Joshua Green, nearing 98 years and considered pioneer of Skagit County Pioneer Association, hardly ever missing a meeting, still holds forth full time at his bank office in Seattle. A treasured memento of his early day steamboat adventures on the Skagit River and salt water sloughs, is on display in his bookcase. It is a freight manifest of cargo, all hand written in an account book and is designated as TRIP No. 1, Tacoma to Sterling, Oct. 14-15, 1888, Steamer Henry Bailey.y.
This photo was taken before the turn of the turn of the century and was identified as the sternwheeler, Glide, by Mortimer Cook's daughter, Nina, in her memoirs. Some old-timers disagree and say it is the Black Prince. Whichever it is, it shows the kind of steamboat that brought the Bullers upriver.
Richard Buller wrote "Henry Brady" as the steamboat that first transported his family upriver but it was actually the Henry Bailey. This venerable old sternwheeler was owned by four partners, including one of the most amazing entrepreneurs of the Northwest, Joshua Green, who lived to be 105.The Henry Bailey transported many pioneer families here. P.A. Woolley's wife Catherine's diary noted that they arrived in Seattle on the Nov. 24, 1889, and then had to board the Henry Bailey sternwheeler for the trip north because northbound trains were still months away. She noted the incessant rain and her dread of the ride north. After boarding the Bailey on the 25th, they traveled overnight and arrived in Mount Vernon at noon on the 26th. If she thought the boat ride was tedious, nothing prepared her for the stagecoach ride upriver: "my first ride on a stage in my life and I never could imagine such roads." The stage trip took four hours and they reached a boarding house in Sedro at noon.
Skiyou pioneer James M. Harrison and his family arrived at Sterling on the Henry Bailey in 1889 after a long journey from Harrison County, Ohio. His son John Harrison recalled in 1939 that his dad unloaded their possessions on the bank and asked the purser if someone would steal them. "I don't know who in hell would steal them," replied the purser Joshua Green. "There is no place to take them."
Green (1869-1975) moved with his family to Seattle in 1886 and in October 1888 he signed on as purser with the Henry Bailey, which was launched that year in Tacoma. sternwheelers were preferred in river systems like the Skagit where the river level would get very shallow during dry months. Sidewheelers required deeper draft, but sternwheelers could operate in very shallow waters and they were designed to slide right up onto a bank instead of needing a full wharf, and then simply reverse engines to pull away.
Green was so enthused about the prospects for shipping in the area that, in 1889, he talked other Bailey officers into borrowing $5,000 to raise the Fanny Lake, which was launched in 1874 and sank in 1883, and bring it back to the Seattle-Skagit run. When raised and refitted, it was said to be "built to float on a honey dew," an ideal configuration for delivering goods to isolated locations on the upper Skagit and the LaConner Flats.
The Fanny Lake was so successful that the partners paid off the loan within a year. But in 1893, after loading 25 tons of hay at the Samuel Calhoun ranch on Sullivan slough, the hay caught fire from a spark from the boilers and both boat and cargo were completely destroyed. The Bailey sank the next year. Green and his partners, however, expanded their fleet, and created a side business of selling and delivering wholesale goods to customers in outlying towns. The firm was eventually named La Conner Trading and Transportation Co., with Joshua Green as president. Green began building his fortune when he established a shipping company to the Klondike gold areas in 1897. Years later, Green purchased Peoples Savings Bank, which had fallen on hard times, for $200,000 in 1925. He changed the name to Peoples Bank and Trust Co., which became one of the most important banks in the Northwest. After his death, U.S. Bancorp of Portland acquired Peoples Bank in 1988 and renamed it U.S. Bank of Washington. Green's family bought the original Stimson mansion at 1204 Minor on First Hill in Seattle and you can now tour this beautiful old home to catch some of the flavor of this pioneer steamboat operator's life.