Category: Dogs

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Christmas Mail


It has always been and still is a challenge to get mail to Skagway. Today we rely on small planes to fly our mail in from Juneau and if they can’t fly for three days, they put it on the ferry. Numerous times I have had retailers tell me they either don’t deliver to Skagway or they send it the dreaded FedEx way: which is, they send it to Anchorage and then hand it over to the post office there which puts it on the barge as parcel post. Recently I had a computer delivered this way that arrived with a big hole punched in the side of the box. Fortunately it hit only packaging material. There is no direct mail delivery on the road to Whitehorse, so if you send a letter there, it goes to Seattle, maybe to Ottawa and then back to Vancouver and then to Whitehorse. And takes 3 weeks. So here is what they did in 1898:

“The amount of mail stacked up on the Skagway dock that Christmas of 1898 was too much for one man to carry, however. The North-West Mounted Police took over the job of delivering the backlog of mail to the Klondikers. They formed relay teams of men and dogs to carry the mail in 30-mile stretches. Traveling day and night, the Mountie teams could complete the one-way 600-mile trip in an average of seven days. The use of dog teams on the Dawson-Skagway route ended in 1901 when the White Pass and Yukon Railway was completed. But dog teams were responsible for mail delivery in most parts of the Alaska Interior for another 30 years.”

Alaska History Course.org

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Sylvestor Scovel


Of the many schemes to get rich, Sylvester Scovel’s was unique.
Scovel was a reporter for the New York World, but he also brought two tons of blasting powder to Skagway in Sept 1897 for White Pass Trail construction. He arrived in Skagway with his wife, Frances Cabanne and went over the Chilkoot Pass with their provisions. When he and Frances reached Lake Bennett, they had intended to float up to Dawson, but when he heard that only three mail deliveries would make it to Dawson that winter, Scovel came up with an idea. Why not organize a regular dog team mail delivery service from Skagway to Dawson and thus deliver the “New York World” to miners who would happily pay for news? He told Frances that they would certainly get rich.
Skeptics pointed out that the 600 miles of snow covered trails, frozen lakes and sub-zero conditions would take 25-30 days.
Still, Scovel told his wife that it would be like an extended honeymoon with nothing to do but “hunt, fish, prospect for gold and write correspondence…”
He left Frances in a tent at Lake Bennett while he hiked back to Skagway and took a boat down to Seattle to wire his employers for support in this venture. The World took three days to respond and then turned him down flatly and ordered him back to New York immediately. He wrote to Frances to return to Skagway and take the first boat down to Seattle as he was returning to New York. He also wrote to William Saportas, an acquaintance and fellow reporter in Skagway (also friend of Soapy) to please go find the “madame” in Lake Bennett and take her down south. Meanwhile poor Frances had not heard from her husband yet and so related in a letter to her mother that Bennett was “awful, awful without him and in this hole – it is death.”
Sylvester’s relatives in Chicago were amazed and told him he should not have left Frances. His Aunt Belle even boxed his ears! To make matters worse, the World was not happy and accused him of “gross extravagance” having wasted too much money. Oddly, the only reason he was not fired was because Hearst was courting him to come work for the New York Journal. Scovel went on to be the World’s “man in Havana”, but died there in 1905 following an operation to his liver.
In the end the only one who came out ahead was William Saportas. He married the lovely widow Frances in 1917 and they presumably lived happily ever after.

Seen above are Scovel and his wife Frances in Skagway promoting his newspaper!

The Year that defined American Journalism: 1897 and the clash of paradigms by W. Joseph Campbell; Edmond Hazard Wells, Magnificence and Misery, page 32.

NY Times Sept 6, 1897

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Mary Ellen/Elizabeth Higgins Hitchcock


Mary Higgins was born on this day March 1, 1849 in Baltimore Maryland or Virginia or Brooklyn, New York. In any event she was from a very wealthy family and married U.S. Navy Commander Roswell D. Hitchcock in 1871. He died in 1892 leaving her a bored and wealthy widow.
She was an eccentric writer who came to Alaska three times with her friend Edith Van Buren (grand-neice of President Van Buren), the last in 1899. Later that year she wrote a book entitled “Two Women in the Klondike” of her adventures with Edith and their two great dane dogs, Ivan and Queen, a dozen pigeons, two canaries and a parrot. I have read this account of their hardships (having to wait all morning for the warm water for their manicures) and having to discipline the insubordinate “servants” that they encountered. It would be funny except that I’m sure that their fellow travelers were not amused.
When they finally got to Skagway on their way south, they stayed at Brannick’s Hotel that had a 4-poster bed with spring mattresses, sheets and pillowcases.
They went to an oyster bar for dinner (beer, ten cents) and took the City of Topeka steamer south the next day.
She had her portrait done with Ivan, seen above. She felt she had endured great hardships, and told stories of her adventures back in Amityville, New York where she died in 1920 at the age of 71.

nytimes article 8/22/1899; victorian-cinema.net; Two Women in the Klondike by Hitchcock.

