Black property owner William Hedges arrives in Seattle in 1864.

  • By Helen Lacy
  • Posted 11/06/1998
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 232
See Additional Media
In about 1864, William Hedges (d. 1871) arrives in Seattle. He becomes the African American who owns the most property during the territorial years.

Illiterate and probably a fugitive slave, he purchased and leased property in several areas of the city, including 47 acres on Green Lake, four acres on Capitol Hill, and a lot on the northwest corner of 4th Avenue S facing Washington Street.

He died in 1871, leaving his property to his children who lived in Baltimore County, Maryland.

Sources: Esther Hall Mumford. Seattle's Black Victorians, 1852-1901 (Seattle: Ananse Press, 1980), 103, 104.
Related Topics
Black Americans Business Pioneers
Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You