Introduction:  D. B. Ward was not among Yelm’s first or permanent settlers, but he did write an account of his family’s move from Arkansas to the northwest.  His connection with Yelm is teaching there in the mid-1860’s, a little over a decade after Yelm’s first settlers.
 
Across the Plains in 1853
By Dillis B. Ward
 
To the Prairie [...]

Introduction:  John Edgar arrived in the northwest as an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He eventually terminated his service them, married a native women, Betsy, and moved on to the Yelm prairie. They were the first family to settle there. The following depicts part of there life there.
Betsy & John Edgar: Pioneers on the [...]

Introduction:  Bridget and James Hughes were born in Ireland, migrated to Massachusetts were they met and married, then headed to the northwest where they settled on the Yelm Prairie for a short while.  The fighting the 1850’s inspired them to relocate in Steillacoom, which seemed safer than the prairie.  The following is from Bridget’s obituary [...]

 Introduction:  James Longmire left an account of his famlily’s trek west from Indiana.  Written decades after the trip it follows their experience through the Indian fighting in the 1850’s
As I am one of the pioneers of Washington, in her territorial days, I will fall in line with the many who have already written, and attempt [...]

Introduction:  James Burns cae from British Isles and settled in Michigan with his parents.  Eventually he came down with “gold fever” and headed to California.  Souring on that experience he headed for the northwest, settling on the Yelm prairie.   He lived alone in the Bald Hills and developed a reputation of being a wee bit  [...]

Introduction:  Little is known about George Brail.  His stay on the prairie was short and he left no paper trail after he moved away in the 1860’s.
George Brail
Among the first settlers to move onto the Yelm Prairie was George Brail (1810 – after 1860).  On his application for a Donation land claim, Brail wrote that [...]

Lewis Barnard & the Prairie Environment
By the spring of the next year he was out on the Yelm Prairie befriending George Brail in the process.  By June 1851 Lewis Barnard (1825 – February 28, 1875) had filed a Donation claim to 320 acres, some of the land bordering Yelm creek and all of it situated [...]

Introduction:  After coming west from Iowa by covered wagon the Wheelers then survived the conflict in the mid-1850’s.  Mariah gave birth to one of the firs chidren born on the Yelm Prairie.  Below is an account of pregnancy and childbirth on the prairie.
The Wheelers
A “time of illness, death and melancholy,” was how the historian Cathy Luchetti [...]