C.S. Moody was born in 1867 in Kirkwood Illinois. He came to Seattle in 1889 to work in banking. He then came to Skagway around 1897 and worked with Hawkins to purchase land for the railroad. He and some investors started the First Bank of Skagway which later went broke in 1899. He was involved in some lawsuits after that. He moved to Washington and started another bank and worked as a special deputy state bank examiner for other banks that went under in 1917.
In his book Alias Soapy Smith, Jeff Smith says that some people believed Moody to be one of Soapy’s “silent partners.” In Seattle, where Moody went in August of 1898, he strongly and emphatically denied the story that he was run out of Skagway by the citizens who thought he was involved with Soapy. He said “All talk detrimental to my reputation was started by my enemies…” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer 08/05/1898, p. 6)
Still, there was no money or gold from Soapy’s estate when his wife Mary came to Skagway to claim his effects. Certainly there was a conspiracy to clean out his estate by some. Perhaps Moody was an innocent that was thrown in with the other clan members. In any event, he returned to Skagway for a short time until the bank went under.
Charles Moody stayed in Washington, married and had a family and died on April 28, 1956.
Klondike Centenial Scrapbook, p.94 ad; Minter; Victoria Daily Colonist 6.6.99;Rootsweb posting; Washington death record.
The family of Soapy Smith generally believes that he kept a nice amount of his plunder in Skagway and that the bulk of it was kept with wealthy friends in Seattle and San Francisco. Nothing is known (yet) to have been written down so those “friends” just kept the money. Soapy’s wife was sent money on a regular basis and the Smith’s bought land in Colorado and Missouri so Mary lived comfortably for most of her days. She swore Soapy was worth about $40,000,000 at the time of his death and that enemies in Skagway robbed the accounts and denied Soapy ever owned any land there (which he did), and the business friends in Seattle and Frisco kept what they had been given to hold. Even if Mary was exaggerating the amount it is probable that Soapy kept large amounts of money in safes outside of Skagway. I doubt there were enough safes in Skagway to hold the cash and gold he was taking in.
Dosen’t anyone find it sort of odd that one of the greatest con men in history was involved in the greatest gold rush in history, and yet died supposedly broke?
Jeff Smith
A year late, but here is my blog post regarding your post. As usual, great work!