Let’s remember when Seattle elected its first mayor, on this day in 1870 (July 11)
Area man Henry A. Atkins became the answer to a trivia question 139 years ago today.
Per HistoryLink:
On July 11, 1870, Henry A. Atkins, a pile driver who helped build docks and wharves up and down Puget Sound, is elected mayor of the City of Seattle, the first person to hold that office.
Atkins, a Republican, had been appointed acting mayor by the Washington Territorial Legislature on December 2, 1869, after the legislature reincorporated the City of Seattle. (Seattle was incorporated as a town for the first time in 1865, but the legislature rescinded that action two years later in response to a petition from citizens who were unhappy with the existing municipal government.) In reestablishing Seattle as a municipality, the legislature issued a charter that put the city’s government in the hands of a mayor and a seven-member town council, with both mayor and council members to be elected annually on the second Monday in July.
It is not clear when Atkins first arrived in Seattle, but he was listed as one of 90 bachelors living in the town in the fall of 1860, out of a total white population of 182. At that time, he and two partners owned and operated a steam-driven pile driver (a machine used to drive piles into the ground to support wharves and other structures). Atkins moved the machine frequently, to wherever work was offered in the Puget Sound area.
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