David Swinson Maynard

David Swinson "Doc" Maynard ( born March 22, 1808 † March 13, 1873 ) was an American pioneer and doctor and founder of the city of Seattle. His friendship with Chief Seattle was very important for the early founding of the city of Seattle. Maynard suggested to name the city after the Indians. Maynard was the first doctor in Seattle, an important merchant, Indian agent, magistrate and acted in 1855 the Treaty of Point Elliott from.

Biography

Maynard came from the vicinity of Castleton (Vermont ). He studied medicine at the Castleton Medical School. In 1828 he married Lydia A. Rickey; with whom he had a daughter and a son. According to court records, he noticed already in 1841, that she was not faithful to him, but he still remained with her until 1850 together.

1832 the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, then a town of 500 inhabitants. He won and lost smaller assets with different speculations and with a medical school, which was destroyed during the economic crisis of 1837. Maynard left Cleveland in 1850 alone. Lydia put an action for divorce, but the divorce took place legally never complete.

Maynard went to St. Louis and on to California. During a cholera epidemic, he took over the management of a small trek and reached Puget Sound. He fell in love with the widow Catherine Troutman Broshears ( born June 19, 1816; † October 20, 1906 ), whose brother Mike but forbade them to marry.

Maynard was involved in logging camps in the area. Instead of the wood locally for sale, he hired the captain of a ship Felker with the wood as collateral and sold it for ten times the price in San Francisco. So he built a shop and fell so in competition with his brother. This now allowed the marriage on the condition to merge the business and that has done something for Maynard's first marriage.

Doc Maynard was significantly different to the other founders, especially William Nathaniel Bell, Arthur Denny, David Denny, Henry Yesler, and Carson Boren. Among other things, Maynard was not an enemy of the alcohol. He did not mind when his friend Captain Felker a hotel, the Felker House, with implicit brothel founded, and asked him for the land available. With the operator of Mother Damnable he was on good terms. His political skills and his good relations with individual Indians helped the town mainly from the Puget Sound War stay out. It was only in 1856 in a brief skirmish around the city.

Maynard persuaded the government of the Oregon Territory expel a private Washington Territory and was thereby confirmed, among others, his divorce. As the only lawyer of the city drowned while canoeing, Maynard studied law and was admitted to the bar.

At the end of his life towards his ex-wife sold their rights to Maynard's assets to a third party, who promptly sued Maynard himself. When Lydia testified in favor of Seattle Maynards, it was well received at David and Catherine and stayed there. Bill Speidel described Maynard as the only man in Seattle who occasionally walked with two women on each side of the city. Maynard was wealthy, but was not as rich as others of his contemporaries.