Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget Sound

CHAPTER VII.
PERSONNEL OF THE PIONEER ARMY

A long roll of honor I might call of the brave men and women who dared and strove in the wild Northwest of the long ago. If I speak of representative pioneers, those unnamed might be equally typical of the bold army of “forest-felling kings,” “forest-fallers” as well as “fighters,” like those Northland men of old.

There are the names of Denny, Yesler, Phillips, Terry, Low, Boren, Butler, Bell, Mercer, Maple, Van Asselt, Horton, Hanford, McConaha, Smith, Maynard, Frye, Blaine and others who felled the forest and laid foundations at and near Seattle; Briggs, Hastings, Van Bokkelin, Hammond, Pettygrove with others founded Port Townsend, while Lansdale, Crockett, Alexander, Cranney, Kellogg, Hancock, Izett, Busby, Ebey and Coupe, led the van for Whidby Island; Eldridge and Roeder at Bellingham Bay; toward the head of navigation, McAllister, Bush, Simmons, Packwood, Chambers, Shelton, are a few of those who blazed the way.

The blows of the sturdy forest-felling kings rang out from many a favored spot on the shores of the great Inland Sea, cheerful signals for the thousands to come after them.

These, and the long list of the Here Unnamed, waged the warfare of beginnings, which required such large courage, independence, persistence, faith and uncompromising toil, as the velvet-shod aftercomers can scarcely conceive of.

Simultaneously with the early subjugation of the country, the political, educational, commercial and social initiatory movements were made of whose present development the people of Puget Sound may well be proud.

Since the organization of the Washington Pioneer Association in October, 1883, the old pioneers and their children have met year by year in the lavish month of June to recount their adventures, toils and privations, and enjoy the sympathy begotten of similar experiences, in the midst of modern ease and plenty.

A concourse of this kind in Seattle evoked the following words of appreciation:

“No organization, no matter what its nature might be, could afford the people of Seattle more gratification by holding its assemblage in their midst than is afforded them by the action of the Pioneers’ Association of Washington Territory in holding its annual gathering in this city. Unlike conventions and gatherings in which only a portion of the community is interested, the meeting of the pioneers is interesting to all. To some, of course, the event is of more importance than to others, but all have an interest in the Pioneers’ Association, all have a pride in the achievement of its members, and all can feel that they are the beneficiaries of the struggle and hardships of which the pioneers tell.

“The reminiscences of the pioneers from the history of the first life breathings of our commonwealth – of a commonwealth which, though in its infancy, is grand indeed, and which gives promise of attaining greatness in the full maturity of its powers of which those who laid the foundations of the state scarcely dreamed. The pioneers are the fathers of the commonwealth; their struggles and their hardships were the struggles and the hardships of a state coming into being. They cleared the forests, not for themselves alone, but for posterity and for all time. As they subdued a wild and rugged land and prepared it to sustain and support its share of the people of the earth, each blow of their ax was a blow destined to resound through all time, each furrow turned by their ploughshares that the earth might yield again and again to their children’s children so long as man shall inhabit the earth. No stroke of work done in the progress of that great labor was done in vain. None of the mighty energy was lost. Each tree that fell, fell never to rise. Each nail driven in a settler’s hut was a nail helping to bind together the fabric of the community. Each day’s labor was given to posterity more surely than if it had been sold for gold to be buried in the earth and brought forth by delighted searchers centuries hence.

“It is for this that we honor the pioneers. It is for this that we are proud and happy to have them meet among us. We are their heirs. Our inheritance is the fruit of their labor, the reward of their fortitude, the recompense of their hardships. The home of today, the center of comfort and contentment, the very soul of the state, could not have been but for the log cabins of forty years ago. The imposing edifice of learning, the complete system of education, could not have been but for the crude school house of the past. The churches and religious institutions of today are the result of the untiring and unselfish labors of the itinerant preacher who wandered back and forth, now painfully picking his way through the forest, now threading with his frail canoe the silver streams, now gliding over the calm waters of the Sound, ever laying broad and deep the true foundations of the grand civilization that was to be. The flourishing cities, the steel rails that bind us to the world, the stately steamers that, behemoth-like, journey to and fro in our waters, – these things could not be but for the rude straggling hamlets, the bridle path cut with infinite labor through the most impenetrable of forests, and the canoe which darted arrow-like through gloomy passages, over bright bays and up laughing waters.

