Topic: Biographies
Aaron T. Van de Vanter came to King County from Indiana in January 1885, age 26. Within five years of his arrival, he helped establish the city of Kent and served as its first mayor. He was deeply inv...
Clayton Van Lydegraf's career as a revolutionary began when he joined the American Communist Party as teenager in the 1930s. In the 1940s he became the party's second in command in the Pacific Northwe...
Seattle attorney William J. "Bill" Van Ness Jr. worked under U.S. Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (1912-1983) from 1966 to 1977 on the U.S. Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. He served fi...
George Vancouver was an important explorer of Puget Sound. He served for 25 years in the British Navy, and commanded the 1791-1792 British expedition to the North Pacific. In April 1792, George Vancou...
George Vanderveer was one of Washington's most controversial trial lawyers, whose unofficial title "counsel for the damned" resulted from his fierce legal representation of Seattle's criminal underwor...
Gordon Franklin Vickery served the City of Seattle for 34 years, first as a firefighter, rising to the office of Chief, and then as Superintendent of Seattle City Light. In both offices he exercised s...
He was known as "Mr. Tri-Cities," the "Man from Hanford," the "Godfather of the Tri-Cities," and, occasionally, by less-flattering terms. For more than 60 years, just about everyone at Hanford and in ...
David Wagoner, considered the dean of Pacific Northwest poets, was already embarked on a promising literary career when his mentor, the legendary Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), called in the winter of ...
Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright IV was born on August 23, 1883, at Fort Walla Walla into a family with a long history of U.S. military service. He furthered that tradition by attending West Point Military ...
Kent Waliser’s passion for the wine industry didn’t begin right away. In fact, he spent most of the first 50 years of his life growing apples and cherries. But after a series of life chang...
Doug Walker was a Seattle software entrepreneur -- cofounder of Walker, Richer & Quinn (WRQ) -- who became a linchpin in Puget Sound philanthropy, with national conservation commitments that include c...
Lillian Walker was an African American civil rights activist in the Bremerton area. Raised in rural Illinois, Walker went on to Chicago to pursue nursing, and moved to Bremerton in 1941 with her husba...
Marjorie Walker was an unconventional and well-to-do New York artist who left city life to live on rural San Juan Island. She'd first seen the San Juan archipelago, located between the Northwest Washi...
As a young girl in Maine, Mary Richardson set her mind to become a missionary. Upon marrying Elkanah Walker in 1837, the couple set out for the Oregon Country. They settled among the Spokane Indians t...
Award-winning producer Jean Walkinshaw (b. 1926) pioneered television documentary filmmaking in the Northwest. Beginning at KING-TV in the 1960s, Walkinshaw pushed TV beyond its white middle-class com...
Monrad Charles "Mon" Wallgren (1891-1961) served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and four years in the U.S. Senate before becoming Washington's 13th governor in 1944. Swept into office...
John Wallingford Jr., a real estate developer who gave his name to the north Seattle neighborhood of Wallingford, arrived in Seattle in 1888 at the age of 55. He was born in Maine, and served in the C...
Pearl Wanamaker was a long-serving Superintendent of Public Instruction (1941-1957), whose years in the non-partisan office addressed World War II educational and vocational demands, and managed the b...
Charles "Wappy" Wappenstein was a colorful character who was twice Seattle's chief of police (from 1906-1907 and from 1910-1911) and served as a member of the Seattle police force for a much longer pe...
The queen of Northwest ceramics, Patti Warashina is internationally recognized for her technically refined, figurative sculptures that helped expand the boundaries of clay as a medium. While poking fu...
"A Pioneer of Three States -- Adventurer, Prospector, Miner, Trader, Explorer, Promoter, Soldier and Public Official," was how Edward Warbass was once described ("San Juan's Best Known Pioneer"). He c...
Florasina Ware was the quintessential activist, known for raising a strong and logical voice on behalf of children, the elderly, and the poor.
Joel "Joe" Warren was Spokane's Chief of Police during the 1880s. He left this position to form his own detective agency. Later, from 1917 to 1920, he served as Seattle's Chief of Police, playing an a...
The eminent African American sculptor and painter James Washington Jr. was a leading member of the Northwest School. He grew up in Mississippi. After working as a WPA artist, he came to the Puget Soun...