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Skagit River Journal

of History & Folklore
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The most in-depth, comprehensive site about the Skagit
Covers from British Columbia to Puget Sound. Counties covered: Skagit, Whatcom, Island, San Juan, Snohomish & BC. An evolving history dedicated to committing random acts of historical kindness

Noel V. Bourasaw, editor

810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, Washington, 98284
Home of the Tarheel Stomp

Mortimer Cook slept here & named the town Bug

Was Jarman first settler in Port Townsend area?
— a sidebar about Blanket Bill Jarman

When Capt. George Vancouver explored the Puget Sound in 1792 in the British ship, Discovery, his midshipman artist, John Sykes, drew the landscapes and natives. He made this engraving of Indians near future-Port Townsend setting up poles and nets to trap ducks.

Regardless of whether William R. Jarman was ransomed or not — according to the "Blanket Bill" legend, the three basic sources generally agree thatr Jarman chose his first semi-permanent home in 1848 with the S'Klallam Indians near future Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula. Within a year, however, Jarman was bitten by the '49er bug and briefly took leave of his new home. Frank Teck, Lelah Jackson Edson and Percival R. Jeffcott share a timeline that shows that in the summer of 1849, Jarman panned for gold at Long Bar on the north fork of the Yuba river, 20 miles northwest of Marysville, California. After contracting malaria, he returned quickly to the Olympic Peninsula that fall or winter.
Another legend rose in Port Townsend that he was the first white settler there, based largely on an Aug. 27, 1904, Leader newspaper article from Port Townsend that was written when Bill came back for a picnic, so we spun this separate feature off from the Jarman epic to explore this possibility:

Townsend's first white settler; Wm. Jarman came here in year 1848 Among the arrivals yesterday in the city to attend the picnic and clambake was William Jarman, who enjoys the distinction of being the first white settler in Port Townsend . . . [Another version of the ransom/blankets] At that time, 1848, where Port Townsend now stands was a barren wilderness save Indian villages which covered the lower end of the present business portion of the city. He was received by King George and the Duke of York, the two leading chiefs of the tribe and taken to their homes where he was well treated. He remained with them for several years, not seeing a white man until Hastings, Ross, Bachellor [sic, actually Bachelder] and Plummer arrived and located here. These men commenced hewing down the forest and soon erected several log cabins. Later he left his Indian home and lived with Mr. Hastings. Thus was Port Townsend founded.
Wm. Jarman while living with Mr. Hastings married an Indian maiden who has long since crossed the great divide, Mr. Hastings performing the ceremony. He is now residing near Ferndale with his niece, Mrs. Manning, and with whom he expects to spend his remaining days.

Here we defer to Thomas W. Camfield, author of Port Townsend, An Illustrated History of Shanghaiing, Shipwrecks, Soiled Doves and Sundry Souls (2000), who initially concluded that Jarman was indeed the first white man to come ashore at future Port Townsend but that he only lived in the area temporarily with the S'Klallam Indians and that Henry C. Wilson was the first to stake an actual claim in 1850.

Was Henry C. Wilson first?

Alfred A. Plummer and Charles Bachelder erected this two-room log cabin as the first building on the site of future-Port Townsend at what is now the corner of Water and Tyler streets.

