Charles Carroll Terry and his older brother Leander (Lee) Terry left their homes in New York state in 1849, bound for California. By October 1851 they were in Oregon Territory, and both, at different times and in different circumstances, became members of the Denny Party, the first group of pioneers to settle on Elliott Bay. Lee Terry and John Low (1820-1888) founded a settlement on Alki that they called New York, but Lee returned to New York in April 1852, having had nothing to do with the founding of Seattle. John Low left one year later, leaving Charles Terry the sole owner of New York, which he renamed Alki. It failed as a settlement, and Charles moved to Seattle, married Mary Jane Russell and began a family. His business acumen and boundless energy soon made him one of the wealthiest men in Seattle. After his untimely death in 1867, he was remembered and praised for his myriad contributions to the city's success and development.
A Scant Record
Family patriarch Horace Terry (1787-1871) was born in Enfield, Connecticut, in 1787. He married Elizabeth Chambers (1789-1853) in 1806 and settled into a life of farming and cattle dealing in Sangerfield, New York. The marriage produced nine children between 1810 and 1832, with son Leander ("Lee") the fourth-born and Charles the eighth.
Other than Lee's 1841 marriage to Maria Abbe (1819-1862) and some scattered genealogical notes, there is no additional information about either brother until 1849. Charles Terry, 19 years old, headed west that year, perhaps accompanied by Lee. There are three different versions of how Charles got to California – overland by wagon train; by ship around Cape Horn; or by ship to the Isthmus of Panama, across the Isthmus by mule, then north by ship to California. Historians do not agree on whether the brothers traveled together to California or how they got there, but they both ended up at the Shasta gold fields just south of the boundary with Oregon Territory. By 1851, either together or separately, they had made their way to Portland.
Lee Terry and "New York"
Lee Terry struck out on his own from Portland to explore points north. In Olympia, he encountered David Denny (1832-1903) and John Low, advance scouts for the Denny Party, a group of pioneers from Illinois. Lee joined them, traveling north from Olympia to Elliott Bay in a small open sailboat. The trio were put ashore at Duwamish Head on September 25, 1851, and quickly, perhaps too quickly, chose what is now Alki Point as a likely place for settlement. On September 28 Low and Terry marked out the first Donation Land Claims on Elliott Bay. Lee Terry named the settlement New York, later dubbed New York Alki, Alki being Chinook Jargon for "by-and-by." By mid-1853 it was called simply Alki. [For the sake of clarity, "Alki" will usually be used throughout.]
Low returned to Portland, carrying a note from David Denny telling his older brother Arthur Denny (1822-1899) to "come at once." Low had hired Denny to help build Alki's first cabin, and he and Terry stayed behind.
Charles Terry Arrives
Charles Terry would later claim that he crossed the border into Oregon Territory on November 10, 1850, a convenient date that would entitle him to 320 acres under the Donation Land Claims Act. (Single men arriving after December 1, 1850, were limited to 160 acres.) He didn't arrive in Portland until October 1851, and his activities in Oregon (if he was in Oregon) before that are unknown. In Portland, he met Arthur Denny and was persuaded to join the Denny Party on its way to settle on Elliott Bay, not knowing that his brother had the same destination.
In a driving rain on November 13, 1851, the main body of the Denny Party – five men (including John Low), five women, and 12 children – arrived at Alki Point on the schooner Exact. Only David Denny – injured, ill, and hunkered in the unfinished cabin – was there to greet them. Some sources report that his first words to his brother Arthur were "I wish you hadn't come" (e.g. Buerge, 102). Lee Terry had left to find a froe to cut shingles for the cabin's roof, but soon returned and was reunited with Charles. The men set about building more cabins, all of them on land that already had been marked out and claimed by Lee Terry and John Low.
At 21 or 22, Charles Terry was the second youngest of the adults in the Denny Party, but he had an entrepreneurial impulse and precocious business sense. Before the Exact sailed for Elliott Bay, he bought supplies to take north as his first stock-in-trade, recording his inventory in a little leather-bound notebook. It included "one box of axes, one box of tobacco, one keg of brandy, one keg of whiskey, and one box of raisins" (Watt, Story of Seattle, 52). Once at Alki, Terry "lost no time in putting up a little cabin to display his goods" (Bagley, 28) – the first mercantile establishment in what would become King County. His first sale was to a fellow settler, but in the early months Native Americans (through barter) were his most frequent customers, with each transaction recorded in his notebook in a section titled "Indians."
