For my family...

I keep uncovering tantalizing pieces of family history. Those pieces don't yet add to a coherent whole but I thought if I started writing them down in one place -- a place where my family could add their thoughts as well -- we could all collaborate on a fuller history of our family in Seattle. I'm not going to try to go in order -- that's really not the goal right now -- but rather to capture what is intriguing me at the moment. And maybe, at some later date, I may try to collect all these random thoughts into a book of some sort (probably on Shutterfly!) So today I'm starting with the Ross family in 1959. I found this in Clarence Bagley's History of Seattle on Google Books (and can I just say what an incredibly great -- searchable -- thing that Google Books is?!) Mr. Bagley gives a list of the 98 married men living in Seattle at the time: "John Ross and wife, William and Elmer, East side of First Avenue, second lot north of Madison." John Ross was my great-great grandfather and he came to Seattle in about 1853. Accounts differ as to exactly when. Later in his account, Mr. Bagley says that John Ross was one of 4 full time employees at Yesler's mill. This I know from family lore because I've been told that Henry Yesler cheated John Ross. I think Yesler was a total skunk but I also think that John Ross was a rotten businessman....he really wasn't interested in business or expansion or cashing in on the growth of Seattle. I know they were living in a house in Seattle in 1959 because they were saving money to build a house on their donation claim which was in what is now Ballard. (More on when that property changed hands later!) Anyway, when I have time, I'll transcribe a wonderful recollection of growing up in this house by Ida Ross Sparkman, my beloved grandmother's Aunt Ida. It's really the best source I have for how it felt to live in Seattle at this point. Everything else is just guesswork.