James Tachell (1862-1944) was born in England and came to the USA with his parents and siblings in 1866. They lived in Calumet, Houghton County, Michigan, where James met his wife Charlreane and they started their family. In the 1890s James, Charlreane and their children began a western migration which would bring them to the Seattle area in the early 1900s.
Greenwood Memorial Park & Funeral Home
The family lived for a few years in Butte-Silver Bow, Montana, where James Tachell worked as an undertaker. By 1910, the family was in Renton, Washington where James Tachell became the founder of the Greenwood Memorial Park & Funeral Home, now famous for the gravesite of musician Jimi Hendrix.
In 1910, eldest son Grover Tachell was 25 years old and living on his own in Seattle. He married later that year and had a good job at Seattle Hardware. Thus it was not surprising that Grover and his bride, Lydia, were able to establish their home in Morningside Heights, a development on land owned by Burwell & Morford, owners of Seattle Hardware.
Tachell home at 2533 NE 92nd Street
Morningside Heights was the plat name for an early-1900s housing development in the northwest quadrant of today’s Wedgwood neighborhood.
Morningside Heights is between NE 90th to 95th Streets on the west side of 35th Ave NE. It is the site of some of the oldest houses in Wedgwood. Grover & Lydia Tachell and their children were among the earliest residents of Morningside Heights in the decade of 1910-1920.
Grover & Lydia Tachell completed their family of six children with the birth of twin boys, Richard & Robert, in 1921.
The Maple Leaf School at 3212 NE 100th Street was completed in 1926.
Richard & Robert Tachell grew up in the lively Morningside community where things were happening. By the time the Tachell boys were old enough to attend school, the boys could go to the nearby Maple Leaf Elementary, newly constructed in 1926 on the corner of NE 100th Street and 32nd Ave NE. The community had pulled together to form the Maple Leaf School District, and the contractors for the new school building were Morningside Heights residents Bill Lovell & his son Ellsworth.
In 1931 another big happening in the neighborhood was the opening of a golf course on former farm fields at NE 110th Street.
Wedgwood in Seattle History 