Chartley Artell Pitt (1878-1966)

Portrait from the 1939Washington legislative composite.

   One of the more colorful political figures to warrant a write-up here, Chartley Artell Pitt rose from humble beginnings in Wisconsin to serve a decade as a Washington state representative, but not before time spent as a vagabond, assistant lighthouse keeper, poet, and published author. While resources on his life remain hard to come by, Pitt was the Portage County, Wisconsin-born son of William C. and Jennie (Eaton) Pitt, being born on April 17, 1878. "Chart", as he was familiarly known, himself gives the following summation of his early life in a brief autobiography published in 1919 in the Chicago Ledger, a periodical he regularly contributed to:

"I am a product of the Wisconsin woods, vintage 1878. My life cord has twisted a bit in the unwinding--and, God willing, I'll tangle it a bit more before I die. There are a few of my footprints scattered around in the Alaskan snows--and several fish in the sea that know the taste of my hook. Been a hunter and trapper all my life --began on rats. Of late it's editors I'm baiting. I have hunted gold, and had the pleasure of not finding it. Took a close up look at the cow camps; and got so that I knew a thousand sheep by their first names."

  With a picturesque early life that saw him widely traveled, Chart Pitt's own vivid writings of riding the rails with hoboes and spending time in hobo camps sound fanciful, with Pitt himself remarking that "Some of my richest adventures have come from the road and its riding." By 1909 Chart Pitt was residing in the Pacific Northwest and on August 18th of that year married in Westminster, British Columbia to Emma May McLeod (1885-1949). The couple would have three children, Lotus Jean Pitt Pasternak (1912-2007) and sons Donald and Gordon.
  A resident of Joseph, Idaho following his marriage, Chart Pitt was published for the first time in 1910, when a poem he'd written, "The Watcher", was featured in the Modern Woodman, a periodical published by the Modern Woodman of America fraternal group. Pitt would win a $10 prize for his efforts (beating out over 1,300 poems) and was acclaimed in both the Modern Woodman and the Steven's Point, Wisconsin Gazette as "a real poet." This same year saw another of Pitt's poems, entitled "Back to the Night", be published in Liberty, a newsletter issued by the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

From the Steven's Pont Gazette, June 15, 1910.

   In 1911 Chart Pitt entered the U.S Lighthouse Service as a  second assistant lighthouse keeper, being stationed at Tree Point Lighthouse near Ketchikan, Alaska. He would remain here with his family until at least 1913 and was afterward stationed at the Destruction Island Lighthouse (where he was a first assistant), and in 1917 was named assistant keeper at the Mukilteo Lighthouse, where he was stationed until 1922. These solitary hours provided Pitt with ample time for writing, and in the late 1910s and early 1920s contributed several articles to the Chicago Ledger, a weekly story paper that featured adventure stories, romance, and poems. The accompanying picture of Chart Pitt in his lightkeeper's uniform and the Mukilteo lighthouse appeared in the Ledger on September 20, 1919.

   Through the 1920s Pitt contributed a number of short stories and prose to then-popular pulp magazines, including Action Stories, Thrilling Adventures, and Outdoor Stories. Pitt's full-length novel, entitled The Bootlegger's Brat, appeared in 1931, dealt with rum-running in Oregon, and even warranted a review in the Sydney, Australia Morning Herald. Still a resident of  Snohomish County at the time of that book's publishing, Chart Pitt was long an advocate of Prohibition and made his debut on the Washington political stage in 1936 when he entered into the race for the Washington House of Representatives from the 38th district, which comprised part of Snohomish and Island County. Running as a Democrat, Pitt won the September 1936 primary and that November was elected to his first term, polling 13,424 votes. 

   Chart Pitt won his second house term in 1938 and would follow that with three more legislative victories, serving ten years in total (1937-47), and was at various times a member of the committees on Elections and Privileges, and Fisheries. His decade-long tenure in the statehouse saw Pitt continue his early advocation for temperance and during the 1939 session spoke on the house floor to "oppose a bill to permit sales of liquor by the drink on trains within the state." Pitt's time in the legislature also saw him aid imprisoned Communist Party political leader Earl Russell Browder, joining 134 other activists, politicians, and intellectuals in sponsoring the Call for the Free Earl Browder Congress in February 1942.

From the 1937 Washington legislative composite.

  In addition to advocating for the prison release of one of the most controversial political leaders in the United States, Chart Pitt was not above theatrics to get his point across on the floor of the Washington legislature, including thumbing his nose at house speaker Jack Sylvester after asking to make a motion, and, during his final term, took to "thumping a baseball bat on boxes and desks" to get a chairman's attention during a raucous debate on the house floor.

  The July 1946 Democratic primary saw Chart Pitt lose in his bid for a sixth term, but he wasn't done politically, as he would launch another campaign for his old house seat in 1948, this time on the Progressive Party ticket. He would poll just 1,405 votes that November, and in the September 1952 Democratic primary was again a losing candidate. Pitt would continue to seek his old seat in the legislature well into his eighties, running candidacies in the 1958, 1960, and 1962 Democratic primary elections. Chartley A. Pitt died at age 87 at an Everett, Washington hospital on February 3, 1966. Widowed in 1949, Pitt was survived by his three children and was interred alongside his wife May at the Evergreen Cemetery in Everett.

From the Washingon legislative composite of 1943.