Skagit River Journal of History & Folklore Subscribers Edition Stories & Photos The most in-depth, comprehensive site about the Skagit. Covers from British Columbia to Puget sound. Counties covered: Skagit, Whatcom, Island, San Juan. An evolving history dedicated to the principle of 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

William C. Ewing, 1904. Courtesy of Marilyn Price-Mitchell

• Work on the Avon dyke completed. Several farmers on flats near timberline [where would that have been then?] furnished men and teams to aid those near the river. Many have proposed to complete the dyke to Sterling [about four miles east-northeast on the north side of the Skagit.
  
• Magnus Anderson plans 1st class hotel at Fir 90'x38', 2 stories where present hotel stands, move that building to next lot. [If you are a subscriber to our separate Subscribers Edition online, see our biography of this key Skagit delta pioneer in Issue 18 (How to subscribe.) The hotel above burned in a fire on April 10, 1885, that leveled every building in Fir. He quickly rebuilt.]
  
• Master Eugene, son of Charles Villeneuve [and living in?] Stanwood, visiting Mr. Pritchard and old friends at Fir
  
• B.L. Martin, store owner in LaConner wedding. Married Miss Stella Palmer of Portland
  
• Mr. [Charles] Harmon's crew at work clearing logs in main channel [South fork, the lower of two jams] of Skagit, took out 2.5 million feet of logs last 2 months. The loads are run down Deep Water slough on a boom to Skagit bay, then by steamer Bob Irving to the mill at Utsalady on Camano island.
  
• On Pleasant Ridge, Will Cornelius was the Square Dance caller last week with Art Cornelius on violin.
  
• Skagit county cold weather record: Thermometer on Feb. 11, 2 below zero, coldest since 1862. [Did not say which city recorded in.]
  
• Blacksmith shop at Skagit city, Old shop moved forward on lot just above the saloon, outfitted for Thompson's Drugs
  

• Survey of range 9 overdue. [That includes sections in Township 35 around junction of Sauk river]
  
• Mail on the river. Post offices on the sound receive mail by steamer tri-weekly, river post offices receive mail twice a week. Freight steamers often dump the Skagit mail off at a way station as second priority when full of freight. Mail for Skagit and Snohomish county is made up on the Sound steamer Washington. There are now nine post offices on the Skagit.
  

• Dr. H.P. Montborne of Mount Vernon . Front page ad every paper, 1st at upper left corner. Physician & surgeon. Dr. completing "hospital" soon ready for all [actually more of a clinic on his lot on Front street where he was building his drug store. See below for examples of his hospital. Front street was on the slope leading up from the river, somewhere underneath what is now the revetment.]
  
• McNaught & Tinkham, attorneys, notary public, Mount Vernon, page 1 [On page 177 of the 1906 Illustrated History book, we find that W.W. Tinkham ran for county probate judge that year as a Democrat and lost 212 to 360 to H.J. White, a Republican. Tinkham was apparently an Illinois native.]
  

• Johnny Campbell, an Indian, is the bete noir of the upriver surveying corps. He led Indians from Nooksack to Snohomish to drive out surveyors. Mr. Sheets is leading the survey party here.
  
• Methodist Episcopal church conference at Avon. $330 pledged by 11 members to build new church at Avon. Plans have been submitted by a builder, calling for $900 to build in thorough style. The lot selected for the church and donated by A.H. Skaling, is on the next block above the school house, protected by the dike. The church will be 25x48.
        [Ed. note: A.H. Skaling opened set up the first general store at Avon on Oct. 27, 1883. He originally moved his family from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, to southern California in 1878, and moved up to the Skagit valley five years later. The Skagit river flows east to west and then forms a horseshoe bend before turning south to present Mount Vernon. Skaling bought part of the claim of W.H. Miller, who homesteaded in 1882 some land on both the west side of the bow and a half mile north of the river. The town of Avon once encompassed land on both sides of the river where it forms a big bow before flowing south to Mount Vernon. Avon has two distinctions. It was the only one of the frontier towns in the valley that did not have an eventual railroad connection. Instead, it was a market center for farmers in the flats to the west and the Olympia Marsh to the north. It was also a temperance town. Skaling included abstinence from liquor as a covenant in all land contracts. When the Seattle & Northern railroad built east from Ship Harbor (Anacortes) in 1890, a new town of North Avon was formed a mile north, connected to Avon by a very long board sidewalk. North Avon had saloons. Methodist Episcopalian was the largest sector of the Methodist church across the country at that time. That branch and others merged together in 1939 as the Methodist Church.]
  
