Showing 1 - 18 of 18 results

Bikur Cholim-Machzikay Hadath (Seattle)

Chevra Bikur Cholim, (Society for visiting the sick) incorporated in Seattle in 1891 with the purpose of caring for the sick and providing proper burial. It evolved into a religious congregation and in 1991 celebrated its centennial.
File 299: Full Text >

Calvary Cemetery (Seattle)

Calvary Cemetery, located in the Ravenna neighborhood of Seattle, was the city's first major Catholic cemetery. The cemetery was dedicated in 1889 and remains active today. In all, more than 40,000 Catholics have been buried there.
File 978: Full Text >

Chief Seattle (Seattle, Chief Noah [born si?al, 178?-1866])

Chief Seattle, or si?al in his native Lushootseed language, led the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes as the first Euro-American settlers arrived in the greater Seattle area in the 1850s. Baptized Noah by Catholic missionaries, Seattle was regarded as a "firm friend of the Whites," who named the region's future central city in his honor. He was a respected leader among Salish tribes, signing the Point Elliott (Mukilteo) Treaty of 1855, which relinquished tribal claims to most of the area, and opposing Native American attempts to dislodge settlers during the "Indian Wars" of 1855-1856. Chief Seattle retired to the Suquamish Reservation at Port Madison, and died there on June 7, 1866. This essay includes a sound recording of the correct pronunciation of Chief Seattle's name, provided by Skagit elder Vi Hilbert (1918-2008).
File 5071: Full Text >

Chief Seattle's Speech

In addition to his namesake city, Chief Seattle (178?-1866) is best remembered for a speech given, according to pioneer Dr. Henry Smith, on the occasion of an 1854 visit to Seattle of Isaac Stevens (1818-1862). Stevens was governor and Commissioner of Indian Affairs of Washington Territory. He visited in January and again in March 1854. Chief Seattle's speech went unnoted in the written record until October 29, 1887, when the Seattle Sunday Star published a text reconstructed from admittedly incomplete notes by Dr. Smith.
File 1427: Full Text >

Chinese Americans

Chinese immigrants played a critical role in the development of Washington Territory and of Seattle. By 1880, more than 3,000 Chinese lived in Washington Territory and worked in various industries.
File 2060: Full Text >

Congregation Ezra Bessaroth

In 1909, the Seattle organization that developed into the Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, comes into existence. This is the organization of Koupa Ozer Dalim Anshe Rhodes, fund for the aid of the poor people in Rhodes by Sephardic Jews (of Spanish origin) from Rhodes. In 1914, it incorporated and in 1917 held High Holiday services in its own synagogue, the first Sephardic building constructed in Seattle. In the late 1990s, the synagogue continues to preserve its Sephardic character in worship and tradition.
File 125: Full Text >

Donation Land Law, also known as the Oregon Land Law

The Donation Land Law of 1850, or Oregon Land Law, permitted settlers on unsurveyed lands to select claims of 320 acres per settler (640 acres per married couple) provided they resided there for four consecutive years.
File 400: Full Text >

Filipino Americans in Seattle

With an estimated population of 30,000 (in the late 1990s), the Filipino American community forms the largest group of Asian Americans in the Seattle area. Beginning with the first known Filipino resident in 1883, waves of Filipino immigration have contributed to the area's arts, business, and political leadership.
File 409: Full Text >

Irish in Washington -- The Early Years (1840s to 1890)

The first Irish to come to the Pacific Northwest found a shifting social order with no established élites, cheap land, and broad economic opportunity. They took advantage of these prospects to become farmers, bankers, entrepreneurs, merchants, publishers, civic leaders, philanthropists, politicians, and mine owners. Some Irish in Washington state became extremely wealthy; most solidly middle-class. Most simply do not fit into the conventional categories for understanding the Irish experience in the U.S. -- urban ghetto, church, and boss.
File 5348: Full Text >

Japanese Americans in Seattle and King County

For more than a hundred years, Japanese Americans have made significant contributions to the commercial, cultural, and social history of Seattle and King County. Early immigrants arrived just before the turn of the century to work on railroads and in sawmills and canneries, eking out a living while enduring discrimination in immigration, employment, and housing. Others turned to farming, converting land covered with marshes and tree stumps into productive cropland.
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Japanese Immigration to the Puget Sound Region

