Sylvester family promoted migration to the Northwest

THE OLYMPIAN | • Published November 22, 2009

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This week in 1859 was relatively quiet in the Olympia area. Following are details about some of the well-known figures in the area at the time.

“Take Notice my wife, Harriet P. Sylvester, has left my bed and board without any cause or provocation. All persons are forbid to harbor or trust her on my account, as I will not pay any debts of her contracting.” – Crowell H. Sylvester, Olympia, Nov. 22, 1859

Crowell Hatch Sylvester and his wife, Harriet, came from Deer Isle, Maine, arriving in Olympia in the early 1850s.

They did so at the persuasion of Crowell’s brother, Edmund Sylvester, Olympia’s founder. Crowell and his wife received a donation land claim in 1853 and built a one-room log cabin near what now is the intersection of South Bay and Shinck roads.

He built a larger cabin in 1870, and finally an eight-room home in 1889. He hired local American Indians to help him clear the land and dig drainage ditches for his farm.

In 1853, Crowell Sylvester was appointed by the County Commission as a road viewer along with Levi Knott. Road viewers were charged with finding the best routes for building roads. They were to mark out a road from South Bay mills to intersect with the road leading from Olympia to David Chamber’s Prairie (now the Yelm Highway).

The cause of Crowell’s and Harriet’s separation is not known, but he was married again to Edith Hall Brown in 1879. They had three children: Mary E., Crowell H. (who went by the name Trealum) and Eunice. Trealum later married Nettie Longmire, the daughter of Joseph Longmire.

The Longmires were early pioneers, their name gracing several places from here to Mount Rainier.

In an 1883 letter to the Deer Island Gazette in Maine, Edith and Crowell wrote, “Perhaps it would interest your readers to hear something about this part of our country. Washington Territory has a boom 1,000 increase population per week to settle upon land, and help develop our resources.

“Our coal fields underlay the Puget Sound Basin. Our timber and lumber facilities are world renowned. We have all that is needed except population to make this territory one of the richest in the union. Now that we are in direct communication with the Atlantic states by the N.P.R. Road we will get the people to come in and possess our land, and develop it.

“We are in communication with the N.P.R. Road at Tenino, 15 miles from here by the Olympia and Centerville (now Centralia) Road. We are having many notables from the states, among whom are Miss Frances Willard, President of the National Women’s Christian Union, who held Temperence Conventions here; and Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, who has passed through our territory.

“We natives of your town are all prospering and enjoying fair health, and wish to be remembered to our friends at Deer Isle.”

Crowell, like his brother Edmund, always was espousing our area’s wonderful resources to entice Easterners to come west. The fact that Edmund owned most of what is now downtown Olympia probably was part of his motive.

Crowell lived in the South Bay area until his death at 74 in 1899. The Morning Olympian reported that Crowell died of Bright’s disease of the heart, and that his property was willed to his children.

Immediately thereafter, Edith moved into Olympia.

South Sound historian Roger Easton can be reached at rogereaston@comcast.net.