PIONEER PERSONALITIES:
SAMPSON CHADWICK

Article in The ISLANDS WEEKLY Aug22-Aug 29, 1995
By John Goekler

Lopez pioneer Sampson Chadwick was, in many ways, a soldier and hunter, woodsman and boat handler, author and poet. By all accounts he worked hard to be a good father and a good neighbor, and could wrest a living from the wild, tend a sick animal, administer an estate or graft a fruit tree.

Chadwick was born in 1847, near Toronto, Canada, to a family of English settlers from Yorkshire. His father abandoned the family soon after Sampson’s birth, and his mother died when he was 10, leaving the youngster to be brought up and educated by an uncle in New York.

The Civil War interrupted Chadwick’s budding career as a watch repairman, when he enlisted in the Union army at age 17, arriving in the ranks just in time to join the army of William Tecumseh Sherman on the famous “march to the sea.” Wile he emerged from battle unscathed, Chadwick was among the many soldiers who suffered from scurvy on the long march.

By the time the Yankees reached the coast of South Carolina, they were so hungry that they dug holes in the sand at low tide to trap shrimp, recounts “Uncle Phil” Hastin, a long-time neighbor of the Chadwick clan, who remembers Sampson telling stories, “sitting in front of the fire with his pipe and his crutches.” After the high tide, the soldiers fished out the shrimp and ate them raw.

Despite the hardships, army life apparently appealed to Chadwick, because he re-enlisted after the war and came west. There are a lot of stories about his arrival in the Northwest – including the oft-told tales that he came in search of his father in the Fraser gold fields, and that he worked as a waiter in San Francisco before being fired for dropping a tray of food – but the real reason for Chadwick’s arrival in the islands may have been less mysterious.

“He was with Pickett’s Army,” Hastin says, referring to the name locals gave to the occupying American forces during the Pig War. (Pickett himself was long gone, of course, have left San Juan to join the Confederacy in 1861, where he is remembered as the leader of the ill-fated “Pickett’s Charge” at Gettysberg.) When a commission appointed by German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm settled the Pig War in 1871 by ruling that the San Juans were American territory, the garrison was disbanded, and Chadwick was out of a job.

Regardless of who claimed the islands, however, an energetic and resourceful fellow was always in demand, and Chadwick was soon employed. A British sheep farmer named John Keddy recruited him to tend his flock, and shortly after, Sampson moved across to Lopez, where Keddy’s brother William also had sheep. His arrival gave the population of white settlers on the island a significant boost, Hastin says. “He was the sixth or seventh guy on Lopez Island.”

Chadwick’s arrangement with the Keddys was simple. He agreed to look after the sheep for two years, during which time he would receive half the wool produced, and half of all the lambs, after deducting any losses to the flock. To supplement that meager income, he hunted deer.

Other than cutting cord wood for the steamers which plied local waters, deer hunting was about as much of an industry as existed on Lopez in those days, and deer hides were a much more common currency than cash money. Like Orcas pioneer Louis Cayou – whose hunting of deer for the Hudson’s Bay Company gave Deer Harbor its name – Chadwick traded hides and venison for staples.

Chadwick established a homestead on the extreme southwest end of the island, on Watmough Bight, so named by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes when he explored the San Juans in 1841. He built a rough cabin facing south on the Strait – on the site of a Samish summer camp – and claimed possession by chasing away the local Indians with his rifle when they arrived to fish.

On trading day he shouldered his Wurflein Plains Rifle – a black powder muzzle-loader for which he molded his own bullets – and set off for Hiram Hutchinson’s trading post at the mouth of Fisherman Bay. Along the way, he shot a number of deer, dressed them out, and bundled the hides and as much of the venison as he could carry for barter. “Old Chadwick was a hell of a shot with that Kentucky rifle,” Hastin remembers.

Once at the trading post, he did his business – collecting such staples as flour, sugar, coffee, gunpowder and tobacco in trade – picked up any mail which had arrived by steamer or canoe, and caught up on the local gossip. Then he shouldered his goods, and made the return hike – likely picking up the extra venison he’d been unable to carry, and had cached on the way up-island – covering perhaps 20 to 25 miles, round trip.