• The [Logging] Boom company held a meeting at the school house Saturday evening. Billy Murdock will still be boss.
        [Ed. note: William Murdock came to the Skagit river from Canada in the late 1870s and worked in logging camps upriver with W.S. Jameson and others. He later ran logging camps of his own, raised beef cattle and then owned the Washington Hotel in Mount Vernon with Adelbert Ford. They both invested in hotels and saloons in old Woolley in 1890 and Murdock was briefly mayor in Woolley in 1891. See this Journal website about Murdock.
  
• Mr. B.D. Bosee [sp?], having the right of a patent shore boom for one year. Mr. Bosee, of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, thinks this river valley the finest he has seen since he left Wisconsin. In his opinion, it will be the field of an extensive business before long.
  
• The trails on the river are in excellent condition.
  
• I.F. Roberts has been in Dr. Montborne's hospital for several weeks, having a very serious attack of bronchitis. He passed a very bad night, Sunday. [This is the first instance of an example of Dr. Montborne's "hospital", which may have been more like what we would call a clinic.]
  
• Mr. Coltenbaugh came in last week from his ranch back of Mount Vernon.
  
• The M.E. conference at Avon decided to hold a camp-meeting the third week in June.
  
• Rev. Mr. McMillen will hereafter hold services at Avon and Mount Vernon on alternate Sundays, beginning at Avon March 23d. Skagit City will also have services every other week. The wife of the Rev. William McMillen has something of a parochial school, hearing the lessons of some of the little ones at Skagit. ]
        [Ed. note: Some wonder why there were three Methodist Episcopal churches in the three towns when each town was just two miles apart on the river. But you have to remember that, in 1884, there were no passable roads between the towns and there were not yet any railroads where you could walk above the waterline. Most people traveled back and forth by canoe or by sternwheeler, depending on the schedule. Traveling by canoe became especially messy and risky as the fall and winter rains set in, and those rains often turned whatever paths there were in the dense forests and in the prairies into seas of mud. So, each town had stores for its basic shopping needs, along with schools and churches. That variety lessened after the turn of the century, when railroads connected all the towns along the river, and the stores, schools and churches in the outlying towns died out completely after automobiles and roads connected the towns, starting in the 1920s. We plan to introduce an in-depth history of Avon in our separate Subscribers Edition later this winter.]
  
• Dr. J.C. Baker dedicated the Baptist church in LaConner Sunday. Funds were raised to pay the church indebtedness and to complete the building, 4435 by subscription and $200 from the Home Missionary Society. The meetings were well attended.
  
• Rev. LeSourd preached at [Skagit City] Wednesday evening.
  
• [William] Pitts has been brightening the appearance of the hotel at Avon. [Mrs. Pitts was the aunt of Mrs. Skaling, the wife of the Avon town founder.]
  
• The Avon lodge of Good Templars [prohibitionists] have for Worthy Chief, James Becraft, and R.L. Vernon, secretary. J. Tilly of Leonard's camp, was initiated at the last meeting.
  
• R.L. Vernon, from a recent trip with intending settlers, reports water on the Olympia marsh about six inches deep on the line between ranges 3 and 4, but little water on the marshes east of this line [that was north of future Burlington, on the way to Bow].
  
• [A.C.] Davis's ponies made the trip from Jameson's camp [upriver in the Birdsview area] to the river crossing [probably in the Riverside-Avon area], in one day, from 7 o'clock until 3.
  
