Peter Frank Emel (1853-1924)

 

Headstone GPS Coordinates: 

Birth: 25 December 1853, Ontario, Canada

Death: 21 February 1924, Seattle, King County, Washington

Relatives in Seabeck Cemetery: Elizabeth (nee Emel) Maher, Ruby C. Emel

American Revolutionary War Patriots*: None.

Disclaimer: These lines have not been officially proven by NSDAR standards.

 

Peter Frank Emel was born on December 25, 1853, in Ontario, Canada. His father, also named Peter Emel, was a French immigrant, and his mother, Marion Ann Hepschwelen, was a German immigrant. In 1861, the family was living in Carrick Township, Bruce County, Canada West. Peter was raised in Canada as a Roman Catholic.

On August 11, 1874, Peter married his first wife, Anna Margaret Stroeder, who went by Margaret. Together they had three children: Elizabeth (born 1875), Frank (1877), and Peter (1878). Shortly after the birth of their youngest child, Margaret died, presumably in Canada. Later that same year, Peter immigrated to the United States with his three young children and settled on a farm in Ada, Norman County, Minnesota.

On October 10, 1880, Peter married Anna Litsen—whose surname appears in records as Litsen, Leitzel, or Lightson—in Clay County, Minnesota. Peter and Anna had four children: William (1883), John (1885), Edward (1887), and Joseph (1889).

The timing of Peter’s initial journeys to Washington Territory is unclear. He may have traveled west several times to secure homestead land while his family remained in Minnesota. By November 1889, Peter, Anna, and their seven children had relocated together to Seattle, where Peter acquired the Duwamish Dairy and became a familiar sight delivering milk by wagon. Around the summer of 1892, the family moved to Seabeck, where Peter worked in logging and lumber. Despite living in Seabeck, he continued to maintain business interests in Seattle, including a grocery store, two hotels, and a beer hall.

The Emel family traveled to their homesteads along the primitive trail between Silverdale and the area then known as “Big Beef,” using a team of oxen to haul their belongings. Peter’s older sons later recalled walking single file along the narrow trail as young boys, helping carry the family’s possessions to their two 320-acre homesteads.

Peter’s most notable contribution to the local community was the construction of a bridge spanning Big and Little Beef creeks. As recorded in Kitsap County: A History (1977):

“As more families moved to the area, Emel proposed that a bridge be built across both Big and Little Beef creeks. The neighbors guffawed and asked what good a bridge would do when there were no roads to the bridges, but he convinced them if they had the bridges, the roads would come.”

Peter supplied lumber milled from timber on his own property to build the bridge, which measured 330 feet long and 16 feet wide, with four-foot railings. He was paid one dollar per foot. The bridge was completed on July 4, 1896, and was improved, expanded, and rebuilt multiple times over the decades. In 1965, the original wooden structure was removed and replaced with the modern bridge that still stands today.

In 1897, Peter and Anna divorced. Anna remarried a few years later and remained in Seattle until her death.

On June 12, 1899, Peter married Maude Ella Gregory in King County, Washington. They had three children: Alice (1902), Ernest (1903), and James (1912). Peter and his adult sons continued working in the timber industry, felling trees and hauling logs down the skids to the water.

The 1910 census lists Peter living in San Bernardino, California, with Maude and their children Alice—who was working as an actress—and Ernest. Peter and Maude divorced in 1912.

Peter Frank Emel died in Seattle on February 21, 1924, from arteriosclerosis and high blood pressure at the age of seventy. He is buried in Seabeck Cemetery beside his eldest child, Elizabeth, who died in 1909. Also buried there is his three-year-old granddaughter Ruby, daughter of Peter Jr., who died in 1911. No marker is currently present for Ruby’s grave.

Most of Peter’s children remained in the Kitsap Peninsula area, where they raised families of their own. Many of their obituaries, published in the Bremerton Sun, recall their early childhoods in Seabeck.