African Americans Charles Harvey and Eva Ellis Harvey arrive in Seattle in 1886.

  • By Helen Lacy
  • Posted 11/06/1998
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 241
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In 1886, Charles H. Harvey and Eva Ellis Harvey come to Seattle. After living in Belltown for a brief time, they move to a house on 2nd Avenue near the present site of the Seattle Art Museum.

In 1889, Harvey and his partner James Booker operated the Handicap Company, a contracting business with offices in the Pioneer Building in Pioneer Square. By the turn of the century Mr. Harvey was employing 15 to 20 men in his contracting business.

Charles H. Harvey was a charter member of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, Seattle's first black church.


Sources:

Esther Hall Mumford, Calabash (Seattle, Ananse Press, 1986), 78,79; Esther Hall Mumford, Seattle's Black Victorians 1852 -1901 (Seattle: Ananse Press, 1980), 33.


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