Pioneer and doctor David Swinson "Doc" Maynard (1808 - March 13, 1873) settled in Seattle when it was still a small village called Duwamps. His cabin sat in what is now historic Pioneer Square. Along with William Bell, Arthur Denny, David Denny, Henry Yesler, and Carson Boren he is considered to be one of Seattle's founding fathers. He was an advocate of Native American rights (at least relative to the other settlers) and a constant supporter of Seattle, roving up and down the coast, ever hoping to attract more settlers with valuable skills. A dispute with the other founding families regarding the layout of Seattle's street grid resulted in today's tangle of streets along Yesler Way, the northern extent of his claim.
Maynard, who arrived in the Seattle area separately from the Denny Party, was of a quite different demeanor than Arthur Denny's staunch Methodists. He lived with both his wife and his ex-wife, drank liquor (while the Denny Party were mostly teetotalers) and deliberately found someone to start a good brothel in Seattle, believing that prostitution was essential to the economic success of a frontier town of that time. Although he was originally one of the city's largest landholders and strongest boosters, he did not necessarily prosper with the city; among the reasons for this appear to have been that his friendly relations with Chief Seattle and other natives made him suspect to his fellow settlers, his Democratic politics were less than ideal for an increasingly Republican region, his civic minded gestures helped others who did not always help him in return, and his drinking probably made him less effective toward the end of his life.
Seattle's Maynard Avenue South and Maynard Alley are named in his honor, as is a Pioneer Square bar.
See also
History of Seattle before 1900
External references
A brief biography of Doc Maynard (http://www.historylink.org/output.cfm?file_id=315) on Seattle's historylink.org.
Bill Speidel, Doc Maynard, The Man Who Invented Seattle (Seattle: Nettle Creek Publishing Co., 1978) (ISBN 09148904077).
Murray Morgan, Skid Road (New York, Ballantine Books, 1951, 1960, and other edition) (ISBN 0295958464)
Along with William Bell, Arthur Denny, David Denny, Henry Yesler, and Carson Boren he is considered to be one of Seattle's founding fathers.
Maynard, who arrived in the Seattle area separately from the Denny Party, was of a quite different demeanor than Arthur Denny's staunch Methodists.
He lived with both his wife and his ex-wife, drank liquor (while the Denny Party were mostly teetotalers) and deliberately found someone to start a good brothel in Seattle, believing that prostitution was essential to the economic success of a frontier town of that time.
Maynard lost confidence in the village after the Indian Wars of 1856 and traded his claim to much of present-day Pioneer Square for farm acreage in West Seattle.
Denny later wrote that Maynard, "stimulated" on liquor, had decided, "he was not only monarch of all he surveyed, but what Boren and I surveyed too." Unable to agree, the neighbors filed two separate plats on May 23, 1853, and their dispute is memorialized today in the tangle of mismatched cross-streets along Yesler Way.
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