Writing history is tricky, dangerous, and even scary. I am often confident I know where true facts lie only to unearth inaccuracies. The origins of the Galer Street name and its spelling provide a good example. 

Several weeks ago, a devoted walker of Seattle streets and a volunteer guide at the Seattle Architecture Foundation, approached me at a party for pedestrian and bicycle advocates about the source of the name Galer, an active street which forms the southern edge of what other friends call the Super Block.(1)  

Certain of my sources, I replied to the inquiry with this information from the Queen Anne Historical Society’s 1993 book, Queen Anne: Community on the Hill: 

“Throughout the 1880s the Queen Anne Hill district was known by various names, including Galer Hill, Queen Anne Hill and occasionally Queen Anne Town. The name Galer derived from Jacob Gaylor who built an impressive home on the southern crest of the hill fronting on what became Gaylor (Galer) Street. The scant references to Galer Hill in the historic record suggest that this name was short-lived.” (2)

Kay F. Reinartz, Ph.D., the author of this citation and a well-qualified student of local history, also served as the editor of the society’s book. Her aside about the impressive house on Galer Street turns out to be totally incorrect.

Below is copy of a photograph taken in 1900 that I found at the UW’s Digital Photograph Collection. It is in Prosch’s Washington Views Albums. (3). I’ve copied the entire page from the album. It shows the Galer log cabin on top and Thomas Mercer’s house overlooking Lake Union below. As the handwritten caption tells us, Jacob Galer’s house, called an ‘impressive home’ in Community on the Hill, was a log cabin. Reinertz correctly located it ‘on the southern crest of the hill.’  She went too far though when she assumed it was on Galer Street. The label corrects Community on the Hill. The Galer family home perched on the northwest corner of Highland Drive and 5th Avenue N. from which Jacob and his wife Lydia had a great view of Lake Union just like the Mercers from their house down the hill. Like Reinertz, I too first assumed that the Galer farm must have been on the street bearing their name. I also forgot about streets like Blaine and McGraw, both named for important Seattle pioneers who lived elsewhere. From Google Maps, I glean the Galer farm may have stretched up the hill into what we know as Bhy Kracke Park.    

 It is clear now that l was wrong to rely on our book as an accurate source of information. I only wish that was the end of my misinformation. 

At my suggestion, the kind inquisitor at the bicycle party also asked Ann Ferguson, the head of the Seattle Room at the Seattle Public Library about the Gaylor/Galer matter. Ann, who grew up just a few blocks from the street in question, did what librarians intuitively do. She turned to an expert, a Seattle Public Library genealogy librarian, to sleuth out the truth and provide well-researched and documented answers to the question.  

Ferguson’s response, which the kind pedestrian shared with me, first noted: 

“His last name is listed as Galer in all the records she found with the exception of his death certificate, which lists his name as Gaylor. She believes that was an error on the death certificate.” (4)

Using information from the 1878 Territorial census, the genealogy librarian found Galer, Jacob - 70, born in OH, Galer, Lydia - 53, born in ME and Galer, Frank - 11, born in IL. all living in Seattle and spelling their last name Galer. She also uncovered on the website Find a Grave (5) that the last name Galer appeared on Jacob’s headstone. More exciting for me, the website revealed that Jacob Galer’s gravesite (and Lydia’s too) is in our very own Mt. Pleasant Cemetery and that he died on September 16, 1884.

We also learn from Find a Grave that Lydia B. Galer was the full name of Jacob’s wife, that Jacob had lived in Bureau County, Il. from August 1834 to April 1860, that he had served as Bureau County’s first coroner, that Jacob and Lydia wed in 1858 and that they moved to Kansas in 1860.  Find a Grave also mentions that Jacob had first been first buried in Seattle Cemetery, and that presented yet another historical problem. (6)

By the time Jacob died at 77 in September 1884, the Seattle Cemetery had been donated to the city by David and Louisa Denny as its first park. Walt Crowley reported on HistoryLink (7) that the Seattle Cemetery occupied what is now known as Denny Park. The Denny’s, who had donated (maybe lent is the better term) the six-acre tract to the city for its municipal cemetery in 1864, donated it again in July of 1884 for a park, before our Jacob died. (8) The only proviso in the donation was that the residents of the cemetery had to find a new home.  

I can only assume that the folks buried in Denny Park did not immediately move out and that people, including Jacob Galer, continued to be buried there until the new site in what is now Volunteer Park (9) was cleared to make room for them. Unlike those who had been buried in the Seattle Cemetery for a long time, Jacob did not get reburied on Capitol Hill. Rather, Lydia and her son Frank, if they were indeed responsible for his reburial, kept Jacob closer to the family farmstead (10) and had him reinterred at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery on Queen Anne.   

I’ll have to do some more digging to find out when Jacob got reinterred, for if it happened after Lydia and Frank died, there is the outside chance that the last name on Jacob’s headstone was borrowed from the street name! (11)

I’ve saved my biggest possible mistake for last. Sexist assumptions permeates all the research I report here. No one has specifically said that Galer Street was named for Jacob, yet it is quite clear that Jacob and Lydia built and lived in the log cabin. The 1900 reference to the Jacob Galer Log Cabin omits Lydia, but it reflects biases of the time. I should have no reason to assume that Jacob was the street’s only namesake. Even the Seattle Street Names website affirms Blaine Street being named for both Catharine and her husband David. So let’s not fall into the traps of history. The 1895 ordinance that regularized streets extended street names across the entire city east to west and north to south. Lydia and Jacob’s last name was probably applied to the street by Mr. Comstock who platted the area south of Galer St. and chose to give his own name to one of the streets in his plat.

And remember, every time you read local history, well any history, take it with a grain of salt.  If you choose to write local history, make sure you double check your sources. There is a good chance you could be wrong! 

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1. Superblock is a planning tool that has been successfully applied in Barcelona. It is a scheme that uses broad avenues for public transit, cars and trucks while giving back the internal areas of the block for schools, gardens, bike lanes and walking.   

2. Queen Anne: A Community on the Hill, Queen Anne Historical Society, Seattle, 1993, p. 61.

3. Prosch’s family later developed Queen Anne Park, a northwestern slope development.

4. Ann Ferguson emailed letter dated November 2024 and in which there is a link to the death certificate maybe spelling the last name incorrectly and indicating pneumonia as the cause of Jacob’s death. 

5. www.findagrave.com 

6. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/5103853/jacob_galer

7. Seattle establishes its first public park, Denny Park, on site of the city's first municipal cemetery on July 10, 1884. - HistoryLink.org 

8. To make this even more exciting, we know from a random photograph shown at a meeting of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Board, that the Denny Park we know at the corner of Dexter and Denny, is much lower than the Seattle Cemetery where Jacob Galer was first buried. It was quite a bit higher in elevation before the Second 1929 Regrade. 

 9.Yes, the bodies had to be moved again when Volunteer Park was created after the Spanish American War. The final resting place for nearly all the bodies is Lake View Cemetery that adjoins Volunteer Park on the north.

10. As documented by the librarians, in the 1883 census Galer described himself as a farmer. 

11. I have hunted for the Galer headstones at Mt. Pleasant to no avail. Maps provided by the cemetery show the Galer name, but finding the stones isn’t easy. When I find them, I’ll post photos here.