Eldridge Morse, a lawyer trained at the University of Michigan, arrived in Snohomish on October 26, 1872, with his young family and remained there until his death on January 5, 1914. Albert Folsom, twenty years older than Morse, became Snohomish County’s first medical doctor after coming from Wisconsin with a broken heart from a failed marriage and, lacking ambition to accumulate property or secure a position for himself, offered his medical services for voluntary payment. Encouraged by the success of a handwritten newsletter, Morse and Folsom established the first newspaper in both Snohomish and Snohomish County. Morse traveled to Olympia to buy a used printing press, brought it back by steamship, and taught himself to set type. The first issue circulated through the one-street town on January 15, 1876, and the last was issued on May 3, 1879. Morse asked what the community was, how its spirit harmonized with the tendencies of the age, and what work lay in hand by which its people hoped to leave behind them footprints on the sands of time.