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Albert Sam Chisel

Albert Chisel or Schisel was born on this day, December first, 1886 in Manitowac, Wisconsin. In the 1920’s he and his brother ran a little store in Haines.
Unfortunately, Albert was murdered by Bert Taylor on the 4th of July, 1927 over a dog dispute. He is buried in Haines.

from Ken Coates “Strange Things Done”

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D’arcy Edward Strickland


Inspector Strickland of the NWMP was born on this day, November 2, 1868 in Ontario Canada. IN 1898 he was in charge of the Canadian border station at White Pass. Strickland was a big, beefy man and, judging from the photos taken of him, he tended not to wear the standard NWMP uniform. According to his disapproving superior, Inspector Charles Constantine, Strickland was a fun-loving person, “what is generally known as a good fellow” with “a taste for low company [and] a decided fondness for drink.”
Strickland was accompanied to the Yukon by his wife Tannis and their son Roland (seen above); his daughter Frances was born at Tagish Post in 1899. Strickland was an important figure in the early days of the NWMP in the Yukon. He supervised the construction of the Tagish Post in 1897.

After leaving the Yukon he went to the Boer War in South Africa as Adjutant of the 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles. He died at Fort Saskatchewan in 1908 at the age of 40 from cardial dropsy, perhaps something he contracted in Africa.

www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca; familysearch; Dobrowolsky

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John Weise


John Weise emigrated to St Paul Minnesota from Brightling, Sussex England where he was born on September 29, 1872. At the time he emigrated his name was Jesse Funnell. When he moved to Skagway in 1898 he changed his name to John Weise. He may have gone to Atlin to mine but later worked in Skagway as a bartender for the Board of Trade Saloon.
He also worked as a section foreman for White Pass. He married Theresa, a cook for White Pass and they lived in Skagway when their son, John was born in 1915. In 1916-17 they moved to Whitehorse when Prohibition closed the bars in Skagway.
John’s grandson, also John Weise, forwarded the photo above which he believes is his grandfather – a dapper fellow! I will post some more of his photos in upcoming blogs – some great ones of Engine 67, Engine 61 and some workers on White Pass using work carts/Casey cars which I have never seen before.

John Weiss; 1920 census.

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Unlikely survivors of the Princess Sophia


On October 24, 1918 the Princess Sophia with all 356 human passengers onboard sank after running aground on the rocks at Vanderbilt reef in the Lynn Canal. There were however, two non-human survivors: one was a dog that jumped ship and swam ashore to save itself (very un-Lassie like, surely he could have dragged a couple of women and children ashore with him).
The other survivor is less known: Polly the Parrot.
Now Captain Alexander and his supposed wife left the mine near Atlin to head south for a holiday (like many of us do these days). Along the way he dropped off his parrot, Polly, who he claimed was over 45 years old, at the hotel in Carcross which also had a bar. When the good Captain and “wife” did not return Polly was left in Carcross where he spouted obscenities at the patrons for the next 50 years. When Polly died he was buried in the Carcross cemetery with a little brass plaque near the gate. Over the years people have added little toys to the grave, although I admit I haven’t been there in 2 years.
When the courts were settling the estate of Captain Alexander, his wife and daughter in England set the record straight that they were not with him on the Princess Sophia. Then who was this mysterious woman who drowned? Hmmm, the clot plickens….

In this photo Capt James Alexander is seated in the middle and “Mrs. Alexander” is holding the bird in the doorway.

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Lepha Mae Mary Bennett Edgren


Lepha was the daughter of Captain James Bennett. In October of 1897 she threatened to shoot a man in Skagway who was abusing his dogs.

She married Jesse L. Edgren and moved to Dawson where she had a baby, Mae Eldorado Edgren in December 1898. Unfortunately Lepha died of typhoid January 6, 1899, leaving Jessie with newborn Mae. Jessie took the baby back to Wisconsin to the grandparents. He then died there in Hennepin, Wisconsin in 1915. There is a record in the Fairbanks newspaper that Mae Eldorado Edgren died in 1921 perhaps in Alaska, so it would seem the family suffered another Alaska tragedy.
This photo of Lepha’s funeral procession led by her faithful dog team was probably taken by Larss.

from: Mills p. 14; Larss photo at AK State Library; Andromeda Romano-Lax “Mothers of Gold” 1997.