• One farm in the delta — Mr. Olof [Olaf] Polson's — gave 102 bushels of oats per acre, on [eight?] acres, and 180 tons of hay from 26 acres. He rotates his crops. [Crop rotation was a scientific idea introduced in the Mid-west after the Civil War. The dust-storms of the early 1930s helped make rotation the rule rather than the exception.]
  
• The steamer Gazelle struck a snag and sank in the mouth of the Stillaguamish river last week [near Stanwood]. It will not require much time or expense to raise and repair her. [This report was updated on March 18: The Gazelle was raised and floated to the beach on rafts made of barrels and cordwood, and patched up sufficiently to make the trip. She will soon be thoroughly repaired.]
  
• Two ranches, C. Bergen and John Pulver, are clearing off Mr. English's place on the island. Mr. Pulver came from Sundberg, Wayne county, Ohio, where German is the only language spoken.
        [Ed. note: As with Mr. Kimble, we do not know which "island" the writer is referring to. It could be what we now call Fir island — the delta between the forks of the Skagit, or it could be the island formed between the Skagit river and Britt slough to the east. Mr. Pulver was a Swiss immigrant and was the namesake for the Pulver road. See another note about Pulver in the March 4 and March 25 issues.]
  
• Dr. William Thompson, according to the gossips, in the near future will ally himself in marriage to the daughter of John Gates. He has our consent. If rumor is at fault, we hope neither party will "interview" the local reporter.
  
• Mr. F.H. Clark, postmaster and general merchant at Carpenter, Illinois, paid a visit recently to his cousin, Mr. W.W. Tinkham. Mr. Clark is delighted with our winter climate and may soon make a trial of our summer, so much has this country pleased his fancy.
  
• Weekly market report. Butter — 37 1/2 cents. Eggs — Clothier & English 30 cents, Ledger & Cole 25 cents, [Skagit City] 28 cents, Avon 35 cents. Potatoes — Mount Vernon 60 cents, Avon 65 cents, Skagit City best 75 cents, Lyman 75 cents.
  
• Day Brothers are clearing up their ranch, and have now fourteen acres ready for cultivation. They will soon be able to raise hay enough to supply their camp. [We believe this was somewhere on the south shore of the Skagit, east of future Clear Lake.]
  
• On Thompson river, British Columbia, peaches are grown, besides melons and corn. The farm producing them has a high elevation and a fairly exposed position. Those well up the Skagit should try these products, as the successful growth of corn near Wilburton gives some promise of success with the two others.
        [Ed. note: we have read vague references to Wilburton before, including an item below in the April 8 issue for James Cochrane. We believe that Wilburton was a township named for John T. Wilbur, a very early settler on the south fork of the Skagit. We hope that a reader will have more information about Wilburton.]
  Advertisements
• William M. Thompson, Drugs and medicine. Practicing physician and notary public. Skagit City. 3/11: Gossips say he will align himself in marriage to daughter. of John Gates [Mary]
  
• Howell and McBride, attorneys and notary public. LaConner. Will practice in all courts in territory and conduct contests before between claimants the U.S. Land Office.
  These ads repeat weekly:
• Brann & Moran. Mount Vernon Hotel. Wines, liquors, cigars, billiard table. [George V. Brann had logging camps in Skagit county and at least one on Whidbey island. George Moran logged in Whatcom county as early as May 1876, then for five years on the Skagit river, came to Mount Vernon in June 1881 and owned and operated the Mount Vernon House or Hotel for several years. He sold the hotel in 1890 and then went into the retail liquor business until at least 1906.]
  
• Ruby Hotel. Wines, liquors, cigars, billiard table and pool tables. [Michael McNamara, owner]
  
• Bonanza Bar and Billiard Room. Wilson & Co., Mount Vernon, A fine stock of liquors and cigars, billiard table.
  
• Reed & McDermid. Liquor and cigars, tobacco, confections, fancy groceries.
  
• Avon Hotel. Permanent board and transient. Wm. A. Pitts, proprietor.
  
