1312 East 65th - A personal connection

The little white house at 1310 NE 65th Street, with the former Åkerlund house to the right. Undated image courtesty of King County Department of Assessments

In 1986, a friend and I rented the little white house at 1310 NE 65th Street, next door to the former Åkerlund house. Our landlord was Hugh Sisley. I hesitate to mention that name. I might as well say "Voldemort". But in 1986 the house was still in good shape, and quite charming.

Mrs. Peterman lived in the former Åkerlund house. I don't remember much about her, except that she was nice and that she had a Maine coon cat named Elliot whom we adored. She told us, more than once, that the man who used to own our house kept his yard looking "just like a park". (My guilty conscience might have only imagined the significant glances. We were good tenants, but essentially apartment-dwellers who had no experience with yard work. Fortunately, our other next-door neighbor, Bob, mowed our lawn for us.)

I was sad, but not surprised, to learn that Hugh Sisley had acquired 1312. It's subsequently suffered the degenerative fate of all Hugh houses. I won't be posting a "now" photo of the house. It makes me too angry.

"... the happiest in her life." - 1312 East 65th - August, Anna, and Glen Åkerlund

House built: 1910
BEG 429.32 FT W & 36.35 FT N OF SE SEC COR TH N 102 FT TH W 30 FT TH S 102 FT TH E 30 FT TO BEG
Plat Block: ?
Plat Lot: ?
1910 Address: 1312 East 65th
Current address: 1312 NE 65th

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August Åkerlund, age 34, born in Sweden, house carpenter
Anna Åkerlund, age 31, born in Sweden
Glen Åkerlund, age 2, born in Washington

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Anna, August, and Glen Akerlund, circa 1910 - reproduced with kind permission from Anders and Inga Åkerlund

August Åkerlund was 29 years old and single when he sailed from Liverpool to Boston on the S. S. Saxonia in May of 1905. He listed his trade as "carpenter", had $250 in his possession, and was headed for Minneapolis. According to the ship's manifest, he'd been to the US once before, in Chicago.

On 11 May, 1907, he married Swedish-born Anna Gustafson in Minneapolis. Some time later they moved to Seattle. On 14 August 1908, Anna gave birth to her first son, Glen Oskar.

Inga Åkerlund, Glen's daughter-in-law, wrote to me that the family returned to Sweden in 1912. August had promised his parents that he would return to care for them when they could no longer manage their small farm. "They actually had tickets for returning with Titanic," she wrote, "but must wait for new booking". August struggled with the farm, but returned to his profession as a carpenter. The family moved to Västerås for the sake of Glen's education.

Glen was ordained in 1936, and went on to become a dean in the Västerås diocese. He died on 23 January, 2003, at the age of 95. Read more about him (translated, or in the original Swedish).

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The public record of the Åkerlund family's life in the United States is practically non-existent, limited to the census record from 1910, the marriage record, the ship's manifest. I haven't been able to find a directory listing for them, nor any mention of them in the newspapers.

This photograph makes up for any perceived loss. It's a beautiful portrait of a young family and their new home, and a rare glimpse of a neighborhood young enough to still have space to breathe.

Anna once told Inga that "the years in America were the happiest in her life." I'm grateful to Inga and Anders Åkerlund for sharing this treasure.

The Recently Departed, Part II - 816 E. 67th - Robert, Fannie, and Johanna Hilts, and Oran Harper

House built: 1901
Woodlawn Add to Green Lake
Plat Block: 52
Plat Lot: 9
1910 Address: 816 E 67th
Current address: Demolished late August – early September 2014

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Robert Loren Hilts, age 51, married 30 years, carpenter, born in Oregon to Canadian-born David Hilts and Indiana Hilts (born in Indiana).
Fannie NORMAN Hilts, age 50, born in Missouri to Saul Norman (born in Indiana) and Hepzibah FRAKER Norman (born in Missouri).
Joanna Hilts, daughter, age 18, single, born in Washington, working as a salesman (sic) in a department store.
Oran Harper, step-grandson, age 12, born in Missouri, birthplace of parents unknown.

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Photo taken 20 August 2014

Undated photo courtesy of the King County Department of Assessments

Let's just put this out there right now. Fannie Norman Hilts lived to be 99 years old, and if she'd held on a month and a half longer, she would have lived to be 100. She was born on 22 February, 1860, in Gentryville, MO. Her father was killed during the Civil War, fighting for the Union Army. "My people helped free the slaves," she told a reporter from the Seattle Times. In the same interview, she also mentioned hearing the guns booming during the Battle of Charleston (Missouri). Since she would have been less than two years old, I suspect it was a family story, told so often, and in such detail, that it assumed the solidity of memory for her.