Wilson was a clerk on the brig George Emory, for Capt. Lafayette Balch, who sailed on a regular route between San Francisco and the lower Puget Sound past Point Wilson. Balch founded the town of Port Steilacoom in January 1851 after Edmund Sylvester discouraged Balch from setting up a store nearby in Smithfield, which became Olympia that year and the Territorial capital the next year. After Sylvester ran up the rent for his barren lots, Balch packed up his goods, sailed north out of Budd's Inlet and landed 20 miles northeast (west of today's McCord Air Force Base). Balch built a dock there for his ship and others soon joined him and his brother Albert as they became important merchants in the area. Those who study that region's history will recall that Lafayette died suddenly in November 1862 in San Francisco and that Albert died a month later after several years of insane wandering about the town. Their nephew Augustus Balch also joined them from Maine and he and his family eventually located all over the state. We are still researching for the connection between them and the car-dealer Dick Balch, in Federal Way, who made national news in 1972 for his antics of dressing up as the devil and smashing out the headlights of his brand new Chevrolets, while insisting "if you can't trust your car dealer, who can you trust?"
Balch trusted Wilson so much that he left him at the new town to manage his business while he sailed the George Emery back and forth to California. Going strictly by the record, our first discovery about Wilson was in Hubert Howe Bancroft's 1890 book, History of Washington, Idaho and Montana, 1845-1889. He wrote that Wilson appeared at what Capt. Charles Wilkes called Point Hudson on Aug. 15, 1850, and staked a donation claim, just east of what became downtown Port Townsend, but did not sink roots there immediately. We then found his mark in Elwood Evans's Notes on Settlement, where he recorded that Wilson was a justice of the peace in Lewis County by November 1851. Just in case you doubt that possibility because neither Steilacoom nor Port Townsend are in that county now, keep in mind that in Dec. 21, 1845 to March 2, 1853, when Washington became a territory, Lewis County — named for explorer Meriwether Lewis, encompassed all of the Puget Sound and Southwestern Washington. Lewis is sometimes considered the keystone of the territory because the Cowlitz River was the natural path for overland pioneers moving north and because the Northern Pacific Railroad chose a similar route for its first trackage in 1873.
Wilson kept managing Balch's businesses in Port Steilacoom, but soon had many hats to wear after his JP duties, as he seems to have ranged back and forth between Steilacoom and Port Townsend in 1852-53. He even attended the two constitutional conventions with Balch that led up to 1853 Territory status. We also learned from Evans's signature 1889 book, History of the Pacific Northwest Oregon and Washington, that "Of those present at Port Townsend beach at that [February 1852] time was Henry C. Wilson, who had selected his claim on the bay, and notified upon it in August, 1850; but he had continued clerking for Captain Balch, and did not make actual residence until after Mr. Plummer [see below] had commenced to reside on the place taken by him." Sometime after other settlers laid out the town of Port Townsend in June, 1852, Evans wrote that "Wilson, appointed U.S. inspector of customs, made his official headquarters at Port Townsend." Strangely, did not originally find anywhere the details of Wilson's business in Port Townsend after the early 1850s; we only knew from Bancroft that he had the first store in town in 1852. When Jefferson County was formed in December 1852, he was also either appointed or elected sheriff.

This George Welch photo of Lincoln Beach was taken in 1921. It shows the beach next to Port Townsend that is another likely landing point for Jarman in 1848, opposite southern Whidbey Island and the present ferry channel. The photo was lovingly reproduced by Ann Welch, whose website offers a CD of such historic photos called "Port Townsend: Then and Now". George Welch was her grandfather; he married Lillian Eisenbeis, daughter of Port Townsend retailer and capitalist Charles Eisenbeis, who erected his stone building downtown and the famous Manresa Castle. Ann grew up in the town, but left for many years to live in Seattle, where she operated a hot glass studio. She moved back to Port Townsend five years ago and rediscovered George's prints and 3x5-inch negatives, which were shot between 1903 and 1925. After many hours of restoration and reproduction, Ann produced her CD and the website, which has a marvelous comparison section, morphing the old photos into present scenes on the same spot. Her brother is Mark Welch, the mayor of Port Townsend, who is also a photographer and teaches video production at Port Townsend High School.

The actual founder and the confused founding: 1851 or 1852? Meanwhile, Alfred A. Plummer and Charles Bachelder, who had sailed past Point Hudson in 1850 on the George Emery, recorded their claims near Wilson's in 1851 and they built a two-room log cabin at what is now the corner of Water and Tyler streets. Plummer managed a hotel in San Francisco in 1850 where Balch was a guest and told him about the Olympic Peninsula. At this point, we have not made a family connection between Charles Bachelder and James M. Batchelder, who made quite a splash a few years later during the trial and execution of Indian Chief Leschi. We do know that they both arrived in the Northwest in 1850 and both via the steamship, George Emery. In 1852, Plummer and Charles Bachelder were joined by Loren B. Hastings, a Vermont native who sailed to Portland, Oregon, in 1849 and worked there for a time for a pioneer merchant there named Francis W. Pettygrove. In October 1851, both of them rowed a skiff down the Columbia and then up the Cowlitz as far as they could go and then continued overland up the Peninsula to Point Hudson.
They staked claims there and then returned for their families, whom they brought north on the pilot-boat schooner Mary Taylor that Hastings bought. They arrived on Feb. 15, 1852, staked their claims and then registered the paperwork in Olympia on April 24, 1852. Bancroft recorded in 1890 that the two men took claims "about a mile north-west of Wilson." They were both single so they could only claim 160 acres apiece, according to the Oregon Donation Land Law. Bancroft also noted that when Hastings and Pettygrove arrived in November, they took claims "adjoining those of Bachelder and Plummer on the north and west." The four settlers soon decided to found a town and they dropped the H from Port Townshend to craft a name. Bancroft wrote that the four initial settlers agreed to devote a third of each of their claims to townsite purposes. Albert Briggs, who settled a mile and a half southwest of the quarter in May 1852, wrote later on that:

