Bailey Gatzert
Values Codes I – E – L
Bailey Gatzert (1829-93) left Germany for Natchez, Mississippi, in 1849 and, four years later, went to the West Coast to sell groceries, clothing, and equipment to miners.
He opened a grocery and general store in Nevada City, California in 1858.
After he married Babette Schwabacker in San Francisco, the couple moved to eastern Washington and then Seattle.
The Schwabacker brothers were then operating a wholesale hardware, grocery, and general store on the West Coast.
In 1869, Gatzert opened a Seattle branch for the company.
After three years, the Seattle store generated $250,000 in sales annually, making Gatzert a prominent figure in Seattle, then a town of 1,100 residents.
In 1872, Bailey Gatzert won a term on Seattle’s city council.
In 1875, Gatzert successfully ran for mayor.
He completed his mayoral term in July, 1876, but, three months later, a council vacancy arose and the council chose him to fill it.
Gatzert won a third council election in 1877.
Bailey Gatzert
Gatzert left public service and became a successful entrepreneur. He organized and served as president of two Seattle banks and started a real estate business with a brother-in-law.
His business interests grew to include coal mining, municipal water supply, flour mills, and shipbuilding.
Gatzert was a leading business figure in Seattle and was chosen in 1880 to entertain President Rutherford B. Hayes in his Seattle home during Hayes’s historic first visit by a U.S. President west of the Rocky Mountains.
Bailey Gatzert is still honored in the 21st century.
The Bailey Gatzert Elementary School serves Seattle schoolchildren to the present day and the Gatzert Pier on Seattle’s Puget Sound commemorates his life.
In 1890, a 177-foot long, 560-ton sternwheel steamboat was christened the Bailey Gatzert and sailed in Puget Sound for years.
The Bailey Gatzert’s whistle, name board, and pilot wheel are permanently displayed at the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center Museum in Stevenson, Washington.
In 1996, the U.S. Postal Service issued a Bailey Gatzert stamp to honor the historic vessel and its namesake.
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 Bailey Gatzert exhibit.