• Moodie & Hendricks Butchers. Wholesale and retail. Mount Vernon. [See Nick Bessner, next issue]
  

This photo supplied by reader Larry Harnden shows a view of the Mount Vernon waterfront on the Skagit river as we look northeast. The building at the right center with a group of men standing before it is Ruby Hotel, opened by Michael McNamara to house some of the argonauts of the short-lived 1880 gold rush on Ruby creek, a tributary of the upper Skagit. We believe that the building at the far left is the Mount Vernon House, owned by Brann and Moran. See the ads above for both.

• The Skagit News office was invaded last week in a friendly way by Eldridge Morse, the buckskin-coated, entertaining, soi-disant tramp of Snohomish City. He is examining the tidelands for the Agriculture Department [we assume that was the federal department but it could have been for the Washington territory]. See the our profile of this fascinating man and towering intellect.]
  
• Rev. B.N.L. Davis of Riverside has planted a young orchard of a thousand trees on a farm above Mount Vernon, with 200 apple trees, and the remainder stone fruit, and will add 400 apple treas. He plans to dry his own fruit.
  

      "I have to wade much of the way; the water was up to my knees, and my long stick is to protect me from the pits." (Holes washed out by the tides.) The interviewer asked: "You must have to start early; they tell me you have to walk eleven miles." "Yes," he replied, "I start before daybreak. When I get my chores done, I take my lantern and start out." Asked if he had lost his lantern, he replied: "Oh, no; when it gets to be daylight I set my lantern down on a root or stump, and then pick it up on the way back home."]

---

• The burning of D.E. Kimble's "old house on the island" removes one of the early landmarks.
  David Everett Kimble       [David E. Kimble was one of the 1870 settlers who came from Whidbey island and homesteaded the Mount Vernon area. He staked a claim on the land below that of Jasper Gates. Pine street was roughly the boundary. He sold part of his claim to Xavar Bartl in the early 1870s and in 1887, Capt. David Decatur bought the chunk below Pine street. It was possibly in 1887 that Kimble moved north to New Westminster in British Columbia for an unknown period. Tom Robinson thinks Kimble's original cabin on the Mount Vernon part of Kimble's property was located about where the Interurban station stood at the northwest corner of Kincaid and First streets, later Vaux pharmacy. His main residence was apparently at the bend of the river below Mount Vernon near what was then the south end of the lower of two large log jams. His main residence there was referred to as Kimble's Landing, where sternwheelers landed before the two log jams were cleared for navigation. Back then, readers probably knew what the editor meant when he wrote "the island," but we wish he had elaborated. From recent research, we have inferred that this mention meant the area on the east shore of the bend of the Skagit below Mount Vernon, which was formed into an island by Britt slough to the east and south. For more about Kimble, see these websites: In November 2004, we have posted a five-part section about the importance of the Kimble family role in the earliest settlement on the river. That includes links to early letters in 1884-85 that gave details of the very first settlers. Also see the story of the 1870 settlers and the story of Jasper Gates.
  

      At that time, it is possible that Britt's Slough was still open from the river. It once was an overflow channel from the river going out from somewhere around the present sewer treatment plant and running back into the river down at the forks. That might have made an "island" of the Kimble place. I doubt that it would refer to a place down on Fir Island, since no one until long after ever called "the Skagit Delta" anything else than that. Until the early twentieth century, what we call Fir Island — before the complete diking of the North Fork — was divided by Dry Slough, Wylie's Slough, and a few others into several islands.

• The first stage from LaConner came in Saturday and Mr. Eyre expects to arrive again to-day. His passengers were the families of Messrs. Gregg and Pyle, of whom mention is made elsewhere. The road is rough and the distance very much increased because of the tortuous course pursued over the flats. The stage line is a good move in the direction of good communication between the river and the flats. [We think this was Fred Eyre.]
  
• LaConner is spelled without a space at this time. It is also spelled "Laconner in the legal ads for homesteads."
  
• On the last trip up Sound, between Utsalady and Stanwood, the [sternwheeler] Quincy broke one of her rods and had to make Seattle with only one engine. It required but little time to make repairs [the boat's captain was Steamboat Dan Benson, one of the first settlers of the Skiyou district, east of Sedro].
  
