A Most Unusual Artifact
The glass eye of Justice Roger Sherman Greene
One of the pleasures of leading walks is meeting people. During this past year I got to introduce Seattle to someone who had lived here for only five days and meet a person who told me “my great-grandfather survived the Fire [of 1889].” A third gave me advice on where to get New Mexican food but the most memorable was Carol Whipple, who I had met before and had a story I had forgotten but which she told me again.
Sitting with her father who was dying in the hospital, Carol was looking through a box of family photos he had given her. Down at the bottom, she found a small wooden box labeled with the word “Eyes.” Inside was a smaller box, which bore the name and address of someone she had never heard of in New York. Opening it, Carol found a glass eye. When she asked “Whose eye is this?” her father’s deadpan response: “My grandfather’s. His left eye, I recall.”
Born in Boston in 1840, Carol’s great-grandfather Roger Sherman Greene was a wounded Union Civil War veteran who was appointed associate justice of the Washington Territorial Supreme Court in 1870. Nine years later he became Chief Justice. Following a long and distinguished, he died in 1930 and is buried at the Evergreen-Washelli Memorial Park.
Greene is perhaps best known for two acts, both centered on his belief in justice and the rule of law, no matter who you were. On January 18, 1882, a mob of citizens intent upon lynching, dragged two men out of a downtown Seattle courtroom, where they were being tried for murder. Greene, in attendance to guarantee a safe hearing, attempted to cut down the ropes bearing the men but was stopped at gunpoint by the mob. He later wrote: “A sense of duty which does not grow out of facts actually existing and affording a reasonable warrant for it…is not a sound sense of duty.”
In late 1885 and early 1886, Seattle citizens again acted with cowardice and dishonor when they banded together to oust Chinese members of the community. Although Greene held anti-Chinese beliefs, he worked to thwart the racist mobs via legal action. In a statement to a grand jury he admonished: “The fact shows that some men of extraordinary effrontery and depravity have found temporary harbor among us…We ourselves…will vindicate our personal courage…our loyalty to law, our hatred of cowardice, brutality and crime,” if you honor the Constitution and what it stands for. Sadly, his attempts to stop these racist acts failed, and the Chinese were driven out of town, in one of the most despicable moments in Seattle history.
Although no biography exists of Greene, he appears prominently in Sandra VanBurkleo’s Gender Remade. She wrote: “Greene steadily advanced his vision of a self-perfecting republic governed by a mixed-sex popular sovereign, often siding with unpopular groups and enlisting small armies of women—in his view, society’s moral compass…These commitments followed him into retirement, when he took on problems related to industrial and urban growth, juvenile poverty in Seattle, animal abuse, black rights, and seaman indigence.”
Long a civic booster, Greene also had a role in one of the many efforts to build a ship canal, via the Lake Washington Canal Association. Carol shared his stock certificate with me, which I include because I think it’s rather handsome.
No documents or family stories account for when Greene got his glass eye or why he needed it. The Puget Sound Weekly Argus noted in 1883 that Greene was compelled to go to New York for eye treatment. Two years later he wrote to a colleague, “you are aware of the preciousness of my eyesight” and in a 1926 letter to historian Clarence Bagley, Greene commented that “my sight has now become so dim that…I have not, for seven or more years, been able to read writing or print.” His eyesight didn’t seem to slow him down. A deeply religious man, and a founder of the First Baptist Church in Olympia, Greene was active in missionary work in Asia and India late into his 80s.
This newsletter is free. If you want to subscribe, here’s a handy button. By the way, I have copies of several of my books for sale, too. With all of the supply issues, it’s never too early to shop for the holidays.
Readers Respond: “And yeah, leaf blowers! I decided long ago that there was a special circle in hell for that inventor (along with the plastic clamshell!) A la Dante's Inferno.” And, apparently I was on to something with my screed about these menaces, or so wrote the New York Times eminent writer Margaret Renkl. Not that she mentioned me, but she made key points about how bad these things are.
Upcoming talks (both virtual):
Nov 3 - 6pm - In conversation with Knute Berger. University Book Store.
Nov 8 - 7pm - Chatting with Lynda Mapes about our two new books. Bricks and Mortar Books.