. . . $3,000 was to be put into a joint stock to carry on merchandising and a fishery, neither partner to draw out more than the net income according to their share; but at the end of three years the original stock might be drawn from the concern. A condition was imposed, on account of habits of intemperance on the part of Bachelder and Pettygrove, that if any member of the firm should be declared incompetent by a vote of the others to attend to business on account of drink, he should forfeit his interest and quit the company. Bachelder lost his share by this agreement, receiving a few hundred dollars for his land from Pettygrove.

According to Bancroft, "As timber was the chief marketable product of the country, and as Hastings and Pettygrove were owners of three yokes of oxen, the company at once set to work cutting piles and squaring timbers; at which labor they continued for about two years, loading several vessels, and carrying on a general merchandise business besides." In Illustrated History, Camfield also did a fine job of alerting readers to Benjamin and Mary Ross, a couple in their sixties who accompanied Hastings on the Mary Taylor but who escaped almost every historian's notice except for Judge Joseph Kuhn who profiled Port Townsend in the boom years just before the 1893 national Depression.

Pettygrove was a town founder at Portland

Francis W. Pettygrove and family, one of the founders of Portland and of Port Townsend

Thus we have three possible competing "first settlement" years, from 1850-52. In February 1902 the town celebrated its semi-centennial with a grand old-settlers picnic, as Camfield shares, apparently dating the event to coincide with the arrival of the Hastings family. Eleven years earlier the pioneers had gathered and Cowlitz River pioneer Edward D. Warbass recalled at that old-timers event how Pettygrove and Hastings showed up at his cabin on the river and how he supplied them ponies to complete their trip north: "Mr. Pettygrove told me he had just sold the townsite of Portland and said he had been persuaded to come to Port Townsend, where he understood there was a splendid place for a townsite." The centennial, however, was celebrated in 1951.
We have been surprised that so few modern historians have recognized Pettygrove as the experienced townsite booster and that there is little notation about how many of the original pioneers had deep connections in that fledgling town south of the Columbia at that time. As Harvey Scott wrote in his 1890 book, History of Portland, Portland, Oregon, "During the month of November 1843, Hon. [Amos] L. Lovejoy (at present residing at Oregon City) and a gentleman named Overton, stepped ashore at this point from an Indian canoe, while en route from Vancouver to Oregon City, and having examined the topography of the surrounding country concluded at once that this was the most eligible position for a town site." Pettygrove lived in a cabin on the site, soon bought out the interests of Overton who disappeared, and Pettygrove owned the acreage best suited for a town and wharf. He surveyed and established the boundaries during the summer of 1844, and laid out the narrow streets that city planners have muttered about in modern days. Then, in 1845, Lovejoy and Pettygrove held a famous coin toss to determine the name for the village: Pettygrove won the toss and chose Portland, for his hometown in Maine, over Lovejoy's choice of Boston. He hung in there and in 1847, Loren B. Hastings arrived via wagon train, along with another Port Townsend pioneer, Albert Briggs, and their families.
In 1850 the handful of persevering merchants won a shipping contract with the previously hesitant Pacific Mail Co. after they financed the planking of the Canyon Road, which provided a thruway for shipping wheat and other products from the vast Willamette Valley. Land values were just about to explode and Pettygrove collected on his extensive investment in town lots. That still did not answer why Pettgrove came north and no one seemed to have ever wondered why he left Portland, which had started booming. Then we found the answer in Hubert Howe Bancroft's 1890 book, History of Washington, Idaho and Montana: "[Pettygrove] who had ruined himself by speculating in property at Benicia, California." Sure enough, in The History of Solano County, we find:

In May F. W. Pettygrove and A. E. Wilson formed a co-partnership for the transaction of a general business. They built a frame hotel, which they called the Benicia House. They brought with them from Oregon nine frame buildings, which were erected in different parts of the town, and some stand to this day.

