Governor's business card, circa 1853

September 09, 2009

Let’s say you’re the governor of a brand-new U.S. territory created in the 1850s and you don’t have any printed business cards. What do you do? Why, you write them up yourself.

That’s what Isaac Stevens did soon after becoming the first governor of Washington Territory, in 1853. The State Archives in Olympia has both an original and the digital version of former Gov. Stevens’ business card. There is a legendary story about Stevens’ arrival in Olympia. President Franklin Pierce appointed Stevens as governor of the newly created territory on March 17, 1853. One of Stevens’ first assignments was to find and survey a northern railway route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. The railway route project resulted in Stevens taking several months before he reached Olympia, the territorial capital. By the time Stevens reached the capital in late November 1853, he was tired, dirty and hungry. The citizens of Olympia had prepared a lavish welcome for him, but when the exhausted Stevens arrived in buckskins, they took him for just another ragged traveler and sent him off to the kitchen to eat scraps so that he would not be an embarrassment to the new governor. After awhile, the celebrants realized their mistake and welcomed Stevens to his new home. Even though Olympia had at least one printing press back then, it’s possible that Stevens drafted hand-written business cards just so that he would have something to give other people until he could get some cards printed. To learn more about Washington’s territorial years, see the territorial timeline here . Go here to learn more about the State Archives.
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