“All honor to the pioneers – all honor and welcome. We say it who are their heirs, we whose homes are on the land which they reclaimed from the forests, we who till the fields that they first tilled, we whose pride and glory is the grand land-locked sea on which they gazed delighted so many years ago. Welcome to them, and may they come together again and again as the years pass away. When their eyes are dim with age and their hair is as white as the snows that cover the mountains they love, may they still see the land which they created the home of a great, proud people, a people loving the land they love, a people honoring and obeying the laws that they have honored and obeyed so long, a people honoring, glorying in, the flag which they bore over treeless plains, over lofty mountains, over raging torrents, through suffering and danger, always proudly, always confidently, always hopefully, until they planted it by the shore of the Western sea in the most beautiful of all lands. May each old settler, as he journeys year by year toward the shoreless sea, over whose waters he must journey away, feel that the flag which he carried so far and so bravely will wave forever in the soft southwestern breeze, which kisses his furrowed brow and toys with his silvery hair. May he feel, too, that the love of the people is with him, that they watch him, lovingly, tenderly, as he journeys down the pathway, and the story of his deeds is graven forever on their minds, and love and honor forever on their hearts.”

And so do I, a descendent of a long line of pioneers in America, reiterate, “Honor the Pioneers.”

LYDIA C. LOW

Mrs. Low was one of the party that landed at Alki, Nov. 13th, 1851, having crossed the plains with her husband and children.

I have heard her tell of seeing my father, D. T. Denny, the lone white occupant of Alki, as she stepped ashore from the boat that carried the passengers from the schooner.

The Lows did not make a permanent settlement there, but moved to a farm back of Olympia, thence to Sonoma, Cal., and back again to Puget Sound, where they made their home at Snohomish for many years. Mrs. Low was the mother of a large family of nine children, who shared her pioneer life. Some died in childhood, accidents befell others, a part were more fortunate, yet she seemed in old age serene, courageous, undaunted as ever, faithful and true, lovely and beloved.

She passed from earth away on Dec. 11th, 1901, her husband, John D. Low, having preceded her a number of years before.

OTHER PIONEERS

Both Mr. and Mrs. Izett of Whidby Island are pioneers of note. Mrs. Izett crossed the plains in 1847, and in 1852 came to the Sound on a visit, at the same time Mr. Izett happened to arrive. He persuaded her not to return to her old home. Mr. Izett in 1850 went to India from England by way of Cape Horn, and two years later came to Seattle. For four years he secured spars for the British government at Utsalady. In 1859 he built the first boat of any size to be constructed on Puget Sound. This was a 100-ton schooner, and she was built at Oak Harbor. In 1862 he framed two of the first Columbia river steamers. Mrs. Izett is a sister of Mrs. F. A. Chenoweth, whose husband was a judge, with four associates, of the first Washington territorial tribunal. Another of the members was Judge McFadden. Mr. Izett knew well Gen. Isaac I. Stevens, the first governor of the territory. He came to Washington in the fall of 1859, and issued his first proclamation as governor the following February. The legislature met soon after.

J. W. MAPLE

John Wesley Maple was not only one of the oldest settlers of this (King) county, but he was one of its most prominent men. He figured to some extent in political life, but during the last few years had retired to the homestead by the Duwamish, where his father had settled after crossing the plains nearly fifty years ago, and where he himself met his death yesterday. (In March of 1902.)

He was born in Guernsey county, Ohio, January 1, 1840. As a little boy he spent his childhood days near the farm of the McKinleys, and often during his later years he was fond of relating apple stealing expeditions in which he indulged as a little boy, and for which the father of the late President McKinley often chastised him. From Ohio his father, Jacob Maple, moved to Keokuk, Ia., where he lived near the farm on which Mayor Humes, of Seattle, was reared.

In 1856, Jacob Maple, the father, and Samuel Maple, the brother of John W., came to Puget Sound. In 1862 the rest of the family followed them. In crossing the plains John W. Maple was made captain of the four wagon trains which were united in the expedition. He guided them to Pendleton, Ore., where they separated. Thence he came to the Duwamish river, where his father and brother had settled.

Later Mr. Maple and Samuel Snyder took up a homestead on Squak slough. A few years after that Mr. Maple went to Ellensburg. He finally returned to spend the rest of his life on the homestead.

HELD MANY OFFICES

In the early days he was several times elected to county offices. He was at one time supervisor for the road district extending from Yesler way to O’Brien station and to Renton. In 1896 he was elected treasurer of King county on the Populist ticket. He furnished a bond of $1,600,000. At the end of his term a shortage was found. Every cent of this was finally made good by him to those who stood on his bond.

In 1897 Mr. Maple received a complimentary vote on the part of several members of the state legislature for the office of United States senator. For this office his neighbors indorsed him, and August Toellnor, of Van Asselt, was sent by them to Olympia to see what could be done to further the candidacy. Since the end of his term as treasurer Mr. Maple has held no office, save that of school director in his district. Only a week ago Mr. Maple announced to his friends that he had left the Populist party and had returned to the Republican party, to which he had belonged prior to the wave of Populism which swept over the West in the early nineties.

