Edd Lorig, ca 1890Edd Lorig was born toward the end of the American Civil War on 2 March 1865 in Mt. Pleasant, Henry County, Iowa.* He was the fifth child born to Henry and Katie Lorig and their only son. Walt Lorig remembered a few stories about his dad. The Lorig children went to Catholic grammar school and when Edd was about eleven years old he was apparently wrongly accused of something and punished by the priest. That incident caused him to run away from home. Walt didn’t know how long he was gone. He eventually did return home but would never go back to the school.
By the time he was about 14 or 15 years old he was working in the brickyard in Mt. Pleasant. He left Iowa and moved west arriving eventually in Seattle shortly after the Fire of 1889. His first job was on the Front Street cable car in Seattle. It was the only streetcar in Seattle at that time. The 1891 City Directory shows him as a Gripman Front Cable, Ry Co. In 1898 he is listed as a fireman on the West Seattle Ferry. By 1900 Edd is listed as a machinist for the S. C. Ry Power House. Then in 1901 he appears as an engineer for the G.N. Elevator Co. and a year later in 1902 he is again a machinist but with Wm Campbell and Son.
It was while he was working as a machinist that he met Hy Dygert. They got along well together and started their own business in Ballard. Edd did the mill work and Hy liked to do the boat and car work. So what little car work there was they did it and also they worked quite a bit on fishing boats. The name S. E. Sagstad keeps appearing on documents and as witness to marriages and I think this is where it connects since Sagstad was a boat builder and prominent in Ballard about that time period. Sivert E. Sagstad came from Norway to America in 1905 and may have distant connections to the Landaas family as well.
Edd and Hy owned and operated Shilshole Machine Works from about 1908 until 1915. Their shop was first in Ballard at the foot of 24th. Later they moved to 633 Westlake Avenue North. It is interesting to note that Shilshole Machine Works appears also as Lorig & Dygert some years and Shilshole other years. Edd’s eyesight began to fail but he continued to do machine work into the 1920s. By 1930 his eyesight was so poor he began working as a watchman and could no longer do the machine work he enjoyed so much. From the vision loss described by Walt we can guess that Edd more than likely had macular degeneration—losing the vision at the center of his eyes and only able to see out the edges unlike glaucoma where the outer vision is lost and what is left is referred to as tunnel vision. There is no complete cure even today for macular degeneration.
Lorig & Dygert aka Shilshole Machine Works, ca 1910
As it looks today as part of Pacific Fishermen's Shipyard**
