Happy Birthday to Oscar Dunbar, born on the day, March 6, 1849 in Salem Oregon. In 1878 he married an English lady, Mary Agnes Thomas in San Francisco and they settled in Oregon. Their daughter Clara Agnes was born in Portland in 1881.
They all came to Skagway in 1898 and Oscar published the Alaska Travelers Guide and was the publisher of the Skagway Daily Alaskan from 1899 through 1900 when his daughter took over the publication of the paper until 1904 or so.
They moved back to Pendleton, Oregon where Oscar died in 1904.
The Skagway Alaskan newspaper is published in Skagway today (resurrected in 1978 by Jeff Brady). Copies are given to each passenger that gets off a cruise ship in summer by local “newsies” dressed in period costume. That newspaper has interesting stories of Skagway as well as advertisements and coupons. In addition, there is another real newspaper that is published every two weeks which details the drama of life in Skagway. Available at the News Depot bookstore for only $1, the police blotter and the Heard on the Wind sections are always worth the price!
Seen above are the “newsies” that distributed the original paper.
1900 census;1902 directory;family chron; Haigh; familysearch.