"Rebecca Howard (1827-1881)

An outstanding hotelier and cook,was one of Olympia,Washington's earliest businesswomen.Born in 1827 in Philadelphia,She married Alexander Howard,a local cooper,in New Bedford,Massachusetts in 1843.By 1859 she and her husband had moved to Olympia and opened a hotel and restaurant in the Pacific House on Main Street(now Capitol Way).In 1860 Rebecca advertised the building as the "Pacific Restaurant."Memoirs of vistors to Olympia record the fine inn keeping provided by Rebecca.The Howard's hotel and restaurant was frequented by legislators and vistors to the city including President Rutherford B.Hayes and his wife Lucy in 1880.When the building was razed in 1902,the Olympia Washington Standard said that the Pacific Hotel was the leading hotel on Puget Sound under "the ministration of Rebecca Howard,...whose wit and humor...made the Pacific an oasis in the then desert of travel."In June 1862,she and her husband signed an agrement to take care of Isaac I.Stevens Glasgow,a part Native American child of American settler Thomas Glasgow,who by most accounts was being mistreated by his father.The Howards officially adopted the child in 1877 and he took the name Frank A.Howard.Frank became a leading citizen of city,inheriting his adopted parents'properties and investing in land and development.After Rebecca died in 1881,twenty-six pages were needed to enumerate her property which was valued at over $6,200.00.Alexander died in 1890.Both are buried in the Masonic Cemetery in Tumwater.