George Kinnear
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George Kinnear (January 30, 1836 – July 21, 1912) was an early
Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...
real estate developer, responsible for some of the early residential development of Queen Anne Hill. He also had a brief military career.Bagley 1916 He was born in
Pickaway County, Ohio Pickaway County is a County (United States), county in the U.S. state of Ohio. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 58,539. Its county seat is Circleville, Ohio, Circleville. Its name derives from the Pekowi ban ...
. His family soon moved to
Tippecanoe County, Indiana Tippecanoe County ( ) is a county located in the west-central portion of the U.S. state of Indiana about east of the Illinois state line, less than from the Indianapolis metro area, and from Chicago. As of the 2020 census, the population wa ...
, where they lived in a
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at Lafayette on the banks of the
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. When he was three years old, his father purchased land on Flint Creek and, making his own bricks, erected a brick dwelling with a
walnut A walnut is the edible seed of any tree of the genus '' Juglans'' (family Juglandaceae), particularly the Persian or English walnut, '' Juglans regia''. They are accessory fruit because the outer covering of the fruit is technically an i ...
interior. When Kinnear was nine, his family moved to
Woodford County, Illinois Woodford County is a county located in the state of Illinois. The 2020 United States census listed its population at 38,467. Its county seat is Eureka. Woodford County is part of the Peoria metropolitan area. Its name comes from General Will ...
, taking their livestock with them. With the outbreak of the
Civil War A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
Kinnear joined the Forty-seventh Illinois Regiment, with which he remained until mustered out in 1864. During the war he had sent home much of his pay to his mother, intending to help her out with household expenses. She, however, had lived very modestly and invested his money, leaving him with the not inconsiderable fortune of
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3600 upon his return from service. He invested in a herd of cattle which he fed through the winter and sold at an advance the following spring, using the proceeds in the purchase of two sections of Illinois land. He not only became identified with farming interests but from 1864 until 1869 held the office of Woodford County clerk. On retiring from the county clerkship, he concentrated his energies upon the development and cultivation of his land and, while still farming, he would purchase corn in the fall and place it in cribs, selling it when the market reached, as he believed, its high point. In the meantime, he studied conditions in the developing
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. His attention was first called to the
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country in 1864; he came to believe that Puget Sound would someday be home to a great city. He made a trip to the northwest in 1874, looking over the different locations. He was most favorably impressed with the site of the fledgling Seattle and before he returned to Illinois he purchased what is now known as the G. Kinnear addition on the south side of Queen Anne Hill. Four years later, in 1878, he brought his family to the northwest. He sold his Illinois land as quickly as he could, at fifty dollars per acre, and converted the proceeds into Seattle real estate, much of which rose rapidly in value. Clarence B. Bagley wrote of him:
…from the beginning of his residence on the Sound he did everything in his power to make known to the country the possibilities and opportunities of the northwest and to aid in the development of the city in which he had located. He favored and fostered every measure which he believed would prove of benefit to the town and country.
In 1878–1879 he labored strenuously to secure the building of a wagon road over the
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and as the organizer of the board of immigration he had several thousand pamphlets printed and sent advertisements to the newspapers throughout the country. As the result of this widespread publicity, letters requesting pamphlets arrived at the rate of one hundred or more per day. For several years after the printed supply had been exhausted the requests kept coming in. In 1885–1886, at the time of the Anti-Chinese riots, he was one of the founders of the Home Guard, and served as its
Captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...
, its highest
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. The Home Guard joined the Seattle Rifles, the University Cadets and (eventually) Company D of the Territorial Militia in successfully facing down the anti-Chinese rioters and preventing the forcible eviction of Seattle's Chinese residents. In 1911, shortly before his death, he published his own account of the events, which Bagley described as a "correct account of the whole anti-Chinese trouble", contrasting it to earlier "inaccurate accounts".Kinnear 1911 In 1887 he donated 14
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s of land overlooking the Sound from the west side of Queen Anne Hill to the young city; this now constitutes Kinnear Park.


Notes


References

* Clarence B. Bagley, ''History of Seattle From the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time'', The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company (Chicago:1916), Volume II, p. 714 ''et. seq''
Full text online at Internet Archive
This work is in the public domain; some passages of this article follow it quite closely. *George Kinnear ''Anti-Chinese Riots At Seattle, Wn., February 8th, 1876'', originally published in the ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'', January 1, 1911. Privately published in a small volume with the publication date "February 8th, 1911". Full text online on Wikisource. Lengthy excerpts are also reproduced in the biographical sketch of Kinnear in Bagley's ''History of Seattle''.


External links

*
George Kinnear Papers.
1889-1900. 0.28 cubic feet (1 box). At th
Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kinnear, George Businesspeople from Seattle People from Pickaway County, Ohio People from Woodford County, Illinois 1836 births 1912 deaths 19th-century American businesspeople