Georg Harrison

Georg Friedrich Ferdinand Harrison (March 29, 1826 - September 2, 1892) was an American pioneer, politician, businessman, the acknowledged of the pioneering Harrison Group, one of the primary founders of Seattle, Washington, patriarch of the Harrison family, and later the city's wealthiest citizen. Seattle's former Harrison Hill was named after him; it was flattened in a series of regrading projects and its former site is now known as the Harrison Regrade. The city's Ferdinand Way is also named after him.

Missouri, Iowa, and the way west

Harrison was born in St. Charles, Missouri into a family of Protestant German-English settlers. Harrison had two older brothers, Karl and Martin, and 4 younger siblings: Manfred, Sigmund, Marlene, and Ilma. Harrison resided in St. Charles for the first six years of his life until his family and numbers of other German residents moved northwards. Harrison's family in addition to numerous other Germans from St. Charles settled in Pella, Iowa. The name "Pella" is a reference to Pella of the Decapolis, where the Christians of Jerusalem had found refuge during the Roman–Jewish war of 70; the name was selected in reference to the encroaching populations of Catholic Irish and German immigrants throughout Missouri.

His father, Diederick Harrison (1799-1858) was a former employee for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in St. Louis, Missouri and served alongside "Ashley's Hundred" during the Arikara War. Returning home from the war, he alongside his family relocated to St. Charles where he participated in the state general assembly, elected as a Whig. Diederick's service in the Arikara War as part of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company and service in the general assembly would be the root inspiration for Harrison's pioneerism, militarism and political future. During his time in St. Charles about gunsmithing and later in Pella, Iowa, learned of carpentry, civil engineering, and logging. In 1848, he married Adelheid Van der Berg and together they had five children: Edith Annelien Harrison, Miriam Diana Weber Harrison, Wilhelm Oskar Harrison, Ludwig Johannes Harrison, and Elisabeth Gretchen Harrison.

Both him and his father having had ambition of travelling westward since 1845, Diederick and Georg assembled the Harrison Group and left Iowa in May 12 1850 and arrived in Portland on September 22 1850. In November, Diederick booked passage on the schooner Burgundy and the group sailed on to the Puget Sound, arriving at Olympic Point at the northernmost extent of Elliot Bay on November 16, 1850. When the terrain of Olympic Point proved unsuitable for long-term settlement, the Harrison Group moved further inland before settling at the southernmost parts of Lake Haahchu, which are now the grounds of Pioneer Square, the original center of gravity for the city of Seattle before it would move southward towards Federal Yard and Bakersville.

Though the initial settlement of the Harrison Group struggled with disease, a second and third wave of settlers, mostly people related to the original group who were unfit for travel for varying reasons, replenished the population of the Haahchu settlement.

Career

On February 26, 1851, Harrison and others filed land claims. Though Harrison was more interested in logging within the region, Diederick and Harrison's oldest brother Karl established themselves as selling cargo on commission for ship captains.

On August 29, 1851, Harrison was a delegate at the Cowlitz Convention that drafted a petition to US Congress to create a new territory north of the Columbia River.