"Mr. Van Asselt was a Hollander, having been born in Holland April 11, 1817, two years after the battle of Waterloo. He was in his early youth a soldier in the Holland army during its dispute with Belgium. An expert marksman and an indefatigable huntsman, he came to America in 1850, on a sailing schooner, and a year later was traveling the trail from the Central West to California. Instead of going to the land of gold and sunshine, Van Asselt headed north, reaching the Columbia River in the fall of 1850. A year later found him crossing the Columbia River, after a short sojourn in the mining camps of Northern California. With three companions, L. M. Collins, Jacob and Samuel Maple, Henry Van Asselt made the perilous journey from the Columbia River to the Sound, where, near Olympia, he boarded a canoe, and after two days' traveling reached the mouth of the Duwamish River. Ascending the stream to the junction of the White and Black Rivers, a distance of only a few miles, he staked out a donation land claim of 320 acres in the heart of the richest section of the Duwamish valley." SAID VALUES INCREASED. "The sturdy Hollander cleared the valley of its primeval forest of firs, and made it truly blossom with farm products of every description. The land today (1902) is worth $1,000 an acre and upwards. At his death, the aged pioneer, the last of his generation, had in his own name some 100 odd acres of this land. Not many weeks ago he had sold twenty-four acres of the old homestead as the site of the new rolling mill and foundry to be constructed by the Vulcan Iron Works. "Mr. Van Asselt was not the least interesting, by any means, of the old pioneers of King County. In fact, until his death he was the last living member of the first group of white men to set foot on the shores of Elliott Bay. He was a very devout man, and in the late years of his life, when he had retired from active business, it was his custom to spend part of every Sunday at the county jail, reading to the prisoners excerpts from holy writ and giving them words of hopefulness and cheer. This duty was performed for many years as regularly as was his attendance at the Methodist Protestant church, in this city, of which he had been for thirty years a member. It is to be said of the dead pioneer that he was universally loved and respected, and it was his proudest boast that he had never made an enemy in his life. This was literally true.