History & Background

William and William O. Nettleton

Nettleton’s 1^st and 2^nd Additions were platted in 1887 by William and William O. Nettleton. William Nettleton came to Spokane in 1883 at the age of 64 following a distinguished career in the mid-west. Nettleton was born in Ashtabula, Ohio on Lake Superior on April 22, 1822. William worked on the family farm into his late 20s when he began traveling with his brother and sister-in-law, George E. and Julia A. Nettleton. George, who had previously been working as an Indian trader, traveled with his wife and brother to the Chippewa Indian Agency at Sand Lake, Wisconsin. There the Nettleton brothers worked transporting goods for the Indians. The following year, William opened a farm for the Chippewa on the Gulf River.

Having worked the Chippewa farm for three years, William Nettleton became associated with a land and town company in 1853-54. Funded by W.W. Corcoran, a Washington banker, and James Stinson, a businessman from Chicago, William traveled to the head of Lake Superior and competed with another land and town company to establish the townsite of Superior, Wisconsin. By 1854, Nettleton had selected a townsite and with the help of Thomas Clark, a civil engineer, and the Superior Townsite Company, surveyed the area. William’s brother George E. soon joined him and set up a trading post and grocery store at Minnesota Point, a freshwater sandbar in the St. Louis River, in the winter of 1854.

By 1855, the Nettleton brothers were again on the move. In 1856, William and George, along with Orin W. Rice, J.B. Culver, and R.E. Jefferson, had surveyed the townsite of Duluth, Minnesota, just across the St. Louis River from Superior. William and George soon acquired title to several hundred acres of land in Duluth and in 1856, George and J.B. Culver had established a sawmill on Lake Avenue in the town. The Nettletons are credited with constructing the first building in Duluth, with William being considered the town’s first resident.

William Nettleton stayed in Duluth for sixteen years, becoming active in civic affairs and railroad investments. George E. and his wife Julia returned to Ohio in 1858, following the area’s first railroad boom. William remained in Duluth, becoming involved in the state legislature in 1859 where he was pivotal in the development of railroads across the country. William was married the following year in, 1860, to Helen (Nell) M. Scoville of Ashtabula, Ohio.

By 1871, Nettleton had moved on to St. Paul, Minnesota where he purchased 130 acres of land west of town.  Nettleton started a dairy farm there, which he operated for eight years. In 1880, William and his son George O. platted the family farm, calling it Nettleton’s Addition. Now known as part of Macalester-Groveland, portions of the area are listed as a National Register Historic District.

In 1883, William and Nell, along with their son George O., came to Spokane, following the route of the Northern Pacific Railroad. In 1885, William’s nephew William O., George E. Nettleton’s son, followed his uncle west to Spokane. W.O. Nettleton was born to George E. and Julia A. Nettleton in 1851 in Ashtabula, Ohio. In 1886, William Nettleton purchased over 270 acres from the Northern Pacific Railroad and along with his nephew W.O. and son George, platted Nettleton’s 1^st and 2^nd Addition in 1887.

W.O. Nettleton quickly became a prominent figure in Spokane, and by 1890, had partnered with Waldo Grant Paine, his cousin-in-law who had married Laura Louise Nettleton, in a real estate and mortgage business with an office in the Eagle Block. Waldo G. Paine had married Louise in 1889 in St. Paul where he’d grown up and started his own grocery business in 1880. Paine moved to Spokane in 1889, barely escaping the fire that swept through the city days after his arrival.

During this time, Paine created a partnership to purchase the Lindsey Mercantile Company, while W.O. Nettleton continued to engage in real estate. In 1892, W.O. was elected as a city councilman from the Fourth Ward, and would additionally become one of the original owners and developers of the first street cable railway in Spokane, and establish Finney College on West College Avenue. In 1904, W.O.’s uncle William Nettleton died tragically in a fall from the Great Northern trestle, just west of his home in Nettleton’s 2^nd Addition. Overtaken by a dizzy spell while crossing the trestle, William had been known to be ill for some years prior to his death. That same year, following his uncle’s passing, W.O. opened a shoe store with his son Joshua Mills Nettleton at 614 N Monroe. The Nettleton Shoe Store operated until his own passing in 1924.

William Nettleton would leave behind his wife Helen, son George O. Nettleton, and daughters Mrs. Louise Nettleton Paine, and Mrs. Julia C. Nettleton Insinger, who married F. Robbert Insinger, Manager of the Northwestern and Pacific Hypotheek Bank, in 1897. William O. Nettleton would leave behind his wife Ella W., two daughters, Miss Emily K. Nettleton, and Mrs. Rosa A. Uhden, his son Joshua Mills Nettleton, a sister, Mrs. Ruth A. Yeomans, and a brother, A.H. Nettleton.

 

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