• Stanwood lodge of Good Templars [prohibitionists], at their meeting Saturday night, decided to build a hall for their meetings. It is to be built by a joint stock company, shares $10, and to cost from $500 to $1,000. Their lodge numbers 41.]
  
• Rev. Mr. Atwood preached at Stanwood last Sunday morning. In the afternoon, Rev. Mr. Homer, who held revival meetings at Mount Vernon lately, conducted the services.
  
• Sale of lots. Maurice McMicken, Esq., of the firm of Struve, Haines & McMicken, Seattle, has purchased of Mr. Ledge sixteen lots in Ball & Ledger's addition to Mount Vernon [west across the Skagit]; consideration, $1,000. He will still further show his appreciation of Mount Vernon as a growing place by building houses for renting.
  
• Good Work. Rev. B.N.L. Davis has planted a young orchard of a thousand trees on his farm above Mt. Vernon [Riverside Addition on what became Hoag road, south of the future Great Northern train trestle]. Of these, two hundred are apple, the remainder being stone fruit. He intends adding four hundred apple trees and will dry his own fruit.
  

• Quinn & Brownrig hotel at Lyman. The four young bloods who left Mount Vernon for their claims last Tuesday, assisted in that evening's entertainment at Quinn and Brownrig's first-class hotel in Lyman. Mr. and Mrs. Gaines were there, Miss Gaines with her music, accompanied by Mrs. LeBallister added to the pleasure of the evening. Fred Pape sang "sweet Forget-me-not" Mr. Bailey's humorous sayings (no longer spread on the Mount Vernon Bulletin), and doubtless Mr. Jeffries' well-remembered musical powers, were all appreciated..
  
• Mr. Frank Hamilton rejoices in the possession of a son, arriving Feb. 28, weight, 8 3/4 pounds. [That was his son, James B. Hamilton. See this Journal website about James and his banking days with C.E. Bingham in Sedro-Woolley.]
  

• Nick Beezner [must mean Nick Bessner, misspelled??] of LaConner has bought out Moodie & Hendricks butchers. [Ed. note: On page 773 of the 1906 Illustrated History book, we find that Nick worked in various jobs around LaConner from @ 1880-85 when he bought a place on Samish flats.] Moodie & Hendricks will deliver their valedictory this week and depart for the Coeur d'Alene, where there are at least many to be fed, if there is little to be found. We wish them lots of silver and hope they will not be stricken down the fever prevalent in that neighborhood.]
  
• Mrs. Maggie Scott returned to Mount Vernon from British Columbia to re-open her Cosmopolitan Restaurant. Ad same issue: Meals all hours, 25 cents and up, as ordered. Oysters every style. No Chinese employed. Open to 11 p.m. [The No Chinese note presages the bias that will erupt the next year in Seattle and the nationwide hatred of the Chinese, who were brought in to work on the railroads but were seen as taking jobs from whites either born in the U.S. or white immigrants.]
  
• A.C. Davis. $2 per day for saddle horses. On March 11, Davis brought his ponies from Jameson's camp [unknown area upriver] to river crossing [probably Riverside] in one day from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
  
• A.M. Flagg of Avon. House & boat builder, built to order & repairing promptly done. [And another note:] A.M. Flagg will soon be ready to turn out boots as they do spoons, by the dozen.
        [Ed. note: In an old history of Avon by Ada Hall, we find that Arthur Flagg soon changed his boat building into a drug, confectionery and cigar store. She tells a funny story about Flagg and Tom McCain, who were determined that liquor should not be sold illegally in their area. But every time that a railroad camp moved in the 1889-90 period, a tent would rise for selling booze. Flagg and McCain would go to the tent as ringers, order booze and the sheriff would swoop in for an arrest. On the first occasion, the bartender asked what he could do for them. But McCain was so opposed to liquor that he could not even mention it. Instead, he said: "Gimme a cigar."] Flagg was a charter member of the M.E. church at Avon in 1884.]
  
