SAMUEL HADLOCK. – The people of the Pacific coast at present belong to that time in the history of their states and society when they do the things that the after-time lovers to look back upon and scrutinize. They are full of restless energy, and experience all that falls to the lot of man. The old free days, when the country was new and towns were built, will ever be regarded by the populous and crowded future as the golden days of our history, – mixed with severe toil and deprivation alternating with abundance.
Samuel Hadlock, who founded Port Hadlock, Washington, of which we give a partial view, is one of the men who belong to and have made this age. He was born in Hudson, New Hampshire, in 1829. Both his parents were New Englanders of old family; and life on the farm developed in our subject the nervous, muscular and mental force which were his by inheritance.
In 1850, the year of his majority, he went out to St. Louis, and in 1852 was on the plains for Oregon with Captain Morgan’s train. He reached The Dalles in September, and leaving behind him the fields and valleys of the Columbia went gold hunting to Southern Oregon. He was as far south as Yreka before the new year, and endured great hardships in the way of sickness and well0nigh starvation. Flour was a dollar a pound. Making his escape the next spring with his pair of blankets on his shoulder, he went afoot to the vicinity of Portland, finding employment with a farmer. In 1854 he found more congenial work in the building of a sawmill on Shoalwater Bay, and in the autumn passed by Astoria to the Southern beach, mining the seashore sand at Port Orford, and soon was at San Francisco dealing in mining stock, milling and selling lumber, doing a driving business until 1868.
Thereupon Mr. Hadlock, on the part of five associates, came to the Sound, looking for a sawmill site. The spot now occupied by the Port Blakely Mill Company was chosen; and, upon Mr. Hadlock’s return to San Francisco, the firm of Hanson, Ackerson & Co. was formed, embracing our subject as an active partner. Upon his arrival again with plains and machinery for a mill, the title to the site was found to be imperfect. The company therefore selected the site of the Tacoma Mill, and in September of 1868 began the erection of that large structure. Mr. Hadlock built and superintended that mill until 1870. Disposing of his interest, he now retired from business, but in the fall of 1870 returned with Mr. Glidden to the Sound and purchased the present site of Port Hadlock, consisting of four hundred acres, where, a few years later, was constructed the large sawmill now owned by the Washington Mill Company. In 1886 Mr. Hadlock laid off the town and gave it the name which it now bears. The spot has become flourishing, and numbers above five hundred inhabitants.
In appearance Mr. Hadlock is of commanding person; and his strong will and business sagacity are a credit to any community in which he may elect to reside. He was united in marriage in San Mateo county, California, in 1864, to Miss Susan Lawrence, a native of Bath, Maine. She died at Port Hadlock, in 1873, leaving one son, Nathan L.
Social customs and business methods may change; and the work of the pioneers of the lumber business no less than that of all the pioneers will be superseded; but the energy and impulse of character communicated by such men as Mr. Hadlock will never cease.