Galer Street sign at the Willcox Wall on Queen Anne. Photo by Michael Herschensohn, Queen Anne Historical Society.

Early Seattle settlers came from all over the USA.  Some settlers have left us their stories so that we have a fair bit of info about them, such as the Denny and Mercer families.  Other early settlers, like Jacob Galer, are little known.  To remember Galer, we have Galer Street on Queen Anne hill.

The Denny and Mercer families came to Seattle in the 1850s from Illinois.  Their goals were to acquire land and wait for it to increase in value.  Mercer Street was the dividing line between the land claims of David & Louisa Denny, who lived near today’s Seattle Center, and Thomas Mercer who lived at lower Queen Anne.

By the 1870s some of the original land claimants of Seattle were gone and another generation of Seattle settlers purchased sites which may or may not have already been developed.  This included Jacob Galer who came to Seattle in 1874.  He acquired land up higher on the hill from Thomas Mercer.  It was a difficult-to-develop site due to the steep slope.

Jacob Galer was born in Ohio in 1807.  As a young man in 1834 he moved to Illinois which was considered to be “out West” at that time.  He made land claims there.  It was typical to list oneself on the census as a farmer, even though many people also had other occupations.  In addition to the land he lived on, Jacob Galer was listed as coroner in Bureau County, Illinois, from 1834 to 1860.

Jacob Galer’s first wife Ruth died at age 28 in 1856.  He remarried in 1858 and in 1860 he & his new wife Lydia, along with Elizabeth, age 15, his daughter from his first marriage, moved to Kansas.

Living in Kansas in the 1860s

“Ho for the Kansas Plains,” sheet music cover of 1856, an anti-slavery song. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

Living in Kansas in the 1860s must have been like living in a pot which was about to boil over.  A Congressional piece of legislation of 1854, called the Kansas-Nebraska Act, allowed these territories to choose whether they would or would not allow slavery.  The majority in the territories would be able to vote in their preference.  As a result, groups on both sides of the slavery question poured into the territory to try to gain the majority.

Jacob, Lydia & Elizabeth Galer lived in Franklin County, Kansas, south of the town of Lawrence.  Lawrence had been founded by an abolitionist (anti-slavery) group and was the site of a great deal of violence in the years leading up to the Civil War in 1861, as the pro- and anti-slavery groups clashed, even before the onset of the Civil War.

It may be that it was in Kansas that the Galer family acquired the ally who would help them the rest of their lives, a Civil War veteran named Putnam R. Pratt.

 Putnam R. Pratt and the Galers move from Kansas to Seattle

Putnam R. Pratt was born in Ohio in 1845 and grew up in Indiana.  At the age of 19, on October 12, 1864, Pratt enlisted in the 22nd Indiana Infantry, to fight in the Civil War.  He served until May 8, 1865.

As was typical for a Civil War veteran, after the war Pratt went out West to find a land claim.  In Kansas he was given credit toward the ownership of the land, according to the amount of time he had served in the Civil War.  Many veterans developed a land claim, sold it and then continued Westward.  Many veterans came to Seattle as they heard of more undeveloped land, or economic opportunities related to the coming of railroads to the West Coast of the USA.

The Galer family came to Seattle in 1874 and we can only speculate on what caused them to come.  Sometimes people received letters from friends who told of Seattle, or people thought that Seattle would be the “next thing” as railroads advanced westward.

The Galers acquired land on the upper part of the hill which Thomas Mercer had first named Eden Hill.  We can speculate that a previous owner might have planted apple trees on the Galer site, in a clearing near today’s 5th Avenue North & Highland Drive.  Or it may be that Jacob Galer planted the trees himself, so that 25 years later it was referred to as an orchard.

The Galer cabin and the Mercer house on Queen Anne. Photo by Theodore E. Peiser, 1900. Prosch Washington Views Album, page 79, UW Special Collections.

On October 24, 1875, in Seattle, Putnam R. Pratt married the Galer’s daughter “Lizzy.”  The wedding was held at the Galer home, officiated by Rev. Daniel Bagley who was also a resident of Queen Anne hill.  The witnesses to the wedding were Thomas Mercer & his wife.

Pratt-Galer wedding in 1875

The happiness of the wedding in 1875 was followed by the heartache of a death in the family in 1878 when Jacob Galer’s second wife, Lydia, died at age 54.  Jacob Galer was now 70 years old and still had the care of his eleven-year-old son Frank.  For the rest of his life, Jacob Galer was cared for by the Pratts.  In 1880 Jacob and his son Frank were living with the Pratts in Oregon.

The Pratts and Galers came back to Seattle by or before 1882 and Putnam Pratt began helping Jacob Galer to derive income from land sales.  Some of the land that Galer owned was set out in a plat map called the Nob Hill Addition.  To “plat” some land means to create a map of streets and lots and register the map with a name.

The map of the Nob Hill Addition showed Galer Street, the first time this street name was used.  The plat of land extended east-west from Nob Hill Avenue to 7th Ave N.  We may speculate that the name “Nob Hill” was in tribute to the hill in San Francisco where railroad magnates had built a row of mansions.  A “nob” was a slang word for a rich person and implied that the land site was prestigious.

Nob Hill plat map of 1882. It is turned sideways with east at the top. Galer Street at left, runs east-west.  The avenues are Nob Hill on the west, to 7th Ave N. on the east.

Jacob Galer died in 1884 and by the next year, the term “Galer Hill” was eclipsed by “Queen Anne Hill,” which began to be used in real estate ads in the newspapers. Putnam Pratt had become a real estate dealer himself.  In 1890 he was listed with an office in the Butler Building, 601 2nd Avenue (northwest corner of James Street).  The Pratt family residence was north of Highland Drive, west of Taylor Avenue.  This is the location where Jacob Galer had first established his family home in 1874.

Following the Yukon Gold Rush in 1897, real estate in Seattle was booming.  In 1899 the Pratts sold the rest of their Queen Anne hill property to the developer James Moore, well-known for developments on Capitol Hill and in the University District.  It is very common for a plat to be named in honor of the previous owner, so this new plat map was named Pratt’s Orchard Addition.  It extended from Highland Drive to Lee Street, between 5th Ave North, Taylor and 6th Ave North.

Pratt’s Orchard Addition of 1899

One section adjacent to the new Pratt’s Orchard Addition was left “unplatted.” This was the Galer & Pratt homesite and has come down to us as a park named for a later owner, the Bhy Kracke Park.  This park on a steep slope has some of the best views out towards Lake Union and the Space Needle.  We have this hillside park to remember early Seattle settlers like the Galers and Pratts.

Sources:

Bureau of Land Management, land claims.

Census and City Directory listings using Ancestry.com and Washington Digital Archives.

Find A Grave – death dates and locations of gravesites.

Putnam Pratt died in California in 1928 and his wife Elizabeth died in 1930.

Historical background info:

HistoryLink Essay #3414, “Seattle Neighborhoods: Queen Anne Hill – Thumbnail History,” by David Wilma, 2001.

HistoryLink Essay #3418, “Seattle Neighborhoods: Interbay – Thumbnail History,” by David Wilma, 2001.

King County Parcel Viewer, plat maps.

Newspaper search via Seattle Public Library online:

“Mrs. Elizabeth Pratt, member of a pioneer Seattle family, the Galers, died in Long Beach, California….” Gives the date of 1874 when the Galers came to Seattle.  Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 6, 1930, page 14.

“Queen Anne Hill.”  Tells of the names of Eden Hill, Galer Hill and Queen Anne. Seattle Daily Times, March 30, 1969, page 137.

Searchable Table of Seattle Street Names by historian Rob Ketcherside.