"George Simmons Dies Wednesday; Member of Historic Family of This Section-93 Years of Age"
The death of Wednesday of last week, September 11, of George Washington Simmons at the age of 93, removed one of the very limited few historic characters of this section of Washington. Mr. Simmons died at San Francisco, where he had lived since 1869. He was a brother of the late Mrs. Charlotte Koontz of Chehalis and an uncle of Miss Anna Koontz, Chehalis librarian. He was eight years of age when a group of 30 including five families and two unmarried men in the year 1845 cut a road throught the wooded area between Cowlitz prairie and Puget Sound, passing near where the city of Chehalis now stands. This same party located the first American settlement in October of that year at the head of Budd's inlet. Four members of the historic Simmons family yet survive. These are Mrs. John Bannon of Vader; Christopher Columbus Simmons, whose home is near Shelton; Michael T. Simmons of Ellensburg; and Charles Simmons of Centralia. In the summer of 1925 George Washington Simmons visited in Chehalis, making the trip to and from San Francisco alone at the age of 89. He was then in the best of health.
Source: The Chehalis Bee-Nugget, 20 Sep 1929, page 1.
Transcribed by Diana Smith. She has no further information on this individual.