William Muir Urquhart
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Muir Urquhart | |
|---|---|
.png) | |
| Born | December 22, 1855 Cutting's Prairie, Lewis County, Washington Territory |
| Died | April 14, 1933 (aged 77) Chehalis, Washington, U.S. |
| Burial place | Fernhill (Urquhart) Cemetery |
| Occupations | Businessman, public servant |
| Signature | |
.png){kind=small} | |
William Muir Urquhart (December 22, 1855 – April 14, 1933) was an American entrepreneur, businessman, and public servant. For many years he was treasurer of Lewis County, Washington.[1] He also served as mayor, councilman, and postmaster of Chehalis, Washington, where he lived and worked for more than fifty years.
He was a merchant, banker, railroad entrepreneur, land developer and timber company investor. He was instrumental in planning the layout the business district of Chehalis in the early days of the city.[2]
Urquhart was born in Cutting's Prairie, north of the Columbia River in the newly created Washington Territory, a vast area of wilderness which had been separated from the Oregon Territory by an Act of Congress in 1853.[3] He was the first member of his family born in the United States. His father, James Urquhart, left Scotland in 1851, taking a ship to New York City, and traveling on foot to New Orleans and by boat up the Mississippi River to Iowa, before joining a wagon train and heading west on the Oregon Trail.
Urquhart's mother and five older brothers and sisters reunited with James Urquhart in early 1855. They traveled around Cape Horn to San Francisco and then to the mouth of the Columbia River by ship, where they transferred to canoes for the last leg of their journey up the Cowlitz River. The trip took them over six months. Urquhart was born later that year in a house his father had built on land he had acquired through a Donation Claim. As the Urquhart family continued to grow in size, they added additional acreage to their holdings and tended to a variety of crops and animals for their own use and for the markets of Olympia on the Puget Sound.[3] Like his ten siblings who grew to maturity, Urquhart became skilled at all aspects of farm work on the frontier.
When Urquhart was eighteen years old, his father added to the family's real estate holdings when he purchased a large tract of land that included a small store and its merchandise. James Urquhart opened a general store which he ran with his son, John, and .aid out a town which he named Napavine. In addition to farm work, Urquhart began to clerk in the store learning the merchant's trade. In 1878 his older brother, John, moved six miles north to Chehalis where he opened a store of his own. John was also the Treasurer of Lewis County and involved in making Chehalis a main stop of the new railroad as well as the county seat. John's sudden and unexpected death changed the course of Urquhart's life.