The Times story includes her photo. She's a pretty, round-cheeked, bright-eyed lady who could more easily pass for 67 than 97. She outlived her husband and four of her five children, but she appears unbowed by grief. She worked from age 5 – "taking care of babies near Unionville, MO. Later I dropped (seeded) corn. When I was 10 I did housework." – but she regretted her failing hearing and eyesight because it prevented her from working.

Work – constant, physical, and at any job that came to hand – was reality, was life. Robert Hilts began his (official, recorded) working life as a carpenter in Union County, Oregon. He married Fannie, whose family had come to Oregon in a wagon train, in November of 1879. By the 1887 Washington Territory census, the family was farming in Stevens County. He also served as County Commissioner in 1892.

In 1904, the family moved to Seattle, and to the house at 816 E. 67th. Robert's occupations ranged from farmer to carpenter to timber clearing contractor and logger. He died in Darrington, WA, on 23 May 1916, at age 60.

Fannie lived with her children after that – with a son, Rupert Leelen Hilts, who was a fisherman in Wrangell, Alaska; with a daughter, Lena, whose husband was a dealer in wood; with Joanna. She died in 1960, in a nursing home, after a long illness.

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A word about Oran Harper, the "step-grandson": it appears his father was Stanford Harper and his mother was Amanda Jane (or Manda, or Mandy Jane) Norman. I couldn't find a connection between Amanda Jane's family and Fannie's. Maybe I just didn't look hard enough, or in the right places. For now, he will remain a mysterious presence.

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A word about footnotes: blogger keeps breaking them, even when I make wholly-unrelated-to-footnotes edits. So I am kicking the footnotes to the curb. See my sources below.

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Sources:

"Child Who Heard Guns Boom in Civil War Turns 97th Birthday Leaf Here", The Seattle Times, February 24, 1957

"Mrs. Robert L. Hilts, 99, Pioneer, Dies", The Seattle Times, January 15, 1960

Badly-Behaved Women, Part I - The Laundry Girl - 816 E 67th - Joanna (Johanna) Hilts

House built: 1901
Woodlawn Add to Green Lake
Plat Block: 52
Plat Lot: 9
1910 Address: 816 E 67th
Current address: Demolished August - September 2014

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1910: Joanna Hilts, age 18, single, working as a salesman (sic) in a department store

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Joanna I. Hilts was born in 1891 in Stevens County, Washington, the fourth child of Robert and Fannie NORMAN Hilts. By 1905, these hard-working farmer folks had moved to Seattle and purchased the house at 816 E 67th from Robert Scrunton.

Joanna's occupations ranged from clerk in 1908 to department store salesman in 1910; nurse in 1912; and finally, laundry worker in 1913. And it was as a laundry girl that Joanna made her mark and earned a place in local labor history.

As part of a series on "Seattle Women Who Maintain Their Own Independence", the May 28, 1905 Seattle Times printed "The Girl in the Steam Laundry",¹ a profile of Harriet Graban of the Queen City Laundry. At that time, the laundry girl worked 10-hour days, six days a week, with Sundays and holidays off. Graban, who had worked at the Queen City Laundry for four years, had reached the point of making $15 a week. As she told the Times, "... a girl will like the work, pay attention and then the proprietors will raise her salary until she could support herself on her wages." (Emphasis mine.)

A quick search of the "Help Wanted - Female" ads of the time reveals the degree of specialization within the laundry. Ads called for shirt waist and neckband ironers, shirt finishers, ladies' clothes ironers, mangle girls, starch and flat work sorters, starchers, collar girls, and more.

Joanna had worked for the Troy Laundry for about a year when she was subpoenaed to testify before the Industrial Welfare commission in Olympia regarding setting a minimum wage for women laundry workers.

There she distinguished herself with her determination and wit. Taking to task laundry owner Frank Nixon, who thought the girls needed only 10 cents for each meal, she said "It's easy enough for you to say that girls can eat on 10 cents a meal. Talking that way doesn't hurt your stomach and it doesn't make your heart faint and your head swim as you slave, slave, slave. Your meal at noon today cost $2.40 for yourself. You've allowed yourself at one sitting more than you would give a laundry girl all week."²

(Nixon wasn't the only one who thought the girls should be kept hungry. Rev. H. R. McGinnity of Tacoma, at the conference as a representative of the disinterested public, had claimed that "working girls should not have coffee with their meals, that a 'horn of milk and a potato' had been good enough for working people" in Ireland.)³

Nixon estimated the annual cost of living for the laundry girl at $372. Joanna estimated $609.⁴ On May 16, the five male conference members outvoted the four female conference members to pass a resolution recommending $8.50 as the minimum wage.⁵ The Industrial Welfare Commission rejected it unanimously and called for a new conference: "Investigation has revealed the fact that $8.50 is not sufficient for a woman to maintain herself in health and comfort."⁶

(In May of 1914, the minimum wage for women working in stores was $10 per week, and had just been set at $8.90 per week for women factory workers. "Members of the welfare commission take the ground that there is little difference between the amount necessary to support a working girl in a factory or laundry, and they do not believe a marked difference in wages between the two industries would be justified.")⁷