In December 1851 the brig Leonesa stopped at Alki seeking long pilings for rebuilding the waterfront in fire-ravaged San Francisco. Given an opportunity to earn money, the men on Alki felled and limbed trees, then floated them out to the Leonesa. In his notebook, Terry kept a meticulous record of how much was loaded daily and "the amount of labour by each in loading the brig Leonesa" ("Terry Account Book, 1851"). In April 1853 the Leonesa returned, bringing more supplies for Terry and purchasing more timber. His inventory kept expanding with purchases from trading schooners plying Puget Sound and supplies imported from Portland and San Francisco.
Denny Party Division
On February 15, 1852, Arthur Denny, William Bell (1817-1887), and Carson Boren (1824-1912) of the Denny Party went by canoe to the head of Elliott Bay and marked off three adjacent claims along the shoreline. This day is generally accepted as Seattle's birth. Alki did not become part of Seattle until the 1907 annexation of West Seattle.
In April 1852 Lee Terry decided to return to his wife and children in New York. Charles took over his abandoned claim. He and John Low became partners, and on September 11, 1852, the inaugural edition of Olympia's The Columbian – the first newspaper north of the Columbia River – carried an advertisement for their New York Markook House (an approximation of mákuk, a Chinook Jargon word for trading). They soon changed the name to the New York Cash Store. They also bought a large bark, the New World, and on November 27, 1852, announced that it was sailing to San Francisco "with 10,000 feet piles; 5,000 square timbers; 50,000 shingles; 100 barrels salmon; 35 cords wood; 5 barrels cranberries" (The Columbian, November 27, 1852, p. 2). Most of the lumber was harvested by settlers and tribesmen hired by Terry and Low. Alki soon was stripped of suitable trees and the crews sent to Port Orchard.
On April 11, 1853, Terry and Low dissolved their partnership after Low decided to move with his family to near Olympia. He sold his business interests and property to Terry, who was now the sole owner of Alki. He was determined to make it the leading settlement on Elliott Bay, and for a short time it appeared he might succeed. In July Terry announced that he and the owners of the Leonesa had formed the 'Leonesa Co.'" (The Columbian, July 2, 1853, p. 3), ensuring that the ship would make regular deliveries of goods to Terry and carry back to San Francisco lumber and other cargo that he exported. He was soon offering buyers everything from cook stoves to windows to "Peruvian and Wool Hats" (The Columbian, October 29, 1853, p. 3).
Two small items that appeared in the following week's edition give some idea of just how many pies Charles Terry had his fingers in – on July 6 the Leonesa sailed from Alki with a cargo of piles and timbers supplied by Terry, and on that same day the clipper Irene, "C. C. Terry, Commander," arrived in Portland with a cargo of flour and pork.
Alki vs. Seattle
Terry's ambition, energy, and head start briefly made Alki the leading settlement on Elliott Bay. Historian and journalist Thomas Prosch later wrote:
"In 1853 Alki was quite as big and looked as well as Seattle; there being three stores there, two saloons, a boarding house and several families and dwellings …
"The first celebration of the National Holiday in King County was at Alki on the Fourth of July, 1853 and consisted of a salute, dinner in a grove, reading the Declaration of Independence, remarks by several speakers and a dance in the evening" (Prosch, 42)
To compete with Henry Yesler's (1810?-1892) steam sawmill in Seattle, which started operations in March 1853, Terry partnered with Captain William Renton (1818-1891) to build a bigger sawmill on the north side of Alki Point. Stiff winter winds from the north and powerful tides destroyed the mill's log booms, and in early 1854 it was moved to Port Orchard. The winds and tides would do the same to piers, and without piers Alki could not compete with Seattle, whose sheltered shoreline offered calmer, deepwater moorage. Yesler's mill was key to the survival of Seattle; the fate of the Alki mill perhaps gave Terry his first inkling that Elliott Bay's future was not to be Alki. But he wasn't quite ready to abandon what was his.
On May 23, 1853, the first plats of Seattle were filed by Arthur Denny, Carson Boren, and David "Doc" Maynard (1801-1873). Four days later, Denny (a trained surveyor) was hired to lay out a townsite on Alki for Charles Terry – 48 equal-size lots on 12 blocks. It would not be formally recorded for nearly a year.
