booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

with their son, William Jr., with whom she lived
until her death at the age of 86 in 1912.
The governor’s paternal grandfather was
born in Montreal in 1852 and apparently had
the equivalent of an eighth-grade education. In
1874 when he turned 22, “he determined to try
his fortune elsewhere” and made his way to San
Francisco where he learned the plumbing trade.
A handsome man with dark, wavy hair and a
dashing mustache, he departed for Portland four
years later and stayed for nine years, working as
a plumber and heating contractor with steadily
increasing success. When he moved to Tacoma in
1887 he founded William Gardner & Co. The firm
installed the first heating plants on the Northwest
coast, from Portland to British Columbia,
equipping the new city halls at Tacoma and Seattle
as well as schools all over the west side of the
Cascades. In 1898 Gardner launched a wholesale
plumbing and supply business that became one of
the largest in the Northwest, with a branch in Portland. He also acquired other commercial
properties in Pierce County and resolved to start a family.
In 1900, at the age of 48, William Gardner married the governor’s grandmother, the
beautiful Ada May Cathcart, who was 20 years younger. The daughter of a shoemaker, she
was born in 1871 in Ontario, Canada. William and Ada
Gardner had three children – Ruth, William and Bryson
Ross Gardner, Booth’s father, who was born on August
18, 1905.
William Gardner & Co. was sold to the Crane
Company in 1906. The governor’s grandfather
retired. He tended to his investments, calling himself
a “capitalist.” He was a Republican, “supporting the
party since becoming a naturalized American citizen,”
but not much of a joiner. He never ran for office or
headed anyone’s campaign committee. Built in 1901,
the Gardner home at 1415 N. 5 th St. in Tacoma was
spaciously upper-middle class, certainly nothing ritzy.
Grandpa was, in short, a conservative old Scot, but he’d
done very well indeed. He loved his summer home on
15
William Gardner, Booth’s paternal grandfather,
in the 1880s, around the time he moved to Tacoma.
Gardner family album.
Ada May Cathcart Gardner, Booth’s beautiful
grandmother. She was 20 years younger than
her husband. Gardner family album.