Joanna returned home from Olympia at the close of the conference, but discovered when she reported to work at the Troy Laundry that she had been fired. The populist Seattle Star (in contrast to Colonel Blethen's Seattle Times, which allowed one grudging column to cover labor issues) made her dismissal front-page headline news.⁸


The Star editorialized on her firing,⁹ and reported on her subsequent blacklisting by every laundry in Seattle.¹⁰ Labor Commissioner E. W. Olsen investigated the case and demanded that B. F. Ivy and W. H. Kuhlemeier, proprietors of the Troy Laundry, reinstate Joanna. When they failed to promise to comply, Olsen decided to make a test case by prosecuting the proprietors and forewoman May Jeffries. Would the new state law authorizing a minimum wage for working women be "broad enough to protect from arbitrary discharge an employee who offends her employer by assisting the industrial welfare commission in fixing the minimum wage for workers in her craft"?¹¹


In early July 1914, Justice of the Peace John B. Gordon found B. F. Ivy guilty of violating the state industrial commission act. Ivy was fined the maximum of $100.¹² The Seattle Star lamented that the fine was nothing more than a slap on the wrist.¹³


The state, however, couldn't compell the Troy Laundry to rehire Joanna. It couldn't protect her from being blacklisted. She may not have worked again until the opening¹⁴ of the union-owned Mutual Laundry in December of 1914.

Though now securely employed by the city's first cooperative, Joanna continued to fight for the rights of the average laundry girl. In February of 1915 she appeared before a joint committee on labor and labor statistics, speaking of the fear of retaliation that kept the state's 2,000-some laundry girls from protesting the proposed amendment to the 8-hour law.¹⁵


By 1916, Joanna and her mother had moved to 514 Prospect on Queen Anne Hill (the Mutual Laundry was located at 714 Broad). Joanna's father, Robert L. Hilts, had died in Darrington, where he had been employed as a logger, in May of that year. In 1917, she and her mother had moved to L112 Valley, still on Queen Anne Hill, and Joanna had been hired as Business Agent for the Mutual Laundry.¹⁶ She had been serving as financial secretary, but when the previous business agent left, the two positions were merged to make a salaried, full-time job. In that capacity, Joanna continued to work for the laundry girl, speaking, for example, to the laundry workers of Everett who wished to form a union.¹⁷

On 18 May 1918, Joanna married Robert Edgar Wall, a Canadian-born iron moulder. She appears to have dropped out of public life after her marriage. She and Robert had three children together - Robert jr., Lena, and John - and lived in South Seattle for the entirety of their marriage.

Joanna died on 27 January 1961, in Duarte, CA, while visiting her son Robert.

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Further reading:

Report of Commission on Industrial Relations, Olson Exhibit No. 3 - Laundry Conference, Senate Chamber, Capitol Building, Olympia, Wash., May 14 and 15, 1914

Home & Dry Gazette - The Story of the Seattle Empire Laundry

"Laundry Workers Struggle for Recogniztion", Kimberley Reimer, Seattle General Strike Project

1 "Seattle Women Who Maintain Their Own Independence - The Girl in the Steam Laundry", Seattle Times, May 28, 1905, Magazine section, pages 1 and 5^↩

2 Johanna Hilts Fired" (headline, front page), The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 20 May 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.^↩

3 "Labor To Watch Scale Hearings", The Seattle Times, May 21, 1914^↩

4 "Minimum Wage May Be Only $8", The Seattle Times, May 15, 1914^↩

5 Ibid.^↩

6 $8.50 Wages For Laundry Girls Too Low", The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 16 May 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.^↩

7 "Minimum Wage May Be Only $8"^↩

8 Johanna Hilts Fired", The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 20 May 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.^↩

9 The Case of Johnna (sic) Hilts, The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 21 May 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.^↩

10 Johanna Hilts On Black List; Can't Get A Job", The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 28 May 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.^↩

11 "State Comes To Aid of Worker", The Seattle Times, May 21, 1914^↩

12 "Laundry Manager Fined", The Seattle Times, July 7, 1914^↩

13 A Slap on the Wrist", The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 08 July 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.^↩

14 Model Laundry Completed; Organized Labor Dances To Celebrate Its Success", The Seattle star. (Seattle, Wash.), 12 Dec. 1914. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.^↩

15 Girls Afraid To Protest 8-Hour Bill", The Tacoma times. (Tacoma, Wash.), 11 Feb. 1915. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress^↩

16 "Laundry Workers Get Girl Business Agent", The Seattle Times, May 11, 1917^↩

17 Laundry Workers Organize Union", The labor journal. (Everett, Wash.), 22 June 1917. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.^↩

About Those Baumgartners ...

