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Now & Then By Paul Dorpat
The Kindly 'Cashier'
WHEN THE FURTHS moved to Seattle in 1882, their new hometown was enjoying its first buoyant year as the largest community in Washington Territory. (It stepped ahead of Walla Walla in 1881.) In the next 30 years Seattle would roar, its population expanding from about 5,000 to nearly 240,000, and much of this prosperous noise was Furth's contribution, the ringing of his wealth and the rattle of his trolleys. Born in Bohemia in 1840 — the eighth of 12 children — Jacob immigrated to San Francisco when he was 16, and managed during his quarter-century in California to express his strengths as both a brilliant manager and caring citizen. In 1865, Jacob married Lucy Dunton, a Californian, and with her had three daughters. Once in Seattle, with the help of San Francisco friends, he founded Puget Sound National Bank, and was in the beginning its only employee. After Furth built this substantial family home on First Hill he continued to list himself as the "cashier" for the bank. But he was effectively the bank's president long before he was named such in 1893. After the Great Fire of 1889, Furth is quoted as cautioning his board of directors to refrain from taking advantage of the ruined by calling in their loans. "Gentlemen . . . what you propose may be good banking, but it is not human." When the 74-year-old capitalist died in 1914 he was probably Seattle's most influential citizen, president of its big bank, its private power and streetcar company, a large iron works — named Vulcan — and much else. But it was his kindness that was memorialized. His neighbor, Thomas Burke, noted how Furth " always found time to express understanding of and sympathy for the motives of even those who were against him." Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.
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