These early African-American pioneers helped to define the city's black community.

In the 1880s Spokane grew from waves of immigration. Though white individuals were the majority, the city soon developed other minority populations. Along with the more famous Chinatown, Spokane had its own small African American community.

In 1880 only three African-Americans were in the Spokane region. By 1885 this number increased to thirteen, including a few families. John Bryon Parker, a barber from New York, and his wife Adella, a black Canadian, came to Spokane with their three small children in 1885. Census records show that they lived in Utah and Nevada for a time on their way west. Adella's Canadian birth suggests that she or her parents might have come to Canada on the Underground Railroad in the 1850s.

By 1887 thirty-eight African-Americans called Spokane their home, though there were certainly more African-Americans in the region. The Parker family still resided in the city and had several more children. J.B. Parker would open the first Black-owned barbershop at the famous California Hotel in the city that year. Several other African-American migrants also found success in the Spokane region in next few decades.

Peter B. Barrow, Sr., was another prominent black businessman in Spokane in the late nineteenth century. Born into slavery, Barrow escaped his home state of Virginia and later served with the Union Army. After moving to Mississippi with his family, the Barrow family came to Washington in hopes of escaping the racial oppression prevalent in the South. Barrow would eventually help with the start of Spokane’s Calvary Baptist Church, the first African-American Baptist Church in the region. Barrow’s grandson Charles and J.B. Parker’s own son Charles would both join the business created by Barrow, The Deer Lake Irrigated Orchards Company.

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From India to Fort Colville and Okanagan, Henry Shuttleworth and his family lived interesting lives in 19th and 20th century west.

Frontier Washington was full of surprising and unexpected character, but perhaps none more so than Henry Shuttleworth.

Shuttleworth was born in Bengal, India around 1837, the son of a colonial indigo farmer. While his youth is largely unknown, as a young man Shuttleworth received some form of education. He shows up in the Washington Territory in the 1850s, working as a clerk for the Hudsons Bay Company.

While in the territory during the 1850s, Shuttleworth's position as a clerk in the Hudson Bay Company was a respectable one, and while stationed at Fort Colville he married Isabella, a Native American woman from a local tribe.

Shuttleworth and Isabella had several children together before moving to western Canada. In 1870 a census taker recorded the family as Henry and Isabella, sons George and Henry, and daughter Mariah. The eldest son George later married a chief’s daughter before moving to Okanagan where he worked as a rancher for years and taught local citizens Interior Salish. George Shuttleworth would live to be a hundred. Another Shuttleworth son, Harry, would join George in Canada’s rodeo competitions in the early 20th century.

While much is not known of Henry Shuttleworth’s life in eastern Washington, the few glimpses gained from early records show the vast global connection many immigrants brought to Spokane's early settlement population and the various paths in life they took once there.

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