Ezra Meeker (1830-1928), one of the Puget Sound region's early and longest-lived pioneers, had a talent for sizing up people. In the late spring or early summer of 1853 he visited Alki. Years later, he recalled:
"Here we met the irrepressible C. C. Terry, proprietor of the new townsite, but keenly alive to the importance of adding to the population of his new town. But we were not hunting townsites, and of course lent a deaf ear to the arguments set forth in favor of the place … Terry afterwards gave up the contest, and removed to Seattle" (Meeker, 65).
The Pivot
On February 4, 1854, a notice in the Pioneer & Democrat (successor to The Columbian) announced that "all persons having demands against or INDEBTED to the firm of the Leonesa Co., or to C. C. Terry, are requested to call and settle immediately, as the undersigned [C. C. Terry] is about to leave for the Atlantic States" ("NOTICE"). Historians can only speculate about the reasons for his decision to return to the East. Some suppose he was seeking investment money, others that he wanted to visit his family, still others that he simply needed time and distance to rethink his future.
Throughout the spring and early summer of 1854, Terry ran ads with the same headline – "Great Inducements" – restating his plans to travel and offering his goods "cheaper than can be purchased elsewhere in the Territory" (e.g. Pioneer & Democrat, June 3, 1854, p. 3). Finally, on July 29, 1854, George & Co. announced that it had "purchased the stock on hand of C. C. Terry" (Pioneer & Democrat, July 29, 1854, p. 3). King County's first merchant was one no longer.
Terry also was selling his buildings on Alki, but barely any of his land. The settlement's early promise was being overtaken by its limitations – the soil was poor, a good harbor was not possible, and its merchantable timber had been cut and sold. One by one, disillusioned settlers drifted away. A map prepared in 1856 for the United States Coast Survey shows a small cluster of buildings along the north shore of "Alki," follow by the word "deserted" in parentheses.
Heading East
Terry now was ready leave, but territorial politics had it otherwise. In a letter he wrote on September 24, 1854, he explained his situation. Terry was in Portland after fruitlessly searching in the Bay Area for one Joseph O. Martin. He had trusted Martin with a power of attorney to collect $2,000 owed Terry, probably for timber he had shipped down. Martin collected the debt, then disappeared. Said Terry, "I have been to San Francisco to get some track of him, but all in vain. He has probably left for the States …" (Colang, p. 5).
There was another complication: "Since I left Alki, the Election came off, and I received the news here that I was Elected Councilman to the Legislature in Wash. Terr. … I cannot leave now until the Legislature closes which will be about the first of April next … I shall have my business all settled by that time. I shall keep my claims, I think, unless I get a good price for it" (Colang, p. 5, underlining in original). His "claims" referred to his land at Alki. A good price was not forthcoming.
Service in the legislature wasn't Terry's first civic involvement. In November 1852 he was a delegate to the Monticello Convention, which petitioned Congress to carve a new territory from the portion of Oregon Territory north of the Columbia River. Congress did, on March 2, 1853. In July 1853 he was appointed a justice of the peace for King County, and in 1854 he established the county's second post office, at Alki, and served as postmaster. In October that year he was appointed foreman of King County's first grand jury.
Characteristically, Terry kept busy in business while fulfilling his legislative obligations. In January 1855 he was one of the incorporators of the Puget Sound Navigation Company. When its primary ship, the Major Tompkins, was wrecked that same month, Terry used a small steamer he owned, Water Lily, to restart the Seattle to Olympia run, with him as captain.
Of greater significance, in April 1855 Terry partnered with Edward Lander (1816-1911), justice of the Supreme Court of Washington Territory, to buy the western half, 160 acres, of Carson Boren's original Seattle claim. They paid a mere $500, or about $3 per acre; the sale was characterized as "one of the most remarkable real estate transactions that has ever been made in the city" (Watt, The Story of Seattle, 192). [Note: In later years some sources gave the price paid as $2,000, but this was a misreading of the record.] The purchase included a long stretch of waterfront footage and a large portion of what would become the commercial center of Seattle. When Terry bought out Lander's half 10 years later it was worth $30,000.
It is not known when Terry left for the East, where he went, how long he was gone, or when he returned. There is just one clue – the absence of his name in any of the reports and records related to the Treaty Wars of 1855 and the attack on Seattle on January 26, 1856, is considered strong evidence that he was not in the territory during that period. There is no doubt that he returned sometime in the spring of that year, as evidenced by his marriage to Mary Jane Russell on July 13, 1856.