I'm new to this whole non-fiction thing. When I research the people in the 1910 census, the data points I find are scarce. I find myself playing connect-the-dots with the few facts available. Something in me needs a narrative. Another something in me needs to fight the impulse to create one.

I will do my best to report the facts I find, without speculation or interpretation or judgement. I know that I can't know the minute details of these people's lives - if they loved each other, if they loved their children, if they were happy or unhappy or too exhausted by a life of labor to even pose the question to themselves.

But I may break out into supplemental posts, such as this one, in which I allow myself the luxury of wondering out loud, just because wondering is integral to my personality (and is the reason I'm doing the research in the first place).

When I stumbled across the Door County Library Newspaper Archives, I found a source of information that filled in a few details of Joseph, Anna, Mayme, and that expanded their lives for me beyond the information found in census records and city directories. And yet these details brought up more questions. Why did Joseph go to Los Angeles? Why, apparently independently, did Anna? Why, when Joseph and Anna applied for their marriage license, did Anna used the name Vogel instead of Sullivan?¹ (Even in cases of divorce, it was common for women to keep their married names.)

Several items² about Joseph mention the "Door County colony"³ in Seattle, which opens up an intriguing avenue of research and helps explain, at least in part, the impulse to move West.

But my greatest curiosity is reserved for Mayme, who appears to have lived (except vacations) in Milwaukee with her deceased father's family, or with Anna's relatives. Maybe this was a common arrangement for the children of first marriages when the mother remarried. I don't know.

Too, I think about her balancing the needs of a dying mother, a tubercular husband, and a new baby; and I imagine she dealt with it the way most of us do in times of great stress and grief - from one moment to the next.

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1 Los Angeles Herald, July 10, 1898^↩
2 The Advocate, Sturgeon Bay, WI, December 17, 1908^↩
3 The Advocate, September 14, 1911^↩

The Recently Departed, Part I - 6712 8th Ave NE - Joseph and Anna Baumgartner, and Mayme Sullivan

House built: 1906
Woodlawn Add to Green Lake
Plat Block: 52
Plat Lot: 2-3
1910 Address: 6712 8th Av NE
Current address: Demolished late August – early September 2014

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Photo taken 20 August 2014

Undated photo courtesy of the King County Department of Assessments

As I mentioned in my first post, light rail is coming and houses, inevitably, will fall. I didn't realize, however, that they would fall quite so soon. The Baumgartner house is one of seven (very) recently demolished to make way for a 7-story structure containing 270 residential units. It seemed like a good time to research these seven households.

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As reported in the 1910 census, Joseph Baumgartner, age 42, is living at 6712 8th Ave NE. He’s German by birth, though he arrived in the United States as a babe in arms in 1872. He is working as a dock hand at a shipping company.
He’s married to Anna (Annie) VOGEL Baumgartner, also 42, born in Wisconsin to German parents. This is her second marriage. She’s working as a "crown cleaner" in a "dye house". (However, the 1910 directory lists her as a presser at Crown Cleaners.)
Mary “Mayme” Sullivan, Annie’s child by her first marriage, is 22, Wisconsin-born, single, and employed as a dressmaker in a shop.

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Both Joseph and Anna were the children of farmers, and grew up in the Eastern Ridges and Lowlands of Wisconsin. Joseph lived in Door County in 1880. By 1895 the family had settled in the now-defunct town of Preble, in Brown County. (His parents, Joseph and Theresa, and his brothers Charles and Emil are all buried in the Allouez Catholic Cemetery in Green Bay.)

The Baumgartner brothers ran a successful stage line, with Joseph as driver, between Green Bay and Sturgeon Bay. The stage carried passengers, mail and freight, even after the Ahnapee & Western railroad was completed.¹

Annie grew up in Rapids, Manitowoc County; but she married Edward J. Sullivan, a Milwaukee boy, on 12 April 1886, and listed her own place of residence as Milwaukee. Edward’s parents, Tim (born in Ireland) and Margaret (born in Canada), had a saloon, with living space upstairs, on Erie Street (the addresses range from 126, 164, and 166 Erie Street over the years). Annie and Edward lived on Erie Street, then later moved to Jackson Street, about a five-minute walk from the Erie Street home. Mary, nicknamed Mayme (or perhaps it was Mayme, nicknamed Mary), was born in April of 1887.

In the past, Edward had worked as a laborer. In 1888, he got a job as a fireman on the tug A. W. Lawrence, working for his uncle, Captain John Sullivan. On 30 October, 1888, in Lake Michigan off North Point, the Lawrence's boilers exploded and the tug blew to pieces. Edward, Captain Sullivan, and two other crew members were killed.²

In the mid-90s, Joseph moved to Los Angeles, working as a driver and also in the shipyards. On 9 July, 1898, he married Anna, "who was likewise sojourning in the Golden state."³ They returned to Wisconsin and Joseph took up farming. By the time of the 1900 census, they were living in Gardner, Door County, near to Anna’s parents, Wolfgang and Theresia Vogel.