Women were in short supply on Lopez in those days, and when Sampson encountered pretty young Adelia Bradshaw on near-by Long Island, he immediately set off to woo her. “Adie” was half Clallum Indian, and the daughter of prominent Port Townsend attorney, territorial politician and judge, Charles Bradshaw. Since a “breed” child was an embarrassment to her ambitious father and his new white wife, Addie had been sent off to Long Island to care for the invalid wife of settler Hezekiah Davis.

When Mrs. Davis died, Addie agreed to wed Chadwick, and the couple were soon ensconced in a new home near he tip of the bight, which was less exposed to the fierce sou’westers than Sampson’s original cabin, and from which they could watch the vessel traffic in the Straits. Over the years the little house grew to accommodate their expanding family. “Every time they had a kid or two, they built on to that,” Hastin says. Ultimately the couple had six children, but one died in infancy, one at age 11, and another in his twenties of a lingering childhood injury.

The Chadwick clan prospered, planting a garden and orchard, tending sheep in partnership with “Old Man Sperry,” for whom Sperry Peninsula is named, gathering seafood from near-by waters, and perhaps bartering mutton and venison for salmon from the fish trap which was established just offshore in later years.

In 1879, as the island became more organized, Chadwick was appointed Road Supervisor for District 2, which entitled him to collect four dollars in cash or labor (at two dollars a day) from every male inhabitant of the district. In 1880, he journeyed to Port Townsend with a pair of witnesses, to become a US citizen – perhaps rowing across the Strait in the clinker-built life boat he received in exchange for guiding a group of British seamen across the island to safety after they jumped ship.

When Chadwick’s neighbor, John Anderson, was murdered – giving rise to the old joke that Lopez was such a healthy place to live they had to shoot a man to start a cemetery – it was Sampson who built the coffin, painted it with shoe blacking, and helped carry it by hand to the new Union Cemetery when the rudimentary road proved too rough to get a horse and wagon up it.

By 1884, Sampson had become such a notable citizen that he was asked to make a Fourth of July speech at Point Lookout (Lopez Hill). While the family rode north in the hay wagon, the Samish got at least some satisfaction for being run off their traditional land by looting Chadwick’s homestead. When the family returned home after a festive fourth, their house was empty. “The Indians cleaned us out,” Chadwick’s daughter Ellen Adelia recalled in a later interview. “They even took the kitten.”

Ironically, Chadwick’s biggest problems in later years came not from the Indians, but from the purse-seiners who began fishing local waters around the turn of the century, and loved to steal his sheep. When the salmon were running, Sampson and Sperry spent many a sleepless night prowling the shoreline with rifles to deny the wily fishers’ a taste of their mutton.

A relatively educated man for his day, Chadwick was a dedicated reader, subscribing to territorial newspapers which arrived by steamer. He also wrote poetry and articles which he submitted to regional newspapers and magazines with only, “Lopez W.T.” To bring music into their home, the family purchased a Montgomery Ward pump organ in 1905, and often gathered around it to sing and play. When the San Juan County Cooperative Telephone Company offered service in 1906, Chadwick welcomed that progress and strung the wire himself from the end of the county road to the house.

As he got older, Sampson had a hard time getting around, and the kids did most of the work. “When he got later on in years, he done the bossin’,” Hastin recalls. The kids were assisted with the heavy work by Valentine, the family ox, who gained his name from being born on February 14.

A life-long collector, Chadwick left behind boxes of mementos when he died in 1924, including Civil War medals, Hudson’s Bay trade trinkets, old tax receipts and railroad folders so old they listed Oklahoma as “Indian Territory.” He also left a sizeable collection of Indian artifacts he gathered around the homestead, many of which are now in the Lopez Island Historical Museum.

Today Sampson Chadwick is mostly remembered as the fellow for whom Chadwick Hill is named. That might get a laugh out of Sampson, however, since he knew that hill across Watmough Bay from his place as Merk’s Mountain, named for “Old Man” Merks, a fisherman who homesteaded on the beach at the foot of it. “Chadwick’s Hill is on the other side,” Hastin says.

Much of the material for this article was gathered from archives at the Lopez Island Historical Museum, through the assistance of curator Nancy McCoy. The Islands Weekly extends special thanks to her, and museum trustee, “Uncle Phil” Hastin.