During all of his life he was an ardent student of literature, and he possessed one of the finest libraries in the state. He was known as a strong orator, and was during his younger days an exhorter in the Methodist Protestant church, of which he was a member.

Mr. Maple was married twice. His first wife, who died more than twenty years ago, was Elizabeth Snyder, a daughter of Samuel Snyder, one of the oldest residents of the Duwamish valley. Six children were the fruit of this union, Charles, Alvin B., Cora, now Mrs. Frank Patten; Dora, now Mrs. Charles Norwich; Bessie, now dead, and Clifford J. Maple. His second wife was Minnie Borella. Three children were born to her, Telford C., Lelah and Beulah Maple.

Of his brothers and sisters the following are living: Mrs. Katherine Van Asselt and Mr. Eli B. Maple, of this city; Mrs. Jane Cavanaugh, of California; Mrs. Elvira Jones and Mrs. Ruth Smith, of Kent, and Aaron Maple, who now lives on the old Maple homestead in Iowa.

CHARLES PROSCH AND THOMAS PROSCH

“The summer in which the gold excitement broke out in the Colville country, in 1855,” said Thomas Prosch, “several members of a party of gold hunters from Seattle were massacred by the Indians in the Yakima Valley while on their way to the gold fields. The party went through Snoqualmie Pass in crossing the mountains. The territorial legislature sent word to Washington and the government undertook to punish the guilty tribes by a detachment of troops under Maj. Haller. This was defeated and war followed for several years. It was most violent in King county in 1855 and 1856, and in Eastern Washington in 1857 and 1858. The principal incidents in the West were the massacre of the whites in 1855 and the attack upon Seattle the following year. In 1857 Col. Steptoe sustained a memorable defeat on the Eastern side of the mountains, and the hostilities were terminated by the complete annihilation of the Indian forces in the same locality the following year by Col. Wright. He killed 1,000 horses and hanged many of the Indians besides the frightful carnage of the battlefield.”

Mr. Prosch and his father, Charles Prosch, with several other members of his family, arrived in the state and in Seattle between the years 1849 and 1857. Gen. M. M. Carver, the founder of Tacoma, who was Mrs. Thomas Prosch’s father, came to the territory in 1843 with Dr. Whitman, who was massacred, with Applegate and Nesmith.

Time and strength would fail me did I attempt to obtain and record accounts of many well known pioneers; I must leave them to other more capable writers. However, I will briefly mention some who were prominent during my childhood.

The Hortons, Dexter Horton and Mrs. Horton, the latter a stout, rosy-cheeked matron whose house and garden, particularly the dahlias growing in the yard, elicited my childish admiration. I remember how certain little pioneer girls were made happy by a visit from her, at which time she fitted them with her own hands some pretty grey merino dresses trimmed with narrow black velvet ribbon. Also how one of them was impressed by the sorrow she could not conceal, the tears ran down her cheeks as she spoke of a child she had lost.

One family have never forgotten the Santa Claus visit to their cottage home, the same being impersonated by Dexter Horton, who departed after leaving some substantial tokens of his good will.

The pioneer ministers of the Gospel were among the most fearless of foundation builders. Reverends Wm. Close, Alderson, Franklin, Doane, Bagley, Whitworth, Belknap, Greer, Mann, Atwood, Hyland, Prefontaine, and others; of Rev. C. Alderson, who often visited my father and mother, Hon. Allen Weir has this to say:

“I remember very clearly when, during the ‘sixties,’ Brother Alderson used to visit the settlement in which my father’s family lived at Dungeness, in Clallam county, Washington Territory. He was then stationed at White River, twelve miles or more south of Seattle. There was no Tacoma in those days. To reach Dungeness, Brother Alderson had to walk over a muddy road a dozen miles or more to Seattle, then by the old steamer Eliza Anderson to Port Townsend, and then depend upon an Indian canoe twenty-five miles to the old postoffice at Elliot Cline’s house. After his arrival it would require several days to get word passed around among the neighbors so as to get a preaching announcement circulated. Sometimes he would preach at Mr. Cline’s house, sometimes at Alonzo Davis’, and sometimes at my father’s. He was literally blazing the trail where now is an highway. The first announcement of these services in the Dungeness river bottom was when a bearded, muddy-booted old bachelor from Long Prairie stopped to halloo to father and interrupt log piling and stump clearing long enough to say: ‘H-a-y! Mr. Weir! The’s a little red-headed Englishman goin’ to preach at Cline’s on Sunday! Better go an’ git your conschense limbered up.’ Everybody knew the road to Cline’s. At each meeting the audience was limited to the number of settlers within a dozen miles. All had to attend or proclaim themselves confirmed heathen. The preacher, who came literally as the ‘Voice of one crying in the wilderness,’ was manifestly not greatly experienced at that time in his work – but he was intensely earnest, courageous, outspoken, a faithful messenger; and under his ministrations many were reminded of their old-time church privileges ‘back in old Mizzoory,’ in ‘Kentuck,’ or in ‘Eelinoy,’ or elsewhere. I remember that to my boyish imagination it seemed a wonderful amount of ‘grit’ was required to carry on his gospel work. He made an impression as an honest toiler in the vineyard, and was accepted at par value for his manly qualities. He was welcomed to the hospitable homes of the people. If we could not always furnish yellow-legged chickens for dinner we always had a plentiful supply of bear meat or venison.

