Mother Damnable
Mary Ann Conklin (* 1821 in Pennsylvania ; † 1873 ) was a prominent personality of early Seattle as Mother Damnable or Madame Damnable ("damnable mother" or "damnable puff mother ") .
Conklin ran Seattle's first hotel , the Felker House, with great success. In addition to the hotel and restaurant , she soon set up a high-class brothel on the top floor. Conklin also rented rooms on a daily basis for local jurisdiction and other official gatherings, and was a major contributor to the business and appeal of early Seattle.
Her nickname referred to her legendary vocabulary that she had acquired from sailors and guests. Conklin was said to be able to swear as brutally as skillfully in Chinese, English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish.
biography
Born in Pennsylvania in 1821, Mary Ann Boyer met a whaling captain , David W. "Bull" Conklin, in 1851 and may have married him. After two years on his ship, he left her in Port Townsend in 1853 and sailed to Alaska . She came to Seattle and started running the Felker House for Captain Leonard Felker. The property came from Doc Maynard , who, unlike most of Seattle's other pioneers, was not a teetotaler and advocated the establishment of a hotel with a brothel as a city attraction.
The building itself was an early, elaborately designed prefabricated house , which Felker had dismantled into individual facade elements by ship to Seattle, and as the first of its kind in Seattle also an architectural specialty.
When, as part of the Puget Sound War, after the battle for Seattle in January 1856, sailors from the USS Decatur wanted to build a road in the vicinity of the hotel, there was a confrontation with Mother Damnable. The then officer of the Decatur and later Admiral Thomas Stowell Phelps described the scene as follows
“… As soon as our men got there, there came three dogs in their wake, stones in their aprons, this termagant shouting from the house towards them. The way in which stones, curses, and incantations flew up there was hardly understandable without fear. After they attacked like a fury and their dogs had bitten into the flesh of the invaders, the entire troop, officers and men fled as if the devil himself had been after them. "
The road construction came about only after the successful placement of a quartermaster.
Mary Ann Conklin died in 1873. Her grave can now be found in Lake View Cemetery, Seattle. The first burial site in Seattle's First Cemetery was relocated in 1884 to make way for Denny Park. The tombstone incorrectly states 1887. According to a local legend, the coffin was noticeably heavy and when it was opened while it was being laid, the body, supposedly turned into stone, would have been found in good condition.
The memory of Conklin in Seattle is cultivated by the somewhat unusual brotherhood E Clampus Vitus , which is dedicated to the gold rush.
In 1889 the Felker House fell victim to a major city fire.
literature
- Robert L. Ferguson, Duse F. McLean, editors Duse F. McLean: The pioneers of Lake View: a guide to Seattle's early settlers and their cemetery. Thistle Press, 1995, ISBN 0962193550
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b T. S. Phelps: Reminiscences of Seattle: Washington Territory and the US Sloop-of-War Decatur During the Indian War of 1855-56 . The Alice Harriman Company, Seattle, 1908. online at the US Department of the Navy.
- ^ William C. Speidel: Sons of the profits; or, There's no business like grow business: the Seattle story, 1851-1901. 1967
- ↑ a b “ Conklin, Mary Ann (1821–1873) aka Mother Damnable ”, at historylink.org.
- ^ William C. Speidel: Doc Maynard: The Man Who Invented Seattle. 1978
- ↑ Erik Lacitis: Fraternal group plans tribute today for Seattle pioneer of ill repute. in: Seattle Times. May 13, 2006
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mother Damnable |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Conklin, Mary Ann; Madame Damnable |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American pioneer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1821 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pennsylvania |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1873 |
| Place of death | Seattle |