minister in 1842, he traveled the state of as a circuit preacher. It takes more than a good resume to get a In 1852, the family, including their only government contract. child, Clarence, joined others as part of the burgeoning Westward movement. Their wagon train was called "The Bethel Party," and included several individuals, such as Bagley, Daniel Dexter Horton (1825-1904) and Thomas Mercer, who would also have a profound (1818-1905) and influence on the growth of . Cholera, not Indians was the main enemy Clarence B. Bagley along the trail. Turning south to the verdant Willamette Valley, the Bagley family settled (1843-1932) near Salem, . The eager Methodist missionary, with a five-year engagement From: HistoryLink.org Essay 3470 : from the Methodist Protestant Church at $600 a year, established several churches Daniel Bagley was a Methodist preacher over an eight-year period. who traveled west in covered wagons with However, Susannah Bagley's health was his family in 1852 as part of the Bethel poor, and the couple and their son traveled Party. He and his wife Susannah Whipple north by horse-drawn buggy -- the first such Bagley (1819-1913) and son Clarence contraption to enter Seattle-- looking for the Bagley arrived in Seattle in October 1860. clean air of . His Willamette Daniel Bagley established the Brown Valley work had apparently been Church in Seattle in 1860 and besides recognized, for he was appointed a preaching became a key advocate for the "traveling agent" of the American Tract Territorial University and its location in Society, with duties in Puget Sound. The Seattle. He also managed the Newcastle Bagley family rented a house from Henry coal mines. His only son, Clarence Bagley, Adams near the southwest corner of 3rd was 17 when he arrived in Seattle. He Avenue and Columbia Street. became a printer, publisher, and writer, a founder of the Washington State Historical The Brown Church Society, and the region's first and preeminent historian. In 1860, Daniel Bagley established what became known as Seattle's "Brown Church" The Father at the northwest corner of 2nd Avenue and Madison Street. According to his son, the Daniel Bagley was born on September 7, "Brown Church's" Sunday School "had 1818, in Crawford County, . become the largest in the territory with 171 Bagley worked on his father's farm clearing officers, teachers, and pupils." Daniel also the land and doing chores. In 1840, he taught at the school, his son Clarence married Massachusetts-raised Susannah substituting for his father in the classroom Rogers Whipple. Their honeymoon was on occasion. spent moving to new land on the prairie of Religious duties did not interfere with Illinois. After becoming a Methodist Bagley's secular interests. Perhaps his most lasting monument resulted from his service

Copyright 2011 Jerry Olson December 10, 2011 with John Webster and Edmund Carr as a Bagley presided. Mercer's eloquence and Washington state university commissioner. the presence of several of the young ladies Arthur Denny (1822-1899), a member of in question helped sooth misunderstandings. the territorial legislature, hoped that Seattle Bagley later officiated at the wedding of Asa would be chosen as the capital. Almost by Mercer and Annie E. Stephens of Baltimore, accident, the first site of the university was one of the "Mercer Girls." Eventually, all at Cowlitz Farm Prairie in Lewis County. but one of the damsels married local men. According to Neal O. Hines, in his book In later life, Rev. Bagley undertook the Denny's Knoll, Bagley convinced Denny management of what became known as the that Seattle would benefit more from being Newcastle coal mines on the eastside of the home of a university than from being the . He and others ran the site of the capital. Lake Washington Coal Company, which had The legislature did indeed act as Bagley been organized in 1866. After 1885, he hoped, passing legislation to found a returned fulltime to his first profession, territorial university in Seattle "provided, a roaming from church to church as visiting good and sufficient deed to ten acres of pastor in Ballard, Columbia City, Yesler land ... be first executed." Denny then Street, and South Park. stepped in and with neighboring property Daniel Bagley was a Master Mason from owners Charles C. Terry, Mary Terry, and his Illinois days, and upon his death on April Edward Lander, dedicated what was referred 26, 1905, he received full honors from to as "the knoll" for the school (today "the Seattle's historic St. John's Lodge. Neal knoll" is known as the Metropolitan Tract Hines wrote that when Daniel Bagley died at near Union and Seneca streets in downtown age 87, six years after Arthur Denny, he had Seattle). been living with his son. "In all his years Bagley was elected president of the nothing had daunted (him) -- not the university's board of commissioners, hardships of the trail from Illinois, not the becoming in effect the school's first guiding rigors of the circuit riding in Oregon, not the spirit. He asked his friend Asa Shinn whims and doubts of territorial legislatures - Mercer (1839-1917) to serve as the school's - and only the single tree on the old first acting president at no salary. In 1894, university grounds had outlasted him [a tree when the new university grounds were long gone from downtown Seattle." established in North Seattle, and the Denny Hall cornerstone was laid, Bagley spoke The Son movingly at the ceremonies about the university's early days. A plaque rests today Clarence Bagley, the only child of Daniel at the University Street entrance of the and Susannah, was born in Troy Grove, Olympic-Four Seasons Hotel attesting to the Illinois, on November 30, 1843. At age nine, efforts of Arthur Denny and Daniel Bagley Clarence had a front-row seat while moving to build a territorial university on that site. across the plains and Rocky Mountains to a new home near Salem, Oregon. The young The Mercer Girls Controversy man attended Willamette Institute, which later became Willamette University. He Daniel Bagley defended the 1866 arrival also did his share of farm duties, a necessary of "The Mercer Girls," which his friend Asa pioneer-days activity. Mercer had organized. A meeting to discuss In October 1860, Clarence was a strapping the matter was held in Yesler Hall, at which 17 years old when the family climbed