Japanese immigrants began arriving in the Puget Sound area in the 1890s to work in the labor-intensive industries of railroad construction, logging, mining, fish processing, and agriculture. The Immigration Act of 1924 virtually ended all immigration from Japan and Asia.
File 300: Full Text >

Korean Americans in King County

Korean Americans may be our least visible Asian American ethnic community. Yet this fast-growing population may also be one of the Puget Sound's most resourceful, energetic, and culturally rich immigrant groups. In three waves, beginning in 1885, Korean laborers, war brides, students, and professionals have gradually come to the United States. During the 1950s, Korean Americans became an economic force in the Pacific Northwest, with one-third of Washington's convenience store operators now of Korean descent. As of 2000, Washington state was home to 46,880 Koreans. Many live in Federal Way, in Seattle's University District, in Shoreline, and in Tacoma's Fern Hill neighborhood. What they've brought with them to our region makes for a fascinating story that parallels their homeland's turbulent modern history.
File 3251: Full Text >

Latino History of Washington State

Latinos, currently the largest minority in the United States at more than 13 percent of the population, have been instrumental to the development of Washington state since the 1774 Spanish exploration of the Olympic Peninsula. During the past 25 years the state's Hispanic population has increased dramatically from 118,432 in 1980 to 549,774 in 2005. The foundation of the current Hispanic boom is rooted in economic and labor developments of the 1940s. Note: Although the term Latino is used throughout this essay, in actuality the Latino experience in Washington state has been until very recently primarily a Mexican American and Mexican experience.
File 7901: Full Text >

Native Americans of Puget Sound -- A Brief History of the First People and Their Cultures

Current scientific data indicate that Native Americans arrived from Siberia via the Bering Sea land bridge about 12,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age. Native Americans in King County, who are united by a common Lushootseed or Salish language system, believe they were created in this area at the end of an ancient Myth Age. Major groups or tribes of local native peoples include the Suquamish, Duwamish, Nisqually, Snoqualmie, and Muckleshoot (Ilalkoamish, Stuckamish, and Skopamish) tribes. They evolved complex cultural, social, and economic structures, which the invasion of Euro-American settlers in the mid-1800s almost erased, but which continue today as the tribes struggle for their survival, respect and renewal.
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Seattle -- A Brief History of Its Founding

Seattle was founded by members of the Denny party, most of whom arrived at Alki Beach on November 13, 1851 and then, in April 1852, relocated to the eastern shore of Elliott Bay. With the filing of the first plats on May 23, 1853, the "Town of Seattle" became official.
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Seattle Sephardim: Early Beginnings

In June 1902, the first Sephardic Jews, Solomo Calvo (d. 1964) and Jacob Policar (d. 1961), arrived in Seattle from Marmara, Turkey. In 1904, Nissim Alhadeff arrived from the Isle of Rhodes. As economic and political conditions in the Ottoman Empire deteriorated, and as Jews became newly subject to the draft there, immigration increased. By 1914, Sephardic Jews had founded three synagogues in Seattle.
File 864: Full Text >

Swedes in Seattle and King County

Prior to the great fire of June 6, 1889, Seattle's Swedish population was small, as it was in the rest of the northwest region. The census of 1880 counted only 190 people of Scandinavian heritage in all of King County. A tremendous influx took place between 1890 and 1910 when close to 150,000 Scandinavians settled in the Pacific Northwest, thus making them the largest foreign-born ethnic group in the state. In Seattle of 1910 they numbered 19,046, 31.3 percent of the foreign born, and of these 8,678 were Swedes. In 1920 Swedes had grown to 10,253 decreasing slightly to 9,634 in 1930. Swedes worked in the woods, in the Ballard mills, on the railroads building tunnels and laying tracks, in construction (contributing both labor and architectural skills), in the mines at Coal Creek, and on the docks at Seattle's harbor, and as farmers around King County.
File 3473: Full Text >

West Coast Waterfront Strike of 1934

Along with every other major West Coast port, Seattle's harbor was paralyzed from May 9 to July 31, 1934, by one of the most important and bitter labor strikes of the twentieth century. The struggle pitted the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) against steamship owners, police, and hostile public officials. Coastal confrontations with police cost seven strikers their lives, including Seattle ILA leader Shelvy Daffron. A King County Sheriff's Special Deputy was also killed in a downtown Seattle melee. The arbitrated settlement firmly established the rights of waterfront workers nationwide.
File 1391: Full Text >