The Colman and Pierce families were among the earliest settlers of the Fauntleroy neighborhood in West Seattle, and were very active in area’s development. Laurence and Ida Colman were the first members of the family to settle in Fauntleroy and were particularly involved in the community, along with their children. Laurence’s father, James M. Colman, was born in Scotland in 1832 and came to the U.S. in 1854, arriving in Seattle in 1861. He was involved in the timber, mill, and shipping industries. In 1872, once he was well established in Seattle, he brought his family from Wisconsin to live with him. He and his wife Agnes had two sons, Laurence (born in 1859) and George.
Laurence and James became intrigued with Fauntleroy in 1906 while looking for a place to build a summer cottage for the family; they bought 17 acres of land there that year, which would become the Colman-Pierce property “Laurentide.” Following James’s death in late 1906, Laurence built a home on the property and moved there with his wife, Ida, and their children Agnes, Kenneth, Katharine and Isabel in 1907. Laurence’s concern for youth development led him to set up vocational and carpentry classes for local boys; he and Ida were also involved with Sunday school programs at Fauntleroy Community Church. In 1914 he built a camp on his Horsehead Bay property and began taking local children there in the summer of 1915. Also in 1914, Laurence was one of the founders of the Fauntleroy YMCA Community Center, which became a formal YMCA branch in 1924. The Horsehead Bay camp later became the YMCA’s Camp Colman (the Colman family also donated the property for the YMCA’s Camp Orkila on Orcas Island).
Laurence and Ida’s daughter Isabel, born in Seattle in 1902, attended Oberlin College and the University of Washington and received a B.S. in Math and an M.S. in Chemistry before marrying Lawrence Pierce in 1929. Pierce came to Seattle from Massachusetts in 1926 and worked for various companies including Puget Sound Power and Light and the J.M. Colman Company. Lawrence and Isabel lived in Fauntleroy except for four years while Lawrence served as the first State Treasurer of the Unemployment Compensation Division. Back in Fauntleroy, Isabel served on the boards of a number of community and charitable organizations, including the YWCA, the Ruth School for Girls, and the Women’s University Club. The Pierces had five children, including John Pierce who still lives in Fauntleroy with his wife Leilia.
(Adapted from Fauntleroy Legacy by Roy W. Morse and E. Richard Brown)
From the guide to the Colman and Pierce families papers, 1872-1990, 1900-1950, (Museum of History & Industry Sophie Frye Bass Library)
