In May 1907, newlyweds Ella Allen Scott and Quincy Scott embarked upon what was even then considered an eccentric honeymoon: they took the train from New York (where they’d met as art school students) to Minneapolis/St. Paul, purchased a pair of horses, and began the 2000 mile ride to Seattle. Traveling across mostly open country, Ella and Quincy paralleled the Northern Pacific Railway tracks. They slept under the sky, occasionally in barns, and once or twice — memorably — in the comfortably bedrooms of kind obliging farm families. Both were 25 years old.

Ella was a Seattle girl, a graduate of Seattle High School who’d attended the University of Washington. In 1890, her mother Anna brought Ella, older sister Jessie, and younger brother Riley from Texas to live near their Seattle family after Ella’s father died. Ella grew up near her maternal uncle William Beck’s lush Ravenna Park, on land Beck was developing as real estate. This area was annexed into the city of Seattle in 1907. By the time Ella and Quincy made their journey, her brother Riley worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. That newspaper and The Seattle Times reported the beginning of the trip and its successful conclusion 112 days later.

In order to spare their horses, Ella and Quincy walked about 1500 of the miles they traveled. It was Quincy’s first journey west of Chicago. “Bad weather, steep roads, and inhospitable farmers who refused to sell them provisions and mistook them for fugitives from justice are only a few of the disagreeable things that they will have to tell their friends about, but in spite of all the hardships they unite in saying that the trip was a huge success and the experience well worth the effort,” reported The Seattle Times (August 22, 1907, p.1).

Arriving in Kirkland, Ella and Quincy took a horse ferry across Lake Washington to Madison Park. “They swung into the saddles and set off on the final ride of the journey. It was a short but merry one, along city thoroughfares. Over the hill, across the Lake Union bridge, up the mild slope of Fifteenth Avenue, past the forested campus of the University. Word traveled ahead of them that something unusual was coming up the street, and from the ferry slip onward, people appeared in scattered clusters along the sidewalks to stare, to cheer, to click their cameras, and to yell questions.

The quotation is from Horseback Honeymoon, written by Ella and Quincy’s daughter Dorothy Ballard using their notes, diaries, and sketches from the trip and published in 1975. I found my copy years ago at one of the Friends of The Seattle Public Library used book sales. University of Washington Libraries Special Collections has a copy, and a quick search of abebooks reveals copies available for less than the cost of a latte.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is still possible to follow Ella and Quincy’s triumphant final lap up 15th Avenue NE to Ravenna Park, although her mother’s house where they posed for photos on the porch, dusty but pleased with themselves, no longer exists and some of the streets they would have known have been vacated. Still, a walk around the block near the intersection of 17th Avenue NE and NE 58th Street will provide a glimpse of the young couple’s homecoming, 108 years ago.

March 13, 2015