Topic: Pioneers
Seattle Pioneer Arthur Denny (1822-1899) wrote an autobiographical sketch in November 1890. It was printed verbatim in William Prosser's 1903 book, Puget Sound Country and is here reproduced in full.
Daniel Bagley was a Methodist preacher who traveled west in covered wagons with his family in 1852 as part of the Bethel Party. He and his wife Susannah Whipple Bagley (1819-1913) and son Clarence Bag...
The Bank of Commerce Building (common name, Yesler Building) at 95 Yesler Way, is located on the southwest corner of 1st Avenue S and Yesler Way and was one of three "legacy" buildings commissioned b...
After a long journey by wagon train from Illinois, William and Sarah Bell and their four daughters arrived in Portland, Oregon Territory, on October 15, 1851. There Bell met Arthur A. Denny (1822-1899...
The Bengston cabin, located in Sammamish (eastern King County) on Duane Isackson's property at 3019 244th Avenue NE, is the oldest-standing pioneer structure in Sammamish. Built in approximately 1888,...
James Bertrand was one of northern Whatcom County's earliest settlers. He was there not only during many key moments in the county's early history, but also during key moments in the early history of ...
After the Puget Sound "Indian War" of 1855-1856, a number of high-status Coast Salish refugees relocated to Chimacum Prairie, south of Port Townsend at the northeast corner of the Olympic Peninsula. T...
David Blaine and Catharine Paine Blaine came to Seattle from Seneca Falls, New York, the site of America's first women's rights convention, in which Catharine Paine participated. The Blaines were Meth...
George and Florence (Ritchie) Boone and their family had the original allotment at Neptune Beach on the Lummi Reservation. This history of the family was contributed by Cheryl Metcalf.
Carson Dobbins Boren and Mary Ann Kays Boren were among the first Anglo-Americans to settle in King County. With their infant, Livonia Gertrude Boren, known as Gertrude (1850-1912), they left Illinois...
Jeremiah Borst is considered to be the father of the Snoqualmie Valley, located in north central King County. A soft-spoken man with a lisp, he was the first permanent non-Indian settler in the valley...
Kate Kanim Borst was a Native American woman who was the third wife of Snoqualmie Valley settler Jeremiah Borst. During her lifetime, she witnessed the transformation of the valley from prairies and I...
Lucinda Stewart Boyce was not only the first Euro-American woman to live permanently on San Juan Island, she also served as a community leader and role model for hundreds of women who braved the primi...
Stephen Boyce moved to San Juan Island in 1860 and, over the next half-century, farmed there, raised a large family, and became a much-respected pioneer settler and community leader. As a youngster in...
Robert "Bob" Bracken was the first non-Indian to settle permanently in what soon became Asotin County. He arrived late in 1861 when the area was still part of an Indian reservation. Bracken engaged i...
Amos Brown was a prominent early citizen of Seattle. He was a pioneering lumberman in the Puget Sound region beginning in the 1850s and had substantial real estate holdings in present downtown Seattle...
Walter Alvadore Bull was in the first wave of non-Indian settlers in the Kittitas Valley just east of the Cascade Range in Central Washington. A 30-year-old bachelor and Union veteran of the Civil War...
George Bush (ca. 1790-1863) was a key leader of the first group of American citizens to settle north of the Columbia River in what is now Washington. Bush was a successful farmer in Missouri, but as a...
William Owen Bush was the eldest son of George Bush (1790?-1863), of Irish and African American descent, and Isabella James Bush (1809?-1866), a German American. In 1844 he accompanied his parents and...
Maude Eliza Kimball Butler, born 1880, was a pioneer teacher-educator who devoted her life to public service and her family, a fidelity she inherited from her mother and bequeathed to her children and...
Horace Cayton was the African American publisher of the Seattle Republican, a newspaper directed toward both white and black readers and which at one point had the second largest circulation in the ci...
The Columbia Maternal Association -- the first women's club in what is now Washington state -- was organized in 1838 by the wives of six pioneer missionaries. Only two of the women were mothers at the...
In 1928, Thomas Graham (1868-1946) wrote a series of articles in the Colville Examiner titled "50 Years Ago," recounting his experiences and observations as a teenager in the Colville Valley. His fami...
James Purcell Comeford first arrived in Snohomish County in 1872 and ran a trading post on the Tulalip Reservation for six years. He founded Marysville in 1878, naming it after his wife Maria. He buil...