• Ledger & Cole. Mount Vernon. General store. Seattle prices, a cash store. [Mr. Ledger was also a partner with Jesse B. Ball, with whom he platted a piece of land in West Mount Vernon at the foot of the wagon bridge. In May 1884, Ledger was granted a ferry license in those days before a bridge spanned the river. Seven years before he was a member of the team that cleared the log jam on the Stillaguamish river near Stanwood. We would like to know more about him. See the April 1 issue below, which reported that the partners had split up.]
  
• McGlinn House. LaConner. Reading room for guests. [Tom Robinson tells us that this hotel began in 1879 as the Maryland House. By 1884, it was owned by John P. McGlinn, the former federal Indian agent for the Swinomish reservation. It was rebuilt and enlarged in the early 1880's and became the town's major hotel.]
  
• Ruby Hotel. Mount Vernon. [Michael] McNamara, owner. Wines, liquors, cigars, billiard and pool tables. [On page 177 of the 1906 Illustrated History, we find that McNamara tried to run a hotel and saloon at Centerville [Stanwood] from @ 1880-82, but failed and apparently came back to MV where he had built the Ruby two lots south of the Clothier & English store in 1879.]
  
• [Daniel E.] Gage. General store. Skagit city.
        [Ed. note: Gage's store dated back to the earliest days of valley settlement. In 1868, a man named Barker had opened a store on the South fork of the river about a mile above where Skagit City now stands, but he was soon murdered and his death was mistakenly blamed on Indians. James J. Conner, a cousin of the founder of LaConner, ran a trading vessel on Puget sound in the early and mid-1870s and he took on as a partner a man named John Campbell, who set up a replacement for Campbell's store at what became Skagit City on the land claim of W.H. McAlpine. By 1876, Daniel Gage erected the most substantial new building in Skagit City, a two-story structure, with the help of carpenter, Amasa Peg-Leg Everett. It was two stories with the lower one for a store, warehouse and dwelling. The upper story was a public hall, where the first Skagit Ball was celebrated on Dec. 1, 1876. In the early days of the Mount Vernon settlement and south from there in the 1870s, brothers William and Daniel Gage collected and transported mail for everyone living upriver. A steamboat would deliver all such mail to Daniel's Skagit City store and William or someone he hired would paddle a canoe down from the log jams to pick it up. When William C. Ewing promoted a public subscription campaign in 1884 to fund the removal of a log jam at the mouth of the Skagit and removal of drifts and snags all the way up to Sterling, Daniel Gage was treasurer of the group. By 1906, Skagit City was a mere shadow of its former self, having given over almost all commerce to Mount Vernon. Gage's store was the last business there. See this website for a photo.
  
• Avon Hotel, permanent boarding house and transients, William A. Pitts, owner. [Mrs. Pitts was Mrs. Skaling's aunt. The Pitts family was from Boston.]
  
• D.O. Pearson. General Merchandise, logging supplies. Stanwood
  
• Seattle Iron Works. Sharpe Coffman & Co., proprietors. Foundry, machine and pattern shops, Jackson street, corner of 2d Avenue. Castings in iron and brass, repairs. Machinery of all kinds made and repaired. W.T. Sharpe, W.M. Coffman, C.R. Allmond.
  

• A farmhand's wages in the winter here are $25 per month.
  
• Xavar Bartl has built his home near Clear Lake and will move up there this week or next. [Bartl's son Jacob Bartl platted part of this land north of the present school house in 1890 as the village of Mountain View and became its postmaster. The U.S. Post Office would not approve that name because of another town of the same name in the State. The name was then changed to Clearlake, which is now generally spelled Clear Lake. This discovery by Clear Lake historian Deanna Ammons was especially important to her so she could complete a timeline of the earliest and most important family in her town. Bartl originally settled in what is now south Mount Vernon in 1871, building a cabin on what is now Sherman Anderson Field and the fairgrounds.]
  