“After Brother Alderson returned to Oregon I never met him again, except at an annual conference in Albany (in 1876, I think it was), but I always remembered him kindly as a sturdy soldier of the Cross who improved his opportunities to administer reproof and exhortation. The memory is a benediction.”

Of agreeable memory is Mrs. S. D. Libby, to whom the pioneer women were glad to go for becoming headgear – and the hats were very pretty, too, as well as the wearers, in those days. Good straw braids were valued and frequently made over by one who had learned the bleacher’s and shaper’s art in far Illinois.

A little pioneer girl used often to rip the hats to the end that the braids might be made to take some new and fashionable form.

“The beautiful Bonney girls,” Emmeline, Sarah and Lucy, afterward well known as Mrs. Shorey, Mrs. G. Kellogg and Mrs. Geo. Harris, might each give long and interesting accounts of early times. Others I think of are the John Ross family, whose sons and daughters are among the few native white children of pioneer families of Seattle (the Ross family were our nearest neighbors for a long time, and good neighbors they were, too); the Peter Andrews family, the Maynards, who were among the earliest and most prominent settlers; Mrs. Maynard did many a kindness to the sick; the Samuel Coombs family, of whom “Sam Coombs,” the patriarch, known to all, is a great lover and admirer of pioneers; Ray Coombs, his son, the artist, and Louisa, his daughter, one of the belles of early times; the L. B. Andrews family; Mr. Andrews was a friend of Grandfather John Denny, and himself a pioneer of repute; his fair, pleasant, blue-eyed daughter was my schoolmate at the old U., then new; the Hanfords, valued citizens, now so distinguished and so well known; Mrs. Hanford’s account of the stirring events of early days was recognized and drawn from by the historian Bancroft in compiling his great work; the De Lins; the Burnetts, long known and much esteemed; the Sires family; the Harmons, Woodins, Campbells, Plummers, Hinds, Weirs of Dungeness, later of Olympia, of whom Allen Weir is well known and distinguished; yes, and Port Gamble, Port Madison, Steilacoom and Olympia people, what volumes upon volumes might have been, might be written – it will take many a basket to hold the chips to be picked up after their and our Blazing the Way.

HAIL, AND FAREWELL

 
Heroic Pioneers!
Of kings and conquerors fully peers;
Well may the men of later day
Proclaim your deeds, crown you with bay;
Forest-fallers, reigning kings,
In that far time that memory brings.
Nor savage beast, nor savage man,
Majestic forests’ frowning ban,
Could palsy arms or break the hearts,
Till wilds gave way to busy marts;
You served your time and country well,
Let tuneful voices paeans swell!
O, steadfast Pioneers!
Bowed ’neath the snows of many years,
Your patient courage never fails,
Your strong true prayers arise,
E’en from the heavenly trails
To “mansions in the skies.”
To noble ones midst daily strife,
And those who’ve crossed the plains of life,
Far past the fiery, setting sun,
The dead and living loved as one,
(Tolls often now the passing bell)
We greeting give and bid farewell.
 
 
O Mother Pioneers!
We greet you through our smiles and tears;
You laid foundations deep,
Climbed oft the sun-beat rocky steep
Of sorrow’s mountain wild,
Descended through the shadowy vales
Led by the little child.
Within, without your cabins rude
As toiling builders well you wrought,
With busy hands and constant hearts,
And eager children wisdom taught;
Long be delayed the passing bell,
Long be it ere we say “Farewell!”
 
 
Beloved Pioneers!
Whom glory waits in coming years,
You planted here with careful hand
The youngest scion in our land
Cut from the tree of Liberty;
To fullest stature it shall grow,
With fruitful branches bending low,
Your worth then shall the people know.
When all your work on earth is done,
Your marches o’er and battles won,
(No more will toll the passing bell)
They’ll watch and wait at Heaven’s gate
To bid you Hail! and nevermore, Farewell!