Charles Wright, a Tacoma railroad tycoon, was responsible for the splendid new St. Luke's, and had plans to found a Girls' School.

He showed his plans to Henrietta Wells, who made several suggestions and was recruited as the first principal of Annie Wright Seminary, a venerable and successful Tacoma school.

While in England in 1900 he was seated next to Queen Victoria at a dinner, and amused her with stories of Ulysses S. Grant (under whom Wells had served during the American Civil War) and Abraham Lincoln, whom he had met on several occasions.

In 1913,[1] Wells retired as Bishop of Spokane, recommending that a younger man would be much more suited to the rigors of horseback and stagecoach travel that was so much a part of his position.

We have in successful operation – three boarding and day schools with twenty teachers and two hundred pupils, a hospital with fifty beds; a Church home for children with room for twenty-five orphans […] I doubt if any one of our mission fields can show a more remarkable growth toward self-support.

Wells was petitioned by the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane to record his memoirs upon his retirement in 1913, and in 1931 these were published as "A Pioneer Missionary."