In addition, on the same page, is the story of Lt. Col. Silas Casey, who was assigned in 1849 to explore the best possible route for a transcontinental railroad over the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Less than a decade later, he would be assigned to command the 9th Infantry Army troops at Fort Steilacoom

Wilson reappears at Teekalet/Port Gamble

This engraving is from the History of the Pacific Northwest: Oregon and Washington, Volume II, which was published by the North Pacific History Company of Portland, Oregon, in 1889. It shows Port Gamble and the Pope & Talbot mill at the northern tip of Kitsap County. In this view, we are looking south at Port Gamble Bay. Two decades later, at the head of the bay, Winfield Scott Jameson would start his own mill and base his vast logging business that extended all the way to the Skagit River, especially at Sterling.

Up in Port Townsend, the names and claims of Hastings (1852) and Plummer (1851) were most mentioned at, respectively, the anniversary celebrations in 1902 and in 1951, when the centennial was celebrated. Why has Wilson been given such short shrift? No one has really answered that question before, but we have found some evidence that may explain why. The hints came in a short footnote that Bancroft included in his 1890 book: "Wilson married Susan P. Keller in Oct. 1854. She was a daughter of Captain Josiah P. Keller of Maine, who settled at Port Gamble, or Teekalet Bay, in the autumn of 1853, with his family. He was born in 1812 [actually @1826], and emigrated to Puget Sound from Boston. He was a useful and respected citizen, being the founder of the village of Teekalet. His death occurred June 11, 1862, at Victoria."
We are fortunate to have a considerable body of information about Keller's family because he is related to Isaac S. Kalloch, the abolitionist preacher from Maine who also served as mayor of San Francisco in the 1870s and then died in Sehome in 1882 after investing in the Whatcom railroad boom. We recently discovered that the reason why there is very little record of Wilson in Port Townsend after the early 1850s is because he transferred his business and his residence, sometime between 1853-55, to Teekalet, the village that soon became better known as Port Gamble, the home of Pope & Talbot/Puget Mill Co. Captain Keller was the son-in-law of Capt. Frederick Talbot, who in the summer of 1853 established a sawmill with his partner, Andrew Jackson Pope, at Teekalet, which is 27 miles south-southeast of Port Townsend (in Kitsap County) as the crow flies. We discovered in the 1860 Federal Census of Washington Territory that Henry C. Wilson was enumerated as the bookkeeper for the Puget Mill Co. and living at the new company town of Port Gamble with his wife, Susan, and their daughter, Anna, age four. A band of the S'Klallam Indians now live across Port Gamble Bay at a reservation and village called Little Boston. "According to tribal oral history, the S'Klallams complied with Talbot's request that they relocate across the bay at Point Julia, with the promise they would always have work at the mill and lumber to build their new homes," as noted at this website.
Like so many others who settled in the Port Townsend-Port Gamble region in the early years of the Territory, Wilson was a Maine native, so we infer that he probably met or grew up with the Pope, Talbot and Keller families in East Machias Maine, and may have sailed west with them in the 1849 gold rush year, as did Capt. Lafayette Balch. We have unfortunately not found any record to back up Bancroft's claim that Wilson founded Teekalet. First of all, it had been an S'Klallam camp near the beach for countless generations. And all sources, including the Pope & Talbot history, Time Tide & Timber, maintain that Captain Talbot founded the village of Teekalet, which the company renamed Port Gamble in 1868.
So, that brings us back full-circle to William Jarman. Why was he given such short shrift? We do know that Jarman outlived all the acknowledged original Port Townsend founders by at least 20 years and that he was welcomed as a grand old man at various anniversaries and reunions of pioneers, especially in 1904, as we noted above. Bachelder proved to have a drinking problem and never figured into the growth of the town; Hastings died in 1881, Plummer in 1883 and Pettygrove in 1887. Camfield also cites a brief July 1905 newspaper item that introduced Jarman as "The first settler to place his foot on the beach on this peninsula. . . ." So, why didn't he associate with Wilson or the four founders and why didn't they acknowledge his seniority as a settler? Two answers come to mind. One, that he preferred the company of Indians and no matter how much they accommodated the settlers, Jarman knew which side his bread was buttered on. Or two, if he had actually deserted, he may have been very careful to stay out of sight just in case the British Navy was still looking for him.
Finally, Camfield's research netted him a brief story from an 1899 edition of the Seattle P-I that might even challenge the designation of "first" about all six of the others. The obituary of John Cooper (see Part Two of our Jarman biography) identified him as a sailor who was an early settler in 1848 near future Port Ludlow: "three sailors jumped ship at Port Ludlow [18 miles south of Port Townsend] in 1848. All three are said to have married Indian girls, members of the 'Snohomish tribe's Jimicum family, which had moved here to settle near the mouth of what is now known as Chimacum Creek.' "The story was partially confirmed by a 1972 interview Camfield conducted with a descendant of one of the sailors. Could one or all of those sailors been the first white settler in the Port Townsend area? Camfield takes the story with a grain of salt, wondering if 1848 was too early, the result of faulty, aging memories. He also notes that an archaeologist has found signs of another of those sailors at Beckett Point on the eastern shore of Discovery Bay.
Another Camfield discovery, however, is an example of why his books are so worthy of purchase. He transcribed an June 1831 article, "Accounts of the Oregon County and of a Colony Proposed to Be Established in It," from the Boston Advertiser, in which Hall J. Kennedy, general agent of the Oregon Co-operative Society, proposed a colony of 100 people to be located near Discovery Bay. That inspired us to imagine how such a colony in that early time would have changed the settlement of the Pacific Northwest radically at a time when the only white men in the Territory were fur trappers and people engaged in trade at and from Fort Vancouver and Fort Colville in future Washington Territory and in what would become British Columbia.
Just to complicate matters further, at the very end of writing the stories of this issue, we discovered a fact about Jarman's voyages as a sailor in 1849-50 that not only challenged our "first settler" conclusions once again, but also connected him with Capt. Lafayette Balch, Henry Wilson and the George Emery. You can read all about it in the biography of Jarman, elsewhere in Issue 40.