• [Lafayette] S. Stevens reports the work on the coal mine [later Cokedale] progressing favorably. No great developments as of yet.
        [Ed. note: Lafayette Stevens came to Sterling, the only upper Skagit river village, in 1873 after searching for coal and gold with Amasa Everett and Orlando Graham. In 1878 he discovered a coal vein in the foothills four miles northeast of the future town of Woolley. He was joined by V.A. Marshall and by the time of this issue they were still trying to figure out how to finance a mine there. By 1888, Stevens called it the Crystal Mine and he sold his interests to railroad man Nelson Bennett. Sometime in the mid-1890s the mine and the town that rose there were named Cokedale. See our exclusive Stevens profile at this website. We will soon update that website from our old domain, where the links from it no longer works.]
  
• E.B. Gregg has made arrangements for renting the Cass place on the North Fork. The rent is to be paid chiefly by a stipulated amount of clearing.
  
• Milton Cook of Mt. Baker post office has had lumber hauled to the new townsite of Rexville and is expected to put up a fine hotel. Still they come to the river.
        [Ed. note: You may have find it strange that the settlement of Mount Baker was on Samish island but if you have ever visited someone who owns beachfront property on the north shore, you will marvel at their view across Chuckanut Bay to the mountain in Whatcom county. Rexville was a village on the southern end of Pleasant Ridge, the hill east of LaConner on the flats. By 1890, Milton B. Cook and his wife leased the new Mountain View Hotel in Hamilton, which was built in 1889 by Hamilton namesake William Hamilton and his wife Elizabeth. The Cooks possibly bought the hotel later. Mrs. Hamilton died in 1891 and William abandoned his family and moved to Arkansas, where he married a 16-year-old Indian girl. They then had four children together. See our Journalwebsite.]
  
• John Nelson from Colusa county, California, has been visiting his brother James Nelson on Dry slough [south Fir island]. He is on the search for land and will sty in this country.
  
• The Bob Irving [steamboat] brought up eighteen tons of freight for Clothier & English on the Sunday's trip. The boat will run twice a week from Seattle to Mukilteo, Utsalady and the Skagit river.
  
• Pleasant Ridge lately indulged in music and dance at the school-house, [William] A. Cornelius and Herbert Gorton furnishing the former and the whole neighbor hood the latter. Also Mr. Tom Hurd from the woods.
  
• It is the fashion to have a dance in a new home before it is ready for occupancy, as it brings good luck. F. Wiles had to submit to the custom, and a thoroughly enjoyable hop took place at his future home last week.
  
• Oscar Slosser has his new home well up and is at work on the inside. It is built of well seasoned lumber, rustic being used on the outside and to some extent within, s the house is to be ceiled [?], not plastered. This river begins to have a more showy appearance.
  
• A bit of Edelweis, the famous Alpine flower that grows on the edge of the snow, was presented to this office by Mr. Pulver, who had gathered it on the mountainside near his home in the canton of Berne, Switzerland. It is a white flower not unlike our common saxifrage, with furry leaves. We heartily thank him. [Also see notes about Pulver in the March 4 and March 11 issues.]
  
• The muster of the Indians on the upper river has begun, but theirs will be a bootless gathering this time. Johnny Campbell, Jimmy John and other hyas tyees are there, doubtless hoping to end the present survey as the other was done. But their pretentious display of force then was the potential cause of stopping the survey, the lack of money being the real cause. The dodge will not work twice.
  
• Mr. Homan's sermon at Mount Vernon Sunday evening was excellent in matter and some of his illustrations were well appreciated. We give the line of his discourse from this text: "there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." This clear, unhesitating declaration is characteristic of the Bible. The Christian life is satisfying to all who have given up purely worldly occupations for it. The requirements are just and reasonable. Nothing else meets the wants of the soul. . . . Originally holy, man fell and his unholy nature was transmitted to posterity. We have only ourselves to blame if we do not gain a greater purity than man originally had. It is possible for all to come to Christ.
  
• The rejection of a candidate by the Avon lodge of Good Templars [prohibitionists] has given good ground for the dissatisfaction felt by some of its members. Four votes, without a cause assigned, perhaps from mere caprice or prejudice, will reject on applicant. A society whose avowed purpose is to benefit the community should reject only on a majority vote. As it stands, fifty members must yield to four, who avoid all explanation by the secrecy of the vote.
  

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