Later Mr. Maple and Samuel Snyder took up a homestead on Squak slough. A few years after that Mr. Maple went to Ellensburg. He finally returned to spend the rest of his life on the homestead.
HELD MANY OFFICES.
In the early days he was several times elected to county offices. He was at one time supervisor for the road district extending from Yesler way to O’Brien station and to Renton. In 1896 he was elected treasurer of King county on the Populist ticket. He furnished a bond of $1,600,000. At the end of his term a shortage was found. Every cent of this was finally made good by him to those who stood on his bond.
In 1897 Mr. Maple received a complimentary vote on the part of several members of the state legislature for the office of United States senator. For this office his neighbors indorsed him, and August Toellnor, of Van Asselt, was sent by them to Olympia to see what could be done to further the candidacy. Since the end of his term as treasurer Mr. Maple has held no office, save that of school director in his district. Only a week ago Mr. Maple announced to his friends that he had left the Populist party and had returned to the Republican party, to which he had belonged prior to the wave of Populism which swept over the West in the early nineties.
During all of his life he was an ardent student of literature, and he possessed one of the finest libraries in the state. He was known as a strong orator, and was during his younger days an exhorter in the Methodist Protestant church, of which he was a member.
Mr. Maple was married twice. His first wife, who died more than twenty years ago, was Elizabeth Snyder, a daughter of Samuel Snyder, one of the oldest residents of the Duwamish valley. Six children were the fruit of this union, Charles, Alvin B., Cora, now Mrs. Frank Patten; Dora, now Mrs. Charles Norwich; Bessie, now dead, and Clifford J. Maple. His second wife was Minnie Borella. Three children were born to her, Telford C., Lelah and Beulah Maple.
Of his brothers and sisters the following are living: Mrs. Katherine Van Asselt and Mr. Eli B. Maple, of this city; Mrs. Jane Cavanaugh, of California; Mrs. Elvira Jones and Mrs. Ruth Smith, of Kent, and Aaron Maple, who now lives on the old Maple homestead in Iowa.
CHARLES PROSCH AND THOMAS PROSCH.
“The summer in which the gold excitement broke out in the Colville country, in 1855,” said Thomas Prosch, “several members of a party of gold hunters from Seattle were massacred by the Indians in the Yakima Valley while on their way to the gold fields. The party went through Snoqualmie Pass in crossing the mountains. The territorial legislature sent word to Washington and the government undertook to punish the guilty tribes by a detachment of troops under Maj. Haller. This was defeated and war followed for several years. It was most violent in King county in 1855 and 1856, and in Eastern Washington in 1857 and 1858. The principal incidents in the West were the massacre of the whites in 1855 and the attack upon Seattle the following year. In 1857 Col. Steptoe sustained a memorable defeat on the Eastern side of the mountains, and the hostilities were terminated by the complete annihilation of the Indian forces in the same locality the following year by Col. Wright. He killed 1,000 horses and hanged many of the Indians besides the frightful carnage of the battlefield.”
Mr. Prosch and his father, Charles Prosch, with several other members of his family, arrived in the state and in Seattle between the years 1849 and 1857. Gen. M. M. Carver, the founder of Tacoma, who was Mrs. Thomas Prosch’s father, came to the territory in 1843 with Dr. Whitman, who was massacred, with Applegate and Nesmith.