Endnotes:

1. S'Klallam Indians

This is the cover photo of Tom Camfield's book, Port Townsend, the City that Whiskey Built, volume two in his series. The photo was donated by the Cable family.

Often spelled Clallam, this tribe was based on the northern and eastern sections of the Olympic Peninsula, from roughly Sequim east to Point Hudson/Port Townsend to Port Gamble. See the accompanying feature in Issue 40 for the history and genealogy of the S'Klallam and Chemakum tribes. The genealogy tree will also include parts of the earliest reports on the Indian tribes of Washington Territory and the House of Ste-tee-thlum, the legendary family of S'Klallam chiefs that also included Sehome, the chief of the Samish tribe, and Alice, the future wife of William R. Jarman. That story is the first published story based on in-depth research and nearly a dozen researchers, authors and experts helped us compile it. [Return]

2. Teck, Edson and Jeffcott Frank Teck was a longtime editor and publisher in Bellingham, before and after the turn of the 20th century, and he interviewed Jarman in depth in 1897 when he was 77 and living in Ferndale with his English niece. Lucky for us all, his notes have survived, the only such original source of the Jarman legends and tales, tall and otherwise.
Lelah Jackson Edson was a Whatcom pioneer herself and published a definitive Whatcom County history in 1951: The Fourth Corner.
Percival R. Jeffcott, is the most prolific author of books about Whatcom County history. For this series, we researched his collection at the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies in Bellingham and read and re-read two of his books, Blanket Bill Jarman (1958) and Nooksack Tales and Trails (1949). [Return]

3. Jarman and the George Emery

This photo is just one of the beautiful gallery of Sandy Hershelman on her website, Sandy Hershelman Designs for print and the Web. The photo earned her the Seafirst's "Faces of Washington," Best of Show award for 1995. We appreciate very much her help with geography and history of the Peninsula.

See the main Blanket Bill Jarman biography in Issue 40 that includes our discovery that Jarman was another crew member for one or more trips on the George Emery. Even though this set of facts raised more questions than it answered, and disputed our conclusions, we welcomed each new piece that fit together. Each fact adds to the history of Port Townsend and helps us fill in the timeline of a fascinating Northwest pioneer, while at the same time leading us to wonder: what if Bill had stayed at Port Townsend instead of heading to Whatcom County in 1852? [Return]