But where was Mayme? A snippet from the 12 August 1899 issue of the Advocate mentions that Mayme, living in Tornado (a community or institution in Door County that seems to no longer exist) with a Miss Tillie Vogel, would be staying with Joseph and Anna for several weeks. Catherine and Nellie Sullivan, Edward's sisters, were to join them for this visit.⁴

At the time of the 1900 census, Mayme (thirteen and attending school) was living with her grandmother, Margaret Sullivan, at 164 Erie Street. Timothy died in 1893; Margaret was now running the saloon. Her daughters Julia, 25, and the aforementioned Catherine, 20, were both working as dressmakers, which might be how Mayme learned the trade.

Mayme spent the winter of 1904 with Joseph and Anna; and the Wisconsin state census, enumerated in June of 1905, shows her living with them. But she is also listed as a dressmaker in the 1906 Milwaukee city directory, living with Margaret, at 281 Reed.

In July of 1906, preparatory to moving to Seattle, Joseph sold his 200-acre farm, and Mayme came up from Milwaukee to spent her "annual visit" with them.⁵

In the fall of 1907, Joseph and Anna moved to Seattle. They lived at 420 Lenora, and Anna was employed as a presser at the Berlin Dye Works. Mayme joined them in Seattle by December of 1908.

In December of 1909 Joseph wrote to friends about the bad weather, and about his work at the ship yard. "Among the work being done are two submarine boats for the navy, a big freighter and a number of other craft."⁶

By 1910, he had purchased, in full, the house at 6712 8th Avenue NE.

In August of 1910, Mayme returned to Wisconsin and married John Stoneman. They set up housekeeping at Sturgeon Bay.⁷ In December of 1910 she went to Seattle. Anna was stricken with stomach cancer, and was too weak for an operation.⁸ Mayme stayed until late January.

On 31 May 1911, Mayme gave birth to a daughter, Mae. Mayme and baby Mae removed to Milwaukee in early July to spend the summer. At that time, John was a patient at the state sanitarium in Wales, receiving treatment for tuberculosis.⁹

John (who made a full recovery) and Mayme left for Seattle on 29 November, 1911, and were present when Anna died on 8 December. Anna’s body was brought back to Wisconsin and buried at Forestville, where she was “mourned by a large circle of friends”.¹⁰

Joseph remained in Seattle. In 1915 he was working as a watchman and living at 726 Pine. In 1920, he had moved to 612 Madison Street, and listed himself as a farmer. In 1930, he was enumerated as a guest at 1019 1st Avenue, and had retired. He died at that address in 1938. His body was brought to Wisconsin and buried near his parents and his brothers in Allouez Catholic Cemetery in Green Bay.

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1 The Democrat, Sturgeon Bay, WI, December 7, 1893^↩
2 “Four Lives Lost”, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, PA, October 31, 1888 ^↩
3 The Advocate, Sturgeon Bay, WI, August 13, 1898^↩
4 The Advocate, Agust 12, 1899^↩
5 The Advocate, September 5, 1907^↩
6 The Advocate, December 23, 1909^↩
7 Door County Democrat, Sturgeon Bay, WI, September 2, 1910^↩
8 Door County Democrat, December 23, 1910^↩
9 Door County Democrat, July 14, 1911^↩
10 Door County Democrat, December 13, 1911^↩

“… forget to worry about the end of life …” - John Sylvester, Delia Darling, and Albert Dorrance Pinney

House built: Before 1905
Plat Block: ? 
Plat Lot: ?
1910 Address:  6817 10th Av Northeast
Current address: 68th and Roosevelt Way – house demolished, site now part of the Calvary Christian Assembly parking lot.

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Delia Delight Dorrance was born in Pavilion Township, Kalamazoo County, Michigan in 1849 to Alfred, a farmer, and Lucinda (Stone) Dorrance. By the 1870 census, she, her older sister Mary, and her younger sister Esther were all schoolteachers. By 1880, she had left the family home and was teaching in Freesoil, Mason County, Michigan.

John Sylvester Pinney was born in Allegan County, Michigan, in 1864. The 1870 census finds a John Pinney, age 6, living with a family named Giligan. Because this census doesn’t ask for the relation of each person enumerated, it’s impossible to tell if he is a nephew, a boarder, or anything else that might help confirm his identity.

Delia and John met when Delia was “a bookkeeper in a Middle West office of the American Press Association”¹. They were married on 3 August, 1885, in Delia’s home of Pavilion. Delia was 36. John was 21.

Their only child, Albert Dorrance Pinney, was born on 3 October, 1892, in St. Paul, MN, where John was manager of the American Press Association. At one time he also served as Secretary of both the Commercial Club and the Grand Army of the Republic Encampment association in St. Paul.

