Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/299



On March 30, 1915, Mr. Thomas Wickham Prosch, Mrs. Virginia McCarver Prosch, Miss Margaret Lenora Denny and Mrs. Harriet Foster Beecher, all of Seattle, Washington, lost their lives in an automobile accident while returning home from a visit to the Washington Historical Society at Tacoma. All four of these unfortunate persons were intimately associated with the history of the Pacific Northwest, the first three from the earliest days, as is indicated by the following:

Mr. Prosch, it will be remembered, delivered the last annual address before the Oregon Historical Society on December 19, 1914. He became a member of this society in 1904 and was a frequent contributor to the pages of The Quarterly. He was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., June 2, 1850, of German and English ancestry. He came with his parents to the Pacific Coast in 1855, and San Francisco became the abiding place of the family until February, 1858, when removal was made to Steilacoom, Pierce county, Washington Territory, where the father, having had many years experience in the printing and newspaper business, established a newspaper called the Puget Sound Herald, the first issue being on March 12, 1858—the third paper in Washington Territory. At the age of nine Mr. Prosch began learning to set type in his father's office, and continued for six years. At fifteen he was a salesman in a store; a hand in a logging camp at seventeen; legislative clerk at nineteen; clerk and inspector in the custom house at Port Townsend at twenty; and between times worked at his trade. In 1872 he became the owner of the Pacific Tribune at Olympia. In 1873 he moved his plant to Tacoma, and in 1875 to Seattle. From that date to 1886 he was identified with the newspapers of that city, chiefly, the Post-Intelli-