4. Elwood Evans Elwood Evans was one of the earliest settlers in future-Washington when it was still the northern part of Oregon Territory and he was destined to be an important historian and politician. Evans crossed the country from Philadelphia to Puget Sound in 1851 when President Millard Fillmore appointed him to be Deputy Collector of Customs. He returned home briefly in 1852 after being accepted at the Olympia district's first bar as an attorney, but soon returned to the Northwest in 1853 to be the private secretary to Isaac I. Stevens, the first governor of the new Territory. Along with that post, he also served as U.S. Attorney. He was a careful observer of events and people and he completed a manuscript in 1873 about the history of Oregon, which he supplied to historian and author Hubert H. Bancroft. In turn, Bancroft used that manuscript as a base for his 1890 book, History of the Pacific States.
In the interim, Evans first gained widespread notice in 1854 for his prosecution of the men who lynched an Indian in the village of Seattle. He was elected School Superintendent at Olympia in 1854 and George F. Whitworth married Evans and Elzira Z. Gore, of Maine, in 1856. That same year he became chief clerk of the Territorial Legislature, as surely one of the last Whig politicians of the Territory. That allegiance soon ended when he became a Republican after the party formed nationally and he also soon drew the governor's ire; Stevens condemned Evans for sympathizing with Chief Leschi before the Indian leader was hanged. Evans was elected to the Olympia City Council in 1859 and then served as secretary of the territory between 1862 and 1867.
As we will detail in an upcoming biography, Evans became a noted jurist in the territory and a key leader in Olympia until 1879, when he moved his family to Tacoma. He gained national prominence as a speaker and Republican leader two years before at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. He also published a History of Washington in 1877 and expanded it in 1893. In the interim, he wrote the general historical chapters in the 1889 seminal work, History of the Pacific Northwest, Oregon, and Washington. He died on Jan. 28, 1898, in Olympia, with full Masonic honors. In a history of Washington Masonry, the irony was noted that Evans was blackballed twice early on in the Olympic Lodge, only to become the eighth State Grand Master. [Return]

5. Charles Bachelder and James M. Bachelder

This is just one of the featured historic Wooden Boat Festival photos on exhibit in Port Townsend's City Council Chambers. You can read about that exhibit and the Walking Tours and learn more about the city's history at the website for the Jefferson County Historical Society.

We are still trying to connect Charles Bachelder and James M. Bachelder. In the near future, we plan to post a story about the sad case of the execution of Indian Chief Leschi by what certainly appears to be a kangaroo court — or courts, because the Territorial Supreme Court was also involved. He located at Fort Steilacoom, where he was the sutler, a civilian who provided military supplies, staples and foodstuffs to soldiers of the 9th Infantry who were quartered there. In the mid-1850s he was appointed as U.S. Commissioner for that section of the territory and became a powerful federal officer.
The district court sentenced Leschi to be hanged on Jan. 21, 1858, but on that day Bachelder issued a warrant for the arrest of Pierce County Sheriff George Williams and his deputy for selling liquor to Indians, and that placed Bachelder high in the history books because the arrest postponed the execution. Outraged locals called vigilante meetings, including Puyallup pioneer Ezra Meeker, who sympathized with Leschi long after the eventual hanging but condemned Bachelder's actions nevertheless. Those lined against Bachelder and others whom they blamed called for Bachelder to be removed from office, in an underground newspaper called the Truth Teller. In the surviving copies of that paper and the establishment Pioneer and Democrat, Bachelder was raked across the coals. But after Feb. 12, 1858, when the latter paper reported that he had indeed been removed (without explanation or details), Bachelder drops from the pages of history. Even Kelly Kunsch, author of The Trials of Leschi, does not know what happened to him. All we know is that he is buried at the Garrison Cemetery and that he died on April 8, 1865, aged 47. An infant daughter is buried beside him, but Sarah C. Bachelder, his wife, is not.
Hubert H. Bancroft wrote in 1890 that James M. Bachelder arrived at Steilacoom with his family in May 1851, along with customs collector and future author Elwood Evans, and James's brother-in-law, John Hamilton, who drowned in Puget Sound three years later. Charles Bachelder arrived the year before and a George Bachelder arrived during the same period. We have not been able to connect any of them. [Return]

