Washington (State). Governor (1889-1893 : Ferry)

Elisha Peyre Ferry was born in Monroe, Mich. in 1825, the son of Pierre Peyre Ferry, one of Napoleon's colonels of cavalry who emigrated from France in 1814. Elisha studied law and was admitted to the bar at the age of twenty. In 1848 he moved to Waukegan, Illinois, where he practiced law and was elected the first mayor of Waukegan. He was a member of the constitutional convention for Illinois in 1861, and from 1861 to 1863 he was bank commissioner for that state. During the Civil War, Ferry was on the staff of Governor Yates of Illinois, serving as assistant adjutant general with the rank of colonel and assisting in organizing, equipping, and sending into the field a large number of Illinois regiments. During the course of duty, he became friendly with Gen. U.S. Grant, who, on becoming president in 1869, offered Ferry the appointment of surveyor-general of Washington Territory. In 1872 Ferry was appointed governor of Washington Territory by President Grant. His reputation and popularity are attested to by the fact that when Washington's voters were at last allowed to elect their own governor, they chose Ferry.

When Ferry consented to become a candidate for state governor, his great personal popularity, together with the strong Republican Party sentiments of the new state, assured his election over former territorial Gov. Eugene Semple, the Democratic Party candidate. In the 1889 general election in which Washington's state constitution was adopted and the site of the state capitol was chosen, Ferry was elected by a vote of 33,711 to 24,732 for Semple. On 11 Nov. Pres. Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation admitting Washington to the Union, and on 18 Nov. Governor Ferry was inaugurated. The first state legislature met in Nov. 1889, and stayed in session until the following March in order to pass all of the laws and appropriations necessary to start up the new government. In Sept. 1890 Ferry called a special session of the legislature, which was followed by a 60-day session in Jan.-Feb. 1891. By the close of the 1891 session Ferry's health had failed and he went to California to recover, returning a few months later.

The fact that the people of Washington had waited so long for statehood was no doubt partly responsible for the "pork-barrel" legislation during the first two sessions of the legislature. Since the state was booming and everyone knew that its abundant natural resources were like money in the bank, there was a stampede by various communities to secure one of the new state institutions. The normal schools at Cheney and Ellensburg were established by the first legislature and the Centralia/Chehalis area was chosen as the site of the State Reform School. Since all of the new expenditures had to be met by increased revenues, haste was made to increase the state's income through the sale and lease of public lands as well as from the taxation of newly developed resources. To encourage development, a State Fish Commission was established, as well as a mining bureau and the office of state geologist, to survey the extent of the state's resources. Laws were passed to regulate and encourage logging companies and irrigation projects, and the Harbor Line Commission was established to survey the state's tidelands. The tremendous growth of population in the territory during the decade preceding statehood was shown in the U.S. Census Bureau's figures for 1890, when the count was 357,232 compared with 75,116 ten years earlier.

New towns were growing up overnight and already established communities were expanding and were rebuilt on a more permanent basis, to the point that in 1889 there was a statewide brick shortage. Expectations for the future of Washington were unbounded when Ferry retired from office in 1893, with the knowledge that he had established the new state on a firm footing. Upon retirement from public office, the Ferrys returned to their home in downtown Seattle, one of the few that had survived the great Seattle fire in 1889. Ferry devoted much of his energy to his church, and died in Seattle on 14 Oct. 1895.

From the description of Governor Elisha P. Ferry papers, 1889-1893. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 70977464