Transcription of obituary, maybe from Port Angeles Evening News, January? 1902 - found in a trash can at an estate sale!

The Times Special Service.

PORT ANGELES, Saturday, Jan. 18 -

All that was mortal of Mrs. Laura E. Peters was laid to rest in Ocean View cemetery this week.

Mrs. Peters. Was an exceptionally strong character, not only known to Clallam county but throughout the state of Washington. She was born in Fountain county, Indiana, sixty-one years ago, the daughter of Daniel Crane of the same place; who, in 1865, moved west to the city of Seattle as one of the pioneer families of the state.

In the early 80's Mrs. Peters became prominent as a worker along public lines by organizing lodges of Good Templars throughout the state. In 1885 she became a member of the Knights of Labor and took a prominent stand on the anti-Chinese question; was one of the committee to investigate the manner in which the Chinese lived and personally collected money to defend those charged with riot as a result of the Chinese trouble.

The following year she was elected secretary of the Puget Sound Cooperative Colony, and aided in bringing over three hundred colonists to Clallam county. She also became the editor of the Commonwealth. The following year, 1887, she came to Port Angeles and was the central and moving spirit of the colony. She aided the building of the first and second opera house, the first saw mill and helped to enforce the tax of fifty cents per lot to buy the first grass seed planted in Port Angeles for pasturage.

In 1896 she was a delegate from Clallam county to the Populist state convention, was made a member of the platform committee, and was the author of the woman's suffrage plank and later on went to Olympia to see that the fusionists kept their pledge. She also took a hand in the movement before the legislature to rage the age of consent in females. She was a firm friend of Gov. Rogers and was a delegate to both conventions at which the Governor was nominated. The second time she went form a sick bed to attend the convention.

While never known to have a personal ill will toward any one, she was radical, aggressive and progressive, strong and positive in her convictions, and plain mannered to an unusual degree. She had no time for dress or the vagaries of fashion. She carried this to the end and would have only the most simple burial. Her coffin was built by a friend and the hearse was a neighbor's spring wagon. As the days shortened and her time was setting, friends would come with sorrowful faces but she would have none of it. She wanted everyone to feel glad, for "Am I not about to step off into a higher and better life," she asked, and as the minister fittingly closed her discourse, "Mrs. Peters had only bid 'good evening' to her earthly friends and 'good morning' to the spiritual."

The funeral ceremonies were conducted by Esther Gideon Thomas, spiritualist minister, of Seattle, of which science Mrs. Peters was a firm believer. Mrs. Peters leaves behind her a faithful husband, Chas. E. Peters, two daughters, Mrs. Mason, Luella and Frank Hall, and three grand-children.

Submitted by Stacey Davis November 3, 2000