Links, background reading and sources Blanket Bill Jarman and the stories associated with him are the entire contents of Issue 40. Go back to the Table of Contents for that issue to find the links to all the stories. If you are not yet a subscriber to the Subscribers Journal magazine online, please see the complete story list and details of how to subscribe. We are pleased to announce the publication of a complete history of the island where the Samish Indians were based. Samish Island, a History: From the Beginning to the 1970s by Susan and Fred Miller is a terrific new book and a loving story of the hook of land just west of Edison in Skagit County. Look for it at your favorite bookstore or online. There is no ISBN number, but the publishing information is: Mount Vernon, WA: Copy & Print Store, 2007. Gail Hopley laid out the book, which also includes poems and stories by and from one of our favorite writers, Berniece Hoyt Leaf, of Sedro-Woolley and Juniper Beach. When we finish reading the book, we will review it in depth in the free home pages of the Journal. If you want to purchase the self-published Miller book in your area, Fred shared a current list of retail locations: "WD Foods in Allen; Skagit County Museum at LaConner and Anacortes Museums; Stowe's Clothing Store and Horen's Drugstore, both in Burlington; Rosabella's Gift and Apple Store on Allen-West and Farm to Market Road; Rhododendron Cafe on Chuckanut Drive; and Blau's Oysters, here on Samish Island. Books can also be ordered thru our e-mail (miller.ff@gmail.com) and at Hopley's e-mail at (ghopley@wavecable,com). Or people can phone me at 360-766-6548 or Gail Hopley at 766-6823. We will go on line to such outlets as Amazon at some point. We arranged the publication ourselves, so there is no publisher sales outlet." If you live outside the area, look for it at your favorite bookstore or better yet, ask them to stock it. There is no ISBN number, but the publishing information is: Mount Vernon, WA: Copy & Print Store, 2007.

Olympic Peninsula stories, including Major Van Bokkelyn, reviews of Tom Camfield Port Townsend books and other stories.
And these other stories from Issue 40 of the Subscribers Journal online.
A profile of William R. Jarman and the legends of Blanket Bill, researched, discussed and debated, Part One.
A profile of William R. Jarman and the legends of Blanket Bill, researched, discussed and debated, Part Two.
Ray Jordan's story of Blanket Bill and Jarman Prairie, from his point of view as a young Belfast neighbor.
Bessemer, Birdsview and the Elliott Hotel, owned by Bill's daughter, Alice, and her husband, James Elliott.
Percival R. Jeffcott's book of Blanket Bill Jarman and the mysteries and legends, some debunked, and a profile of Jeffcott.
The history of the S'Klallam and Chemakum tribes of the Olympic Peninsula. William R. Jarman lived with them, one of the descendants became Chief Sehome of the Samish and another became Mrs. Alice Jarman, namesake of Alice Bay near Edison.
Port Townsend, the birth of the town and Bill's first Washington home
Kitsap County, Slaughter County and a Jarman myth debunked
A full review of the fine new book, Samish Island, a History, by Sue and Fred Miller, which all Skagit history-lovers will want to read, along with those who want to learn about the geology of the Puget Sound area and the "pre-history" of the Indians of the archipelago before the white settlers arrived.
We were shocked and saddened just as we went to press, when we learned of the death of Robert Jeffcott, grandson of Percival R. Jeffcott. Our hearts go out to his family, who grieve his passing. A memorial is planned for the afternoon of Oct. 13, 2007, at his Lummi Island property.

Attention: We have reserved the Burlington Library meeting room for a presentation on October 18. This replaces our original date of Sept. 27, which had a conflict. We will review rare photos and documents about the settlement of the towns north of the Skagit River and west of Sterling. Reservations are not required, but we would appreciate your feedback for planning purposes if you would like to attend. Please click this email button ->> with the number of people, your remarks and what you would like to see. Or read more details here

Story posted on Aug. 30, 2007 . . . Please report any broken links so we can update them
This article originally appeared in Issue 40 of our Subscribers-paid Journal online magazine

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Jones and Solveig Atterberry, NorthWest Properties Aiken & Associates: . . . See our website
Please let us show you residential and commercial property in Sedro-Woolley and Skagit County 2204 Riverside Drive, Mount Vernon, Washington . . . 360 708-8935 . . . 360 708-1729

Oliver Hammer Clothes Shop at 817 Metcalf Street in downtown Sedro-Woolley, 86 years.

Joy's Sedro-Woolley Bakery-Cafe at 823 Metcalf Street in downtown Sedro-Woolley.

Check out Sedro-Woolley First section for links to all stories and reasons to shop here first
or make this your destination on your visit or vacation.

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We may be able to assist. Email us for details.

Peace and quiet at the Alpine RV Park, just north of Marblemount on Hwy 20
Park your RV or pitch a tent by the Skagit River, just a short drive from Winthrop or Sedro-Woolley

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Skagit River Journal

Was Jarman first settler in Port Townsend area? — a sidebar about Blanket Bill Jarman

Was Jarman first settler in Port Townsend area?
— a sidebar about Blanket Bill Jarman