Port Townsend
Port Townsend was a quiet town on the northeast tip of the Olympic Peninsula with a population of 910 in 1880 and 4,181 in 1910.
The town never gained recognition as a Jewish center but its three elected or acting mayors are the most of any Washington town in the early American era.
Henry Landes (1843-1926) was frequently acting mayor of Port Townsend in the 1870’s while serving on the town council.
Between 1907 and 1916, the town elected Max Gerson (1852-1931) and Israel Katz (1851-ca. 1917) to two mayoral terms each.
Landes moved to Port Townsend in 1876.
He won a seat on the city council that year, won three more council terms in 1877-1880 (serving as acting mayor from time to time), served three terms as town treasurer in 1880-83, and was the town’s first state senator after statehood in 1889.
Gerson, born in Germany, came to America in 1871 and moved to Port Townsend in 1880 to open a clothing store.
Gerson won a city council seat in 1903 and was re-elected three times before winning election as mayor in 1907 and again in 1908.
Max Gerson sold his store in 1913 and moved away to care for his wife, who suffered from severe mental illness, forcing a prolonged hospitalization.
Max Gerson
Israel Katz was German-born and came alone to San Francisco at fifteen years of age.
After two years, he headed north to Port Townsend, joining his older brothers Solomon and William in a mercantile partnership and managing a new branch store on San Juan Island.
William Katz drowned in 1881 and Israel took over his share of the business.
When brother Solomon Katz also died soon after, Israel became sole owner.
Katz traveled to Germany in 1887 and returned with his seventeen-year-old bride, Ida.
They moved from San Juan Island to Port Townsend in 1889 and Israel Katz won elections to the Port Townsend town council in 1891 and 1904.
In 1914, Israel Katz was elected Port Townsend mayor and was re-elected the following year.
Just days after his second mayoral term ended in January 1917, the sixty-six year-old Katz left his home in Port Townsend in the morning, without his eyeglasses and other items he usually carried on his person, and disappeared—never to be seen again.
Katz’s fate is a century-old Port Townsend mystery that will likely never be solved.
Israel and Adele Katz
Source
- Mark Rutzik, Breaking New Ground: The Untold Story of Early America’s Jewish Electoral Pioneers – 1788 to 1920, 2025.
Mark Rutzick is the curator of this Port Townsend exhibit.
