David Swinson Maynard
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David Swinson "Doc" Maynard (March 22, 1808 - March 13, 1873) was an American pioneer and doctor, one of Seattle's founding fathers. He was an effective civic booster and, compared to other white settlers, a relative advocate of Native American rights.
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[edit] Early life
Maynard was born to a family of means near Castleton, Vermont. At the age of 17 he was accepted into Castleton Medical School (which much later became the medical school at Middlebury College.) He was top in his class and apprenticed to Dr. Theodore Woodward.
In 1828 he married Lydia A. Rickey; they had a daughter, Frances, in 1830 and a son, Henry, in 1834. According to court papers, he discovered in 1841 that she was unfaithful to him but, for the sake of the family, remained with her until 1850.
In 1832, the Maynards moved to Cleveland, Ohio, at the time a town of 500. He made and lost small fortunes in business and political ventures including railroading and a medical school that collapsed in the Panic of 1837. Maynard left Cleveland in 1850, enabling Lydia to file for divorce on the grounds of desertion, avoiding the scandal of adultery; however, it appears that she never actually completed the divorce.
Maynard took the railroad to St. Louis, and from there set out on a mule for California. He circulated among several wagon trains fighting cholera, which he had learned about during the 1849 epidemic in Cleveland. When the leader of one small wagon train heading for Oregon Territory died, he assumed leadership and thus ended up on Puget Sound. He and widow Catherine Breashears fell in love during their journey; however her brother, Mike Simmons, refused them permission to marry.
[edit] Early ventures in Seattle
Maynard joined in the logging activity at Duwamps (later Seattle), near the mouth of the Duwamish River on Puget Sound. Instead of selling his wood to shippers at $4 a cord, he leased a vessel from Captain Felker, using the wood itself as security, and sold the load in San Francisco at ten times the price. With that money, he bought the fixings for a general store and briefly set up in competition to the only other such store on Puget Sound, which was in Olympia and owned by Catherine's brother. Mike soon agreed to his sister marrying Maynard, apparantly on condition that they move the store to Duwamps.
In April 1852, Maynard built his cabin-and-store in what is now Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood. His character and approach to city-building differed from that of his contemporaries William Bell, Arthur Denny, David Denny, Henry Yesler, and Carson Boren. In part, this may have been because he was much older and had already participated in the development of one city. He drank liquor (while the Denny Party were mostly teetotalers) and, with his friend Captain Felker, found someone to start a good brothel in Seattle — the infamous Mother Damnable — believing that vice was essential to the economic success of a frontier town of that time.
Maynard's political skills helped defused difficult situations with the Indian tribes, in particular between the Duwamish and the more powerful Snohomish, lead by Chief Patkanim. As part of his diplomacy, Maynard worked to rename the settlement after the Duwamish's leader, Chief Seattle.
Maynard's political skills were also helpful in persuading the legislature of the Oregon Territory to support the formation of a separate Washington Territory; perhaps in return, the legislature passed a bill granting him a divorce. He married Catherine on January 15, 1853.
Maynard developed many clever ways to improve his property and his city. For example, he donated land for the University of Washington; the land was in a location such that the road that the state built to the University gave access to Maynard's other property. He also sold a lot very cheaply to Lewis Wyckoff, a blacksmith; as a result, people needing smithing came to Seattle instead of its rival Port Madison.
When the only lawyer in Seattle died in a canoeing accident, Maynard studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1856.
[edit] Later life
Although Maynard was originally one of the city's largest landholders and strongest boosters, he is considered not to have prospered as well as his contemporaries. Among the reasons given for this are that his friendly relations with Chief Seattle and other natives made him suspect to his fellow settlers, his Democratic politics may have been a disadvantage in an increasingly Republican region, his civic minded gestures helped others who did not always help him in return, and his drinking probably made him less effective toward the end of his life.
An alternate theory is that Maynard started out much older than his fellow city fathers, and thus died much sooner. The surviving city fathers may have minimized his role in their reminiscences. At any rate, he died in a mansion furnished with every comfort.
Near the end of his life, Maynard's first wife Lydia sold any rights she may have had in Maynard's property to a person who promptly sued Maynard for Lydia's share of Maynard's property in Seattle (claiming that they had never been divorced; while he was still married when he built his fortune, the common law is not entirely clear as to her claim). Lydia arrived penniless in Seattle to testify on Maynard's behalf; he and Catherine let her stay in their mansion on friendly terms. As Bill Speidel has written, Maynard was seen strolling around town, the only man in Seattle with a wife on either arm.
[edit] Legacy
Maynard, like the other holders of claims along Seattle's shoreline, laid out streets to suit his section of shoreline, resulting in today's tangle of streets where the claims met, for example along Yesler Way, the north boundary of Maynard's plat. Maynard was also responsible for much of the fill-land along Seattle's shore; he snapped up the land cheaply since it was flooded at high tide, and then let ships dump their ballast there for a modest fee, profiting both from the money and from having his land raised.
Maynard is buried in Seattle's Lake View Cemetery[1] next to his wife Catherine.
Seattle's Maynard Avenue South and Maynard Alley are named in his honor, as is a Pioneer Square bar.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- A brief biography of Doc Maynard at historylink.org.
- Bill Speidel, Doc Maynard, The Man Who Invented Seattle (Seattle: Nettle Creek Publishing Co., 1978) (ISBN 0-914890-02-6).
- Murray Morgan, Skid Road (New York, Ballantine Books, 1951, 1960, and other edition) (ISBN 0-295-95846-4 )