The Russells
More is known of Mary Russell's family history than that of the Terrys. Her father, Samuel Woodburn Russell (1804-1890), was born in Pennsylvania, the son of a blacksmith. At a young age he left home, moved to Ohio, and learned the carpentry trade. It was there in the late 1820s that he married Jane Sprott (1809-1881). The couple soon moved to Auburn, Indiana, where all but one of their eight children were born, with Mary Jane being the fifth.
In 1853 the Russells and seven children still at home crossed the plains by ox-team, arriving in Puget Sound country in October that year. They stayed for a time at Alki, and it's probable that this is when Terry first met his future wife, then age 16. The Russells were the only non-Native family residing there at the time, the other few dwellings being used for storage or occupied by bachelors.
After a brief sojourn in Seattle, the Russells took up a claim on the White River between today's Kent and Auburn. On October 28, 1855, warriors from the Muckleshoot and Klickitat tribes attacked settlers there, killing nine of the Russells' neighbors, including two children and an infant. The Russells were spared; alerted by friendly tribespeople, they fled to Seattle, where they would remain. Samuel became a beloved figure in the city. Among other honors, he served as Marshall of a gala Fourth of July celebration in 1868 and was an organizer of the Seattle Society of Pioneers. Two Russell sons, Thomas (1831-1882) and Robert (1834-1888), were also active in civic affairs.
Unconventional Nuptials
Upon his return from the East, Charles Terry proposed to Mary Jane Russell. Their wedding at Port Madison was July 13, 1856. Historian Frederic Grant described it mildly as "one of the pleasant social events of the time" (Grant, 92). According to a later account based on an interview with a granddaughter of the couple, there was more to it. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1948 described it:
"The wedding party consisted of Chief Justice Edward C. Lander, who performed the ceremony; Chief Seattle, a distinguished wedding guest, and the immediate families of the bride and groom. The wedding party set sail from Alki Point in two Indian war canoes manned by braves. They were married near the shore of Port Madison" ("Married (In 1856")).
Mary Jane Russell was "an exceptionally beautiful young woman, and the legend had been passed down by descendants that [on the trip West] the Indians recognized her great beauty and tried to abduct her" (Colang, 7). In Sons of the Profits, author William Speidel wrote that the setting of the wedding "in full view of several thousand panting bucks" (Speidel, 41) and the presence of Chief Seattle in the wedding party was meant to make clear that Mary Jane was now Charles Terry's wife and not to be bothered by amorous Native American suitors. There appears to be no support for this supposition in other accounts, but it's impossible at this remove to determine with certainty anything more than that the marriage occurred. It proved a happy match, and the couple would bring into being three daughters and two sons during its disease-shortened 11-year span.
Terry in Seattle
The Treaty Wars and the attack on Seattle had severe and lasting repercussions. Many settlers feared more attacks and moved to what were considered safer climes. On January 26, 1856, William Bell, one of the original three founders of Seattle, wrote to Arthur Denny, "Should this state of things continue, there will not be six families left here in the spring" (Bagley, History of Seattle, 65). Bell, his ailing wife, Sarah, and their five children were among those who left, moving to California.
Businesses suffered and commerce remained in the doldrums for nearly a decade. But there were opportunities for those with capital to invest. Charles Terry had it, and one of the first things he did after his wedding was to buy the distressed Bettman Brothers general store, one of the city's large retailers. He was a merchant once again, and when gold was discovered in the Fraser River Valley in British Columbia in 1857, he prospered as the best equipped to cater to the needs of hopeful miners passing through Seattle.
Historian Clarence Bagley wrote "Terry had an insatiable hunger for land" (Bagley, "Pioneer Seattle …," pp. 8, 9). In late 1857 he bought nearly a quarter section of land on the banks of the Duwamish River, and soon added another 50 acres. He developed a large and successful farm that specialized in onions, of which he was particularly fond. The Terry family was living on the farm in 1860 but returned to Seattle in 1864.
Earlier in 1857 Terry had consummated what may have been his sharpest transaction. Doc Maynard still owned 260 acres of unplatted land from his original Donation claim in Seattle. Having failed at business on more than one occasion and pessimistic about the city's future, he decided to try farming. Terry still owned almost 320 acres on Alki, and on July 11 that year he and Maynard exchanged their properties. Although Terry's acquisition was smaller, it would prove far more valuable. With this and his share of Carson Boren's original claim, Terry was perhaps the largest property owner in Seattle. Maynard had no more success as a farmer than he'd had as a businessman. He and his forbearing wife, Catherine (1816-1906), farmed haphazardly on Alki for several years. When their house burned down in 1863 they returned to Seattle and opened a small hospital.
