The lead character in Act One, Scene iii of our proposed “Birthplace of the County Heritage Trail” is Edson T. Cady, pictured here in an undated daguerreotype courtesy of the Everett Public Library’s Northwest Room.
People living on the Snohomish River could hear Ed Cady long before they would see him chugging up the river in his flat-bottom scow outfitted with a small, boisterous steam engine.
Christened The Minnehaha, it was the first steam-powered boat on the river that would eventually grow in number to 67 and a variety of sizes and styles. By that time, however, Edson T. Cady had moved on to parts unknown — he disappeared from the pages of history.
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Edson T. Cady was born in 1828 in upstate New York, as was his co-founder E.C. Ferguson. They found each other in Steilacoom, Washington Territory, in a group of frontier businessmen scheming to invest in a ferry service across the Snohomish River — a vital link in a proposed military road from Fort Steilacoom to Fort Bellingham — a project the U.S. Army abandoned when called to serve in the Civil War.
Only three men of the original military road group staked claims near where the Pilchuck River empties into the Snohomish. Besides Cady and Ferguson, there was Egbert Tucker who staked a claim on the south bank.
With the road project abandoned, a new opportunity arose with the gold rush to the Similkameen and Kettle Rivers on the eastern side of the Cascade Range. Cady, Ferguson and a man named Parsons set out to establish a trans-Cascade pack trail to the goldfields. Again, by the time the trail was established, the gold rush petered out and this project was abandoned as well.
Yet, the route they discovered is called Cady Pass to this day.
Around this time, he came into possession of the Minnehaha and “Cady made a living by freighting supplies up and down the river for the few settlers along the river and logging camps near its mouth, and by bringing supplies from Port Gamble,” wrote William Whitfield, in his 1926 history of Snohomish County.
On February 28, 1861, Edson T. Cady was appointed the first postmaster for the settlement he named Cadyville. His post office was his scow, the Minnehaha. Cady held the post for two years when he sold his eastern claim of the future Snohomish City to Mary Low and Woodbury Sinclair.
Western and Eastern Plats of Snohomish City.
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Featured Image above: Photograph of Snohomish City by Gilbert Horton, ca.1885, picturing Ferguson’s Cottage and Eagle Saloon on the left, Sinclair store and home on the right, and the Riverside Hotel in the center. Courtesy Snohomish Historical Society.
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Thanks for the genealogical workup by Ann Tuohy who notes that Edson T. Cady could be the “E.T. Cady” listed on the census of 1880 in Township 3, Mariposa County, California. This man’s birthplace was given as Connecticut rather than New York, but he was a miner, married, but living alone.