The family traveled extensively via John’s work, relocating at different times to Chicago, Boston, Omaha, St. Paul, Columbus and New York. The 1900 census shows the family living in Portland, OR. By 1906, they are in Seattle, and John is the local manager of the Seattle office of the American Type Founders Company.

In May of 1911, John sued Delia for divorce. He claimed in his suit that after Albert’s birth Delia “became morose and quarrelsome.”² Delia, he claimed, “had been harassing him in his office, and that she had spoken to his employers of their domestic troubles. He had to move from place to place, from New York to Seattle, on that account.”³ When they moved to Seattle, said John, she even hired a janitor in the hotel where they were staying to watch John’s movements.⁴

Delia, who requested separate maintenance but did not want a divorce, responded that John had “…been trying for two years to get rid of her in his desire to associate with younger people.”⁵ “…their family life had been pleasant until recently, when her husband began to feel that she was too old.”⁶

That Delia suffered a measure of stress on account of their age difference seems plausible after glancing at the 1900 and 1910 census records. In 1900 we see a mistake: John’s birth year is shown as 1865 (it was 1864), Delia’s as 1860 (it was 1849). In the 1910 census, the age gap is shortened further: John is listed as 48 years old (he was 46), Delia as 51 (she was 61).

The judge refused John’s request for divorce and awarded Delia $12 per week as separate maintenance. Yet he eventually did obtain a divorce. By 1917, he and his second wife, Victoria, were living in San Francisco.

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Life after John appears to have been a busy one for Delia. The 1915 and 1916 directories list her as a Manufacturers’ Agent, an obscurity made clear in an item in the July 24, 1916 issue of The Seattle Star: “Mrs. Delia Delight Pinney … a 67-year-old school girl at the University of Washington, sells stockings and underwear to the women students to pay her way thru school.”

Delia is shown in the house at 6817 10th Av Northeast in the 1920 census (with Albert) and the 1930 census (alone). She became involved in the local literary scene, founding the Seattle Chapter of the League of Western Writers, serving as secretary of the Seattle Verse Writers’ club, and being a member of the Seattle Poetry Club. She read her poetry at club meetings, wrote (but apparently did not publish) a book of children’s poetry in 1931, and was included in Washington Poets, an anthology of 59 contemporary state poets, published in 1932 by Henry Harrison, New York.

By February of 1939 she had moved to 2319 E. Madison on Capitol Hill. There, she wrote to the “Strolling Around The Town” column of The Seattle Times, of her “ambition to have a school organized for people who are more that 70 years old…”  “Thus people, when old, would have something to look forward to and forget to worry about the end of life. And should one going out not have as cheerful thoughts as possible?”⁷

The 1940 census lists Delia as a “patient” at 2432 Harvard, a small convalescent home operated by Christie A. MacLean. She died there on 3 May, 1941, age 93.

The publication of another local poetry anthology, Evergreen Leaves, occasioned a reception at the Olympic Hotel. Dorothy Pinney, Delia’s granddaughter, read Delia’s contribution in her honor.

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1 “Says Wife Nagged For Nineteen Years”, Seattle Sunday Times, May 21, 1911, page 15, column 2^↩
2 ibid.^↩
3 “Husband Refused Divorce, Seattle Star, November 8, 1911 ^↩
4 “Says Wife Nagged For Nineteen Years”^↩
5 “Says Husband Wants to Get Rid of Her”, Seattle Daily Times, Tuesday Evening, May 23, 1911^↩
6 “Says Wife Nagged For Nineteen Years”^↩
7 “Strolling Around the Town”, Seattle Daily Times, February 6, 1939, page 13, column 2^↩

" ... to face the world without a mother's love." - Rice Alva, Vera Grace, and Geraldine Elizabeth Howell

House built: ?
Woodlawn Add to Green Lake N 35 FT
Plat Block: 61
Plat Lot: 7-8
1910 address: 6509 10th Ave NE
Current address: 6509 Roosevelt Way NE

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Vera Grace Glazier was born in Michigan in 1884 to Henrietta (Geddes) Glazier and Frank Porter Glazier. Frank served one term as Michigan state senator and two terms as Michigan state treasurer. In 1907 he went bankrupt, and in 1908 he was indicted on 3 counts of embezzlement.

Rice Alva Howell was born in 1884, also in Michigan, to Lucy (Mapes) Howell and Floyd P. Howell. Floyd was a farmer.

Rice married Vera in Wenatchee on June 16, 1909. Vera's brother Harold, a fruit farmer, served as witness to the marriage. It's intriguing to wonder ... had Rice and Vera known each other in Michigan? Did Rice move to Seattle with the intention of removing Vera from the turmoil of her father's disgrace?

Rice worked as a floor man (per the 1910 Seattle Directory) or executive (per the 1910 Census) at the MacDougall & Southwick department store at 2nd and Pine. The young couple lived at 6509 10th Avenue NE (now Roosevelt Way - the house long demolished, the site is now home to the Bengal Tiger restaurant).

