Snohomish: Then and Now

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO Hiel Barnes staked a claim on a gentle south facing bluff overlooking the Snohomish River, just downstream from a graceful bend that turned the flow due west, as if the river was entering stage-right, auditioning for the future settlement to be named in it’s honor.

Let’s push pause on the confetti machine long enough to consider Mr. Barnes contribution to the founding of Snohomish. After all, it was his job to assemble Ferguson’s cottage in the spring of 1859 – not far from where it still stands today as a private home. Emory C. Ferguson, who apprenticed as a carpenter in the place of his birth in Westchester County, New York, built the cottage in Steilacoom, then took it apart in order to fit it aboard the side-wheeler Ranger No 2 for shipment to Barnes. The founding father of Snohomish actually didn’t arrive until the following year, 1860, but in the spirit of the town that also survives to this day; he arrived with enough supplies to establish a store.

Hiel Barnes was also born in New York State, but he traveled the Oregon Trail west with his parents and siblings, arriving in Portland in time to be listed in the 1850 decennial census as “Hyel” and described as a “tinner” — he was 22 years old. We follow his historical paper trail next to the gold fields of British Columbia’s Fraser River, when a letter to his brother in Olympia, dated July 20, 1858, was published in the local newspaper. Hiel writes,

“You would confer a act of kindness upon all person who think of coming to these mines, by telling them not come this way […] This river is considerable of humbug.”

There is no record of Barnes and Ferguson meeting along side the Fraser River, although both were there around the same time, and both left the gold fields for the safety of Steilacoom, home to the one of the first military forts established in the Pacific Northwest in 1849. But it’s ten years later now in this story, and Hiel Barnes agrees to stake a claim for Ferguson, who was a business partner of Barnes’s brother-in-law. In the absence of any record to the contrary, let’s imagine that it was Hiel Barnes (perhaps in consultation with fellow claim holders, Edson Cady and Egbert Tucker) who was responsible for selecting the site that eventually becomes the western portion of Snohomish City.

Barnes voted on July 9, 1860, along with 16 other men – in the Ferguson cottage he assembled — to establish the settlement site (called Cadyville at the time) as the seat of the new Snohomish County; and Barnes was elected constable. Five years later he married Mary F. McDonald in California, yet they show up in the 1871 Washington Territorial Census as residents of Thurston County, neighbors of the Morgans, parents of Ferguson’s wife, Lucetta. His paper trail ends with the 1910 census when he was counted as living in Randle, part of the Rainer National forest, aged 82, now described as a widower.

Many thanks to Ann Tuohy for her detailed genealogical work-up on the parents and siblings of Hiel Barnes – the so-called paper trail. And please join us on March 7th at the Soccer Dome (and other locations) for our citywide Birthday Bash.

THEN IMAGE:
The Ferguson Cottage as it appeared around 1900. Emory Ferguson is seated in the center of the image, standing to his right is M. J. McGuiness, the owner of the property at the time, who moved the cottage slightly east to its current location in order to build his home on this prime location overlooking the river. Seated on the porch is James Burton as indicated in the October 13, 1911, issue of the Snohomish County Tribune in the story of Ferguson’s death.
Photo courtesy Snohomish Historical Society Archives.

NOW IMAGE:
The Ferguson Cottage as it appears today. Rebecca Loveless (standing) purchased the cottage in 1997 not knowing that she had just purchased the oldest house in the county. Sheryl Maultsby (seated) has rented the home since it was renovated by Loveless.

Since the “kickoff” for Snohomish’s 150th Anniversary celebration attempted an end run around the history of Snohomish’s loss of the county seat to Everett in 1897 by asking for the county records back, I thought it would be fun to feature this historic photograph of the county’s very first “official courthouse” — which is still standing.

