Category: Goldrushers

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Alice Stanton Corliss


Alice Stanton was born in 1867 in Stanton, Minnesota and married Charles William Corliss in 1887 in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. He was a lawyer and they moved to Seattle. In 1898 they joined the gold rush and got as far as Lake Bennett before Alice was stricken with meningitis and died. Her husband took her back to Seattle to be buried.
The city of Skagway issued the death certificate for this day, April 19, 1898 but she probably died on April 17, 1898. She had a daughter, Muriel May who was 8 at the time, but it is unknown if she was with her parents on this disastrous adventure.
A year later Charles remarried and had 6 more children. Alice, Charles and Muriel are all buried in the Wright Crematory in Seattle.

Seen above is the boat building yard at Lake Bennett in 1897-98.

Skagway death record; Washington birth record; familysearch; Washington State Bar Assn. obituary 1914;

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Hyacinthe Antoine Léon Peraldi de Comnene


The little note in my database just said J. Peraldi died on this day, April 14, 1898 at the Hotel Rosalie. (You would think this place got a bad rep for so many guys dying there).
It took a long time searching for records but eventually I found an old obituary, in French, for the island of Corsica, translated said:
Hyacinthe Antoine Léon Peraldi de Comnene: Mining Engineer. It is sent by the government of the United States to Alaska to the search for gold mines. He died accidentally in Alaska, April 14, 1898.
I think it loses something in the translation, but essentially he was a goldrusher whose family was in Philadelphia, apparently recently emigrated from Corsica. He was born in 1872 in Alata, a small town on the island of Corsica. Whether he was actually an engineer I don’t know, but his family thought enough of him to have his remains sent back to Philadelphia where he was buried with the other Peraldi de Comnene’s. There were references also to his family being among the personal enemies of Napoleon Bonaparte. Families left Europe for many reasons. Seen above is a view of Alata, Corsica.

http://oursjeancaporossi.perso.neuf.fr/Repertoire/RepertoireP.html
Skagway Death Record

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Two step Louie


A couple of years ago I was working in Arizona manning (womaning?) a booth for the City at the Quartzite show when the great-grandson of Louis Pollak (born 1883 Missouri) told me this story. Perhaps it qualifies as a tall story for today:
Louie came to the Yukon in the gold rush but did not do so well, so after the rush he returned to Chicago. Not satisfied with the city, he set out for the West again. He built a cabin at Nunn Creek (?) and was attacked and eaten by wolverines. Hmmm.

Ok, so it isn’t the best tall story, but it is true according to his great-grandson, and family stories are sometimes the best.

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Isaac S. Mallette


Another of the lost records from the Gold Rush Cemetery. There were actually two Isaac Mallette’s – ours died on this day, March 24, 1899 in Skagway and is buried here. His nephew, I believe, also from Iowa stayed in the Yukon, mining gold and then staked a land claim in Mayo, Yukon in 1912.

Lorene Gordon’s list.

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Next mayor of Seattle was


So after Wood left the mayorship of Seattle, Thomas J. Humes was appointed mayor on November 19, 1897. He must have left in 1900 for Nome because I read today that he left Nome with $20,000 in gold.
Then in 1904 he left the new Fairbanks camp as a frozen corpse, lashed to a dog sled and was mushed to Valdez over the Valdez Trail.

William R. Hunt in “North of 53 – The Wild Days of the Alaska-Yukon Mining Frontier 1870-1914, 1974 MacMillan, page 101.

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William D. Wood


William Wood was born in 1858 in Marin, California to Canadian parents from Ontario. William became an attorney, land speculator, electric trolley line president, and Seattle mayor. He was a conspicuous figure in the business and political life of Seattle for more than a quarter century and was the key original developer of the Green Lake neighborhood.
He served as mayor of Seattle from April 1896 to July 1897 when the Klondike Gold Rush supplied him with an opportunity more golden: providing steam passage from San Francisco and Seattle to Alaska. I have often heard people cite him as one of the many people who dropped everything and headed for the Klondike to seek their fortunes, but actually he was a savvy businessman who capitalized on the transportation needs of the gold rush.
William Wood died on this day, March 23, 1917 in Seattle of an intestinal ailment.

History of Seattle online; nps.gov; University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, Washington State Biography Pamphlet file; Men of the Pacific Coast (San Francisco: Pacific Art Co., 1903), 479; UW Libraries, Special Collections, Struve Scrapbook, Vol. 1, p. 24; 1880 census in California.

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Peter Clancy Bean

I was contacted yesterday by an author and historical researcher that had been reading the diaries of Frank Purdy that are held at the University of Fairbanks. One entry in those diaries mentioned the fact that the Purdy party had heard a shot on the evening of March 7, 1898 up near White Pass. The next morning they found the body of P.C. Bean who had been murdered. Now the clue here was that they said he was from California and he was actually Peter Clancy Bean.

The murder case is still unsolved.

from: 1880 census in California; Michael Gibson author of “Echo of a Family Secret” (the story of another unsolved murder available at lulu.com)but is currently working on the biography of Frank Purdy, a goldrusher who passed through Skagway.

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O’Connor and Utter outfitters


Although little is known about the O’Connor & Utter outfitters of Dyea in 1898, there is a chance that the Utter might have been Charlie Utter of Deadwood fame.
He was born in about 1838 in New York and his death is unknown. After Wild Bill Hitchcock died in Deadwood in 1876 Charlie went to Colorado and then back to Deadwood for a time. He went to Leadville, Durango and then New Mexico where his trail disappears in the 1880’s.
Utter worked as an trapper, guide, prospector and saloon owner. To someone like Utter, the Klondike would have been irresistible so it is my humble opinion that he was here. There was a Charles Utter who worked as a prospector in Juneau in 1903 and later he worked as a bartender in Nome in 1907 to 1910.
Utter’s biographer, Agnes Wright Spring, traced Utter to Panama in the early 1900s. Now blind he owned drugstores in Panama City and Colón. The last record of him was in 1913 down there where he reportedly had a family. Seen above is the actor who portrayed him in the series “Deadwood”.

Anton Vogee photo of outfitters; Penningham p 437; Fairbanks newspaper notes 1903, 1907, 1909-1910