Vera gave birth to Geraldine Elizabeth on March 9, 1910. Her mother had come from Michigan to attend her. On May 11, Rice, Vera, Mrs. Glazier, and the baby traveled to Wenatchee to stay with Harold.

Vera died on June 30, 1910, at her brother's house. "A happy, lovable baby, three months old, is in the grief-stricken home, destined now to face the world without a mother's love"¹.

The Yale Expositor (Yale, MI) printed the following lurid and possibly wholly fictional article on July 8, 1910: Glazier Disgrace Kills Daughter. "After reading a reference to the imprisonment of her father, Frank P. Glazier, former state treasurer, in a newspaper a few days after the birth of her child, Mrs. Rice Howell, of Wenatchee, Wash., formerly Vera Glazier, died of the shock."² Frank Glazier had been sentenced in February of 1910, but Vera's family, the Expositor explained, had kept the news from her.

Vera's father, sentenced to five to ten years in Jackson prison, only served two. The governor parolled him after Frank developed diabetes.

Rice had returned to Michigan. By the 1920 census, he had remarried, had a 3-month-old daughter, and was living on Colorado Avenue in Highland Park.

Geraldine lived with her grandparents and great-grandmother, also in HIghland Park, on Ford Street, about a mile away from her father.

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To read more about Frank Glazier, see Less than immortal: the rise and fall of Frank Porter Glazier of Chelsea, Michigan, by Louis William Doll.

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1 "BABY'S MOTHER DIES - Grim Reaper Visits Happy Home Near Lewis and Clark School", The Wenatchee Daily World, June 30, 1910, page 5, column 2^↩
2 "Glazier Disgrace Kills Daughter", The Yale Expositor, July 8, 1910, column 5^↩

1407 E. 63rd - Edwin Aid Layton - the Medical Missionary and his Family

House built: 1909
Cowen's University Park
Plat Block: 3
Plat Lot: 5
1910 address: 1407 E 63 St
Current address: 1407 NE 63rd St.

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Edwin Aid Layton was born in 1873 in Concord, KY to Perry S. and Mary (Bartholomew) Layton. Perry, who was 64 at the time of Edwin's birth, was a physician. This was the career that Edwin chose for himself.

Jessie L. Trunkey was born in Illinois in 1875 to Jerome H. Trunkey, a coal merchant, and Mary Jane (Dewolf) Trunkey. Edwin and Jessie married in Chicago in 1895. The 1900 census shows the couple living with Jessie's parents in Chicago. Jessie was teaching and Edwin was practicing medicine.

Edwin heard the call to practice medicine in Africa. In late 1901, he and Jessie went to live in Bolengi, near Coquilhatville, in King Leopold II's infamous Congo Free State. There Jessie gave birth to their first child, Evelyn Lita. They remained through 1903.

In 1904, Edwin wrote: "My work as a medical missionary has taken me to all the villages round about and perhaps 100 miles into the interior," where he witnessed "victims of atrocious acts, cruelties, and oppression resulting from forced labor and an unjust taxation; undoubted signs of devastation and depopulation ..."¹

"No philanthropic person," he wrote, "can be in Kongo without seeing and speaking of the really ruinous results of the present regime ... under my own observation two villages became wholly extinct."²

In November of 1904, Edwin, Jessie, and baby Evelyn travelled to China. There Jessie gave birth to daughter Mildred and son Clarence. The family remained in China until March of 1908. They returned to Chicago, and Jessie gave birth to Edwin jr.

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The 1910 census lists Edwin and Jessie, ages 36 and 35; Evelyn, age 8 (we can hope she became best friends with Bernice Beal next door) , Mildred, age 5, Clarence, age 3, and Edwin jr. 1 year and 3 months. Edwin is renting the house. Arthur D. Trunkey, age 29, and Mary Trunkey, age 25 - Jessie's brother and sister - are living with the family. (Arthur is a underwriter with an insurance company.)

Edwin gave a number of lectures about his life in the Congo Free State. In one article, he is "credited with discovering the first case of the sleeping sickness, or negro lethargy, known to science. He is also said to have established the first schools, destroyed the power of the witch and baptized the first converts among the ten million Bankondo."³ He also lectured on "The Awakening of China".

In 1910, at the first Northwest Chautauqua Assembly, held on Whidbey Island, he shared the bill with "baseball evangelist" Billy Sunday. But most of his lectures seemed to have been quieter affairs at churches, or for the Seattle Business Girls Club (who met at the Good Eats Cafe).

In 1912, Edwin established a practice, Layton Trunkey & Trunkey, at 1422 E. 65th (demolished, and replaced by the original Rising Sun produce stand), and moved the family a block north to 6307 15th Avenue NE. By 1916, the family had relocated to Tacoma.

