep in debt. He intended to liquidate much of his property, including the sawmill, by holding a "Grand Lottery," but was charged and convicted of illegal gambling. He was let off with a $25 fine and court costs, and his reputation in Seattle appears to have been not much changed by the fiasco.
In 1885 Yesler was elected Seattle's mayor for a second one-year term, during which he opposed attempts by townspeople to violently evict the city's Chinese residents. The year after he left office, Sarah – who had been a driving force in the creation of the Seattle Public Library – died suddenly. In 1890 the 80-year-old Yesler married a cousin, Minnie Gagle, then in her early 20s. They traveled extensively until Henry took ill and died in 1892.
Sailing in to Everett's Piers
On July 13, 1918, the Port of Everett was created by a special election and became the sixth port district in Washington, preceded by the Port of Seattle, Port of Grays Harbor, Port of Vancouver, Port of Bremerton, and Port of Kennewick. The vote came seven years after Governor Marion E. Hay signed legislation authorizing the establishment of public port districts in an effort to end the control of urban harbors by private monopolies.
Local citizens had hoped that the Port would develop a robust ship-building industry during World War I. The war's end on November 11, 1918 ended those plans, but the Everett shoreline was already dominated by lumber and shingle mills, and a lumber boom in the 1920s helped the Port grow, as did the fishing industry.
By the 1960s, the wood-product industry was in decline, but in 1967 the Boeing Company opened its massive assembly plant at Paine Field. The aerospace company soon became the Port's largest customer, with many of the oversized parts for Boeing's large jet airplanes arriving there by ship. The Port also received a boost in 1987, when its commissioners voted to sell part of the Port property to the U. S. Navy as a homeport for the carrier USS Nimitz and other ships.
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