Mother Damnable, and The Felker House

Seattle’s earliest bricks-and-mortar hospitality landmark, the Felker House, began life in 1853—not as a Craftsman-style home, but as a two-story pre‑fabricated building brought around Cape Horn by Captain Leonard Felker and erected on “Maynard’s Point,” the southeast corner of First Avenue South and Jackson Street.

Built from milled clapboard siding, southern pine floors, and lath-and-plaster walls, it became the city’s first substantially finished lumber structure

From its earliest days, the Felker House earned renown under the stewardship of Mary Ann Conklin, known to Seattle’s frontier citizens as “Mother Damnable” (later “Madame Damnable”). Once the captain of a whaling ship, Conklin brought discipline—and profanity—in six languages to her management of the establishment

More than a mere inn, the Felker House hosted the territorial court, juries, and even social gatherings—and allegedly housed a bordello upstairs, funneling gold-rush and maritime money into the local economy

Conklin’s volatile reputation is legendary. When a lawyer demanded a receipt for courtroom expenses, she allegedly hurled stove wood at him, shouting, “There’s your receipt!”

During the 1856 “Battle of Seattle,” she reportedly repelled sailors, who were attempting to kill any local indians, by clearing brush around her hotel and unleashing dogs, curses, and stones

Upon her death in 1873, Mother Damnable was buried at Seattle Cemetery. In 1884, when her remains were moved to Lake View Cemetery, laborers were astonished to find her body had turned to stone—a macabre local legend that endures to this day.

The Felker House itself met a fiery end in the 1889 Great Seattle Fire, obliterated along with much of early downtown.

Today the Felker House survives only in photographs and stories, offering a vivid glimpse into Seattle’s rough-and-tumble pioneer era—its ingenuity, vice, and vibrant characters—long before skyscrapers and tech giants reshaped the skyline.