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1 Seymour, Thomas, Memorial concerning conditions in the Independent state of the Kongo ...: praying that Congress investigate existing conditions in the Kongo state, and take steps to ameliorate and correct the evils from which that state is suffering, (Washington, D.C. : Govt. Print. Off., 1904), p. 31^↩
2 Ibid., p. 32^↩
3 "Dr. Edward A. Layton Plans Lecture Series", The Seattle Daily Times, February 8, 1913, p. 7, column 2^↩

1411 E. 63rd St. - The Beals: Malcolm, Mattie, Bernice, and Malcolm Jr.

House built: 1909
Cowen's University Park
Plat Block: 3 Plat Lot: 4
1910 address: 1411 E 63 St
Current address: 1411 NE 63rd St.

Malcolm Beal, age 30, was born in Kansas to Canadian-English parents. In 1910 he was employed as a travelling salesman in baking powder (KC Brand, of the Jacques Manufacturing Co., Chicago, IL).

At the time of the census, he and Mattie had been married for nine years.

Mattie K. Hall, age 29, was born in Texas. Her father had been born in Indiana, her mother in Ohio.
Malcolm and Mattie were married in Garfield County, Oklahoma on 18 Dec 1901.

They had two children: Bernice, age 9, who was born in Oklahoma, and Malcolm H., age 1, born in Pennsylvania.

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When I decided to tackle the project of researching the people in the 1910 census for the neighborhood that would become Roosevelt, I wasn’t sure where to begin. My natural choice would have been the house that my husband Brad and I own. It was certainly there in 1910, according to the Baist Atlas for 1905 (though we and the King County Assessor understood that the house had been built in 1909). But it wasn’t included in the 1910 census.

Maybe it was vacant in April of 1910. Maybe the inhabitants were away on vacation or business. Maybe the census taker had slipped up. Maybe a sheet has been lost. I know not.

For a first entry, the Beals are perhaps a little dry ... which is to say, they didn't make the papers. The public information available about them is limited, as is the public information available for most people in a pre-Internet, pre-overshare world. But they were the first family in Ward 11, Enumeration District 188, visited by Oscar Olson, Enumerator. And so I begin with them.

We know by the birth places of their children that they traveled. We know, by the birth places of Malcolm and Mattie, and those of their parents, that a segment of American society was as transient as our own. We know that they brought the new baby to a new house in a new neighborhood. Seattle's population had nearly doubled between 1890 and 1900. Cowen's boosterism predicted a 1910 population of 500,000 - a number not reached until 1960 - but the population continued to grow nonetheless.

The family was Not From Here, and in that respect, they resembled the majority of their neighbors. Of the 751 people enumerated, only 145 were born in Washington; of those, 115 were 10 years old or younger.

They were white, as was 98% of the enumeration district. They could read and write English. All but two could. Mattie listed "none" as her trade or profession. Only four wives listed other employment. Bernice went to school. Only a handful of children didn't.

The 1910 census was the only one to ask mothers to list the number of children born and the number of children still living. Of the 154 mothers in the enumeration district, 51 had suffered the death of one or more of her children. It's an aspect of early 20th century life that is almost incomprehensible to 21st century American experience.

Mattie's neighbors would have understood her loss, and would not have shunned her in her grief, when Baby Malcolm died in January of the following year.

The family lived in the house until 1919, when they moved to across Lake Washington to Medina.

About this project.

I was born in Bellevue, and grew up on the Renton side of Squak Mountain, where it took a ten-minute drive to get anywhere. However, I spent my early '20's on Capitol Hill, where my first car was Metro and my second, a pair of boots. This skewed my sense of distance. So when I moved to Roosevelt in 1986, I felt as if I'd come to the ends of the earth.

In 1910, as it happens, Roosevelt (which wasn't called Roosevelt yet) was the ends of the earth (or, at least, of Seattle). The 1905 Baist's Real Estate Atlas of Seattle (viewable online through the Seattle Public Library) shows the city bounded by (NE) 85th to the north and 15th (Ave. E.) to the east. The people in the 1910 census were living in a new neighborhood. It was probably as bald of trees as any new suburban development. It needed time to mellow and grow green again. The new houses needed to age. The character needed to set.

At this writing, it's 2014, and Roosevelt is being transmogrified (as it was in the beginning, and again when Interstate 5 cut it off from Green Lake). We've got light rail coming. We've got boosters and new development. Houses that stood in the neighborhood from the beginning will, inevitably, fall. It's a good time to look back and see who first made them into homes.

There are 183 dwellings listed in Enumeration District 188 for the 1910 census. That's a lot of dwellings. I'm limiting my research to that which I can do online, at home, in my pajamas, with a bunny and some knitting close at hand. I will link to more thorough sources of information, when and where I find them.

Because when it comes down to it, I'm not a historian. I'm just awfully nosy.