Copyright 2011 Jerry Olson December 10, 2011 aboard a buggy and headed north to Seattle. The Echo. After selling his interest in those In the shadow of his father, Clarence cleared two papers he went to work for a new timber from the site of the new university. publication, The Commercial Age. In 1867, Later, he painted, did carpentry, and took up Daniel and Clarence Bagley sold a printing other jobs on the fledgling university business on credit to Samuel L. Maxwell, grounds. In the pages of his own History of who started The Weekly Intelligencer, King County, Clarence could not resist forerunner of today's Seattle Post- mentioning that he and R. H. Beatty, O. J. Intelligencer. Carr, and Josiah Settle did the "flooring and Like father, like son. Clarence helped run shingling." the Newcastle coalmines in 1870. He left the Education was a primary theme in the private sector in 1871 to return to Olympia Bagley family. After the university building as deputy in the office of the Internal was in place, Clarence accompanied his Revenue Collector of Washington, but his parents on a visit to Pennsylvania. He interest in writing and publishing never entered Allegheny College in Meadville flagged. Again, he found himself co-owner during their winter visit. In April 1864, with of another newspaper, The Puget Sound echoes of the Civil War everywhere, Courier. He then accepted the position of Clarence returned with his family to Seattle. Territorial Printer, a job that lasted 10 years. He immediately undertook work as a For a time banking attracted Clarence painter. Bagley, then more newspaper work, and Clarence married Alice Mercer (d. 1926), again a return to state employment. He also youngest daughter of Thomas Mercer (1813- served as an alternate state commissioner for 1898), on December 24, 1865, in the "White the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Church." Their romance dated to his days as Bagley's true love, however, remained a young schoolteacher. He later wrote: writing and local history -- of which he had "Among the children (his students) was a been an early, active participant. little girl who became my wife on Christmas Eve, 1865. She and I trudged through two Seattle and King County's Historian feet of snow that led around stumps standing in Second Avenue to the little building that Bagley's collection of regional historical was already filled with friends, young and material, including books, pamphlets, and old." old newspapers, grew into one of the largest Soon after his marriage, Clarence was such resources in the Pacific Northwest. He appointed to a clerk's position in the also presided over a December 1902, Surveyor General's office, Olympia. His meeting at which the Washington State Olympia work brought him into contact with Historical Society was launched. He wrote influential men engaged in building a new articles for Edmond Meany's new government and economic framework for Washington Historical Quarterly. In one of Washington territory. those pieces he described his family's crossing of the plains. In another, about the Printing, Publishing, Writing Cayuse War, he noted that white settler's "land greed" had been the major cause of In Olympia, his attention was drawn to poor Indian-white relations. printing, publishing, and writing. Those Clarence's authorship of Seattle and King interests led him to purchase two County histories -- three volumes each -- newspapers, The Territorial Republican and was an academic milestone in its time. Even

Copyright 2011 Jerry Olson December 10, 2011 today, Bagley's History of Seattle, Washington and History of King County, Washington enrich the historian's path with their detailed accounts, informal portraits, and personal anecdotes. Clarence and Alice Bagley had five children. Bagley, sometimes called "Pop," died on February 26, 1932. He and his wife are buried in Seattle's Mt. Pleasant Cemetery. Seattle's Bagley Avenue, northward from the shores of , honors both Daniel and Clarence Bagley.

Sources:

C. H. Hanford, Seattle and Environs: 1852-1924 (Chicago and Seattle: Pioneer Historical Publishing Co., 1924); Clarence B. Bagley, History of King County, Washington (Chicago-Seattle: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1929); Neal O. Hines, Denny's Knoll: A History of the Metropolitan Tract of the University of Washington (Seattle: University of Washington, 1980); Roberta Frye Watt, Four Wagons West (Portland, Oregon: Binfords & Mort, 1931); George A. Frykman, Seattle's Historian and Promoter: The Life of Edmond Stephen Meany (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1998); Helen E. Vogt, Charlie Frye and His Times (Seattle: SCW Publications, 1995); Sophie Frye Bass, Pig-Tail Days in Old Seattle (Portland, Oregon: Binfords & Mort, 1937); J. Willis Sayre, This City of Ours (Seattle: Seattle School District No. l, 1936); Index to Clarence B. Bagley's History of Seattle, 1916 ed. by Sally Gene Mahoney (Seattle, WA: Seattle Genealogical Society, 1995). By Junius Rochester, July 28, 2001

Copyright 2011 Jerry Olson December 10, 2011