Historical Note
Land speculation and a new streetcar line to downtown Seattle turned
Columbia from a sleepy area with only a few homesteaders into a fast-growing
residential community. The populace quickly built a town hall, a school, and
churches. Columbia residents approved incorporation as a city of the fourth
class in 1892, and changed its name to Columbia City. After incorporation,
elections were held for mayor, city council, city clerk, judge, and town
marshal. The town advanced to city of the third class status in 1905 and 18
months later voted 109-3 in favor of annexation to Seattle. Consolidation came
on May 3, 1907.
Content Description
These dockets contain summaries of cases heard in Justice Court for the
City of Columbia Precinct. Most are civil cases, although Volume 4 also
includes some criminal cases. The majority of civil cases relate to debts or
personal property, while criminal cases include offenses such as larceny,
assault & battery, threatened assault, and display of a deadly weapon.
There is also a series of requests for search warrants, apparently part of an
effort to crack down on gambling. Volume 1 contains numerous pasted-in
Transcripts of Judgments, all relating to cases brought by the State Insurance
Co. against individuals for money owed.
Case information includes names of parties to the case, names of
attorneys, costs, lists of filings, and disposition of the case. Because of the
type of book used, these details are less clearly delineated in Volume 1 than
in the later volumes. Volume 4 and (to a lesser extent) Volume 2 have names
indexed at the front. The cases represented in this collection all took place
before Columbia City was annexed and therefore were not under the purview of
the Seattle Municipal Court system.