Mother Nature, a bit of a joker herself when it comes to upstaging history, touched us with a flood of historic proportions, forcing the kickoff organizers to huddle for reconsideration of their game plan. As has happened through out the history of our riverside town, a planned trip to Everett had to be cancelled due to flooding. Perhaps a good thing since the decision avoided any potentially loud confrontation with the team from Mukilteo demanding that the re-acquired records be turned over to them!

Mukilteo was the first home of the county seat established by the legislation signed on January 14, 1861. But it was a pro tem designation, pending official elections in July. The first meeting of the county commissioners was held in March, in Mukilteo, and it focused on the building of a road connecting Snohomish with Woods Prairie, the future site of Monroe. At the second meeting the new county was divided into two voting precincts, with voting places at Frost and Fowler’s store in Mukilteo, and Ferguson’s cottage. On July 9, 1861, voters decided 17 to 10 to establish the county seat in Snohomish; in other words, seven more men voted in Snohomish then in Mukilteo!

In a letter written by Jacob Fowler shortly after the election, lamented,

“Some of our boys did not turn out and that many was off at work. Our election is all over. It passed off very quiet, no fighting or drunkenness.”

E. C. Ferguson, on the other hand, recalled how he returned to his home, the small cottage overlooking the river, with the county records in his vest pocket. We will have more about the Ferguson cottage next month, and the move of the county records to his Blue Eagle Saloon.


ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHS:
Courtesy Museum of Snohomish County History, it was taken by Snohomish’s own pioneer photographer Gilbert D. Horton. The Ferguson Cottage is the one story white building on the left, Ferguson's famous Blue Eagle Saloon next in line, then we assume the Jackson Wharf building, since the title of the image is "Jackson's Wharf." The small building on the right is a store selling logging supplies opened by Woodbury Sinclair in 1864, around the same time that Ferguson opened his saloon.

Warner’s Thumbnail History of Snohomish at historylink.org

Margaret Riddle’s Thumbnail History of Mukilteo

We inaugurate this weblog with the first article of the column published in the Snohomish County Tribune, January 17, 2007. It’s the oldest image of our collection, dated 1866, which makes it a fitting choice to also mark the city’s 150th Anniversary of it’s founding in 1859.

The inscription in graceful period handwriting on the reverse reads:

The County Seat in 1866. The Eagle Saloon conducted by E. C. Ferguson on the left of the picture, Sinclair and Clendenning Store on the right. [And on Wm. Whitfield stationary glued to the back] Snohomish in 1866. Taken from south bank of Snohomish River.

Wm. Whitfield was a pioneer businessman and historian who wrote a comprehensive history of Snohomish County published in 1926, and I would like to believe that this photograph hung in his office at 138 Maple Street offering inspiration, as it does for me.

David Dilgard, history specialist with the Everett Public Library’s Northwest Room, has done some digging into who might have been the photographer of this unaccredited image; and in collaboration with the University of Washington Special Collections, he is reasonably certain that it was taken by E. M. Sammis on his way to photograph “The Falls of the Snoqualmie,” as they were referred to at the time. Sammis, from New York, had a studio in Seattle from 1861 to 1866, during which time he captured the only studio photograph of Chief Seattle.

Of particular interest is the dramatic change in vegetation and the complete absence of the giant firs that greeted our first residents.

— Warner

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHS:
The historic image is courtesy of the Snohomish Historical Society’s archives. Following the travels of E. M. Sammis in local news accounts, researchers have established that Sammis photographed “The Falls of the Snoqualmie” in 1865, which means that he had to pass through Snohomish traveling upstream, when he could have captured this image. Since this story was published, the author has come across accounts that the man posing for the camera may be Woodbury Sinclair who operated a store in the small structure on the right.

The Now image is a self-portrait where I am standing in the same spot as Mr. Sinclair(?) in the historic image. Of course, this is the boat launch called Cady Landing today; and in fact, this clearing on the north bank of the river was first called Cadyville, named by Edson Cady, the first claim holder who has disappeared from the pages of history.