The Last Years
The absence of a local newspaper in Seattle until 1863 makes it difficult to track in any detail the lives of Charles Terry and his family. More than 75 years after his death, a journalist wrote that of all those recognized as founders of Seattle, Terry was the one "about whom the least has been written and for whom probably the most praise is deserved" ("Early-Day Mansions …").
As in the years on Alki, only his commercial and civic activities left traces in the records. On the commercial front, Terry stayed active. He was an incorporator of the Puget Sound and Columbia River Railroad Company (1862) and the Seattle and Squak Railroad Company (1864). He won, with Henry Yesler, an exclusive franchise from the territorial legislature to form the Seattle Water Company and bring water in pipes to the town of Seattle (1865). With Joseph Cushman, he gained from the legislature the exclusive right to introduce eastern shad and alewives into Lake Washington and Lake Union and to catch and cure the fish for a period of 30 years (1865). His eclectic interests were again demonstrated in 1864 when he put up a building on 1st Avenue S in Seattle and opened the Eureka Bakery, while also operating the former Bettman Brothers retail and wholesale outlet. This was also the year that he built a new house for his family, at 3rd Avenue and James Street, a Victorian with extravagant eave and gable decorations, considered at the time the finest house in the town.
Terry was known for his generosity, to both public and private recipients. He donated land for the Territorial University and was its first treasurer. He gave a strip on the waterfront along what is now Alaskan Way for an anticipated railroad. Although not notably religious, he helped fund the founding of the Trinity Church. With Yesler he gifted valuable downtown land on 2nd Avenue to an impoverished widow with a severely injured son. That is but a partial account.
On the civic side, Terry was appointed or elected to several positions, culminating in January 1865 when the territorial legislature passed "An Act to Incorporate the Town of Seattle" (1864-65 Wash. Laws, p. 75). The town was to be governed by an elected board of trustees, but pending the first election the legislature appointed five men, including Yesler, David Denny, and Charles Terry, to the first board. The same legislation named Mary Jane Terry's brother, Thomas S. Russell, as town marshal. At the board's inaugural meeting, on January 28, the members elected Terry board president, and in that role he signed into law the town's first ordinances. In the 1866 election he tied with Dexter Horton (1825-1904) but won a runoff to retain his seat.
The Family
Charles and Mary Jane Terry had five children:
Nellie May Terry (1859-1920), married John G. Scurry (1845-1915) in 1876 and had four children;
Betsey Jane Terry (1860-1922), married Howard Holden Lewis (1859-1912) and had five children. She played a significant role in the establishment of Children's Orthopedic Hospital.
Edward Lander Terry (1862-1929) married Jennie Furth (1867-1949) in 1887 and had two children. He served for a time as Seattle City Treasurer. After his mother's death, Edward inherited much of the estate left by his father, but suffered severe losses during the Panic of 1893.
Charles Tilton Terry (1864-1931) never married. It was reported that he worked as a baggage handler at Union Station, both otherwise leaves no trace.
Mary Carroll Terry was born on the same day her father died, February 17, 1867. She married George B. Kittinger (1865-1933) in 1887 and had four children. She and her husband died within 11 days of each other in 1933.
It was said that, except for the Denny clan, the combined Terry/Russell families did more to populate Seattle in in the nineteenth century than any other. Charles Terry's estate was the largest that had been probated in King County up to that time.
After Charles's death Mary Jane Russell Terry remarried twice, first to Charles Murphy, whom she divorced. In April 1873 she married another pioneer, William H. Gilliam (1829-1903), who had homesteaded along the Black River in 1853. She died, age 38, in 1875.
Encomiums
Later historians who wrote of Terry were unanimous in their praise. Clarence Bagley said of him, "There is probably no man connected with the early history of Seattle who deserves more credit for what he did in developing the city and in laying broad and deep the foundation for its later progress and improvement" (History of Seattle, Vol. 2, 789-800); Thomas Prosch described Terry as "public spirited, enterprising, generous and shrewd" (Prosch, 180-181). Sophie Frye Bass, a granddaughter of founders Arthur and Mary Denny, may have had the most succinct and accurate comment: "I truly feel that he had the greatest vision of all the pioneers" (Bass, 126).
