Category: Goldrushers

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Fusao or Furas Toyozumi or Tayozumi


Fusao, known as Joseph, was a cook at the Pullen House restaurant and Inn between 1910 and 1915 perhaps longer. In 1915 he registered for the draft for World War One. There is no record for him after that.
He was born on this day, December 17, 1887 in Kumamoto, Kyushu, Japan. This city is famous for Kawagoe Castle where 21 lords from various clans, all closely allied with the Tokugawa Shogun, resided during the Edo Period. The fuedal age ended in 1868 (remember Tom Cruise in The Last Shogun?). The shrine above is the Toyozumi Shrine in Japan built over a thousand years ago.
So Fusao was born twenty years after that, but emigrated to the U.S. in 1906. There were a number of other Japanese immigrants in Skagway in 1910, some worked in the jewelery trade.

1910 census, WW1 registration for Skagway, Alaska.
This is my last blog for 2010, I will return in January. Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas Meli Kalikimaka

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Della Murray Banks


In January 1945 Della Murray Banks wrote an article in the Alaska Sportsman Magazine about her work on the Dalton Trail. She and her husband Austin Banks had made previous trips to the Chilkat area – in 1896 she was burned at Cook Inlet and lost two fingers on her left hand.
Back in Seattle, in 1898, they were hired by Denison Tucker and the infamous Homer Pennock to lead them to the Klondike on the Dalton Trail. Early on Mrs. Tucker and her sister Mrs. Hutchins decided to stay behind in Seattle so that they would not get their feet wet. (They also could not cook or eat off of tin plates).
In July 1898 the party of about 10 people arrived in Skagway to see the town under martial law following Soapy’s death and subsequent goings-on. Della and her husband went over to Pyramid Harbor to stay instead. They found the English proprietor of the hotel celebrating the Santiago victory. Tucker hired two packers, Jack Noon and Tom McAvoy (who died on today’s date, December 16, 1918).
They used a couple of horses, Polly and “Swift”. They found a mule bit for the horse along the way, and near the summit of the Chilkat Pass, they traded that for a regular bridle found hanging in a tree. By the time they arrived at Dalton Post, Della was riding on a fine saddle and with good bridle, both acquired from the dead animals they passed along the way!
Della cooked on the trip and they paid her $50 a month. In the photo above she is cooking supper, as she puts it, “for our famished outfit. Each meal required ninety biscuits, which I could bake fifteen at a time in our sheet-iron stove. My knees became calloused from kneeling on the rough ground, kneading dough and making biscuits. Conveniences? There were none.”
Would you do this for $50 a month?

Apparently she did not even get that, as the consummate con man, Homer Pennock swindled Mr. & Mrs. Banks. The town of Homer was named by Della Murray Banks, (the first white woman in Homer) before she realized that she and her husband had been swindled. The name stuck, but Della and Austin did not stick around.

collection of her letters are at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley; The Homer Spit, Coal, Gold and Con Men, was
written by Janet Klein, and published in 1996

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Winter Shipwreck


“On December 8th [1900] the Str. “City of Topeka” struck on the rocks at the south end of Sullivan Island, Lynn Canal, and her passengers and crew were fortunate enough to reach the shore with enough equipment to make a camp in the midst of the storm that was howling down the Chilcat Inlet.” (about 25 miles south of Skagway)

In 1890 the Steamer “City of Topeka” brought 3655 tons of coal to Alaska from Nanaimo BC. It is seen above, on the right, at Muir Glacier in 1895 when it was bringing tourists to Alaska on cruises. I wonder if they got their towels folded into little animals in their staterooms?

There is another rock down near Wrangell call “City of Topeka Rock” which might have been another spot that this poor ship went aground, but I cannot find information on that.

First quote is “Marine Disasters of the Alaska Route” – excerpt regarding wrecks in Lynn Canal, written by C.L. Andrews as a plea for the government to install safeguards in the Lynn Canal. published by the Washington Historical Quarterly 1916.

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Charles Hilty


Charles was a member of the Yukon Order of Pioneers. He was an early gold rusher coming to Skagway about 1893. He went on to Hunker Creek and Bear Creek, and made gold claims.
He met a nice German lady in Skagway about 1897, Carolina Bernhoeffer. She and her sister Mary (see earlier blog) ran the hotel “New Home Restaurant & Lodging house”. Carolina may not have ever been married. In any event, she went with Charles to the Yukon and was recorded in 1901 living with him there. They must have married soon after. Carolina was known as “Dutch Lena” and ran several hotels including the Hotel Skagway 1898, Bernhofer’s Roadhouse, Klondike 1901, the Travelers Home in Bear Creek in 1904, cook for Rigley & Templin in Council Alaska in 1905, and washer for Cascade Steam Laundry in Fairbanks. Carolina Hilty died in Skagway in 1906 and is buried in the Gold Rush Cemetery. I blogged on her earlier before I found the connection with Charles. I believe there are some errors on the headstone.

Meanwhile, Charles got into a shooting scrap in Tanana, Alaska and the Pioneers advanced him $1000.00 for lawyer fees. He was acquitted and repaid the money. The Yukon Order of Pioneers motto was “do as you would be done by”. It was formed during the Gold Rush era to ensure stampeders’ rights were protected.
Charles Hilty died on this day, December 9, 1920.

Yukon Genealogy site; 1901 Yukon census Volume YRG1 page v76 as posted also on the Yukon Genealogy site; Gold Fields of Alaska online no date.

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New Zealanders


There were about 50 New Zealanders, or Kiwis, who arrived in 1898. George Fetherling in “The Gold Crusades: A social History of Gold Rushes, 1849-1929” on page 141 states there was a group of Maoris at Sheep Camp in 1898. Looking over the list of names, and not knowing what Maori names are like, I see a W. Ratri, J. Bungale, C. Chleablein, and a Tom Tipppili as well as quite a few English sounding names and Mc’s. I once emailed some professors in New Zealand to see if they could tell, but they said that it was of course possible that the Maori’s had taken English sounding names, so they could not tell which ones were Maori. Anyway, it is an amusing thought that tatooed Maoris were slogging up the trail with everyone else.

Fetherling; NWMP records of people crossing the pass and at Lake Bennett in 1898.

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John Holland

Several decades ago, the city clerk of Skagway went to the Gold Rush Cemetery and wrote down the names on the headboards that were still visible. Some were names of folks not recorded in the death records or on any other list or census. John Holland is one of those. We only know that he was born in December of 1849 and died on April 18, 1899 in Skagway and is buried in plot number 75. My notation for this is just “Lorene’s list” for the lists that Lorene Gordon gave me when I started this project.

So who was John Holland? Perhaps he fled the lower 48 to avoid being confused with this John Holland who invented the submarine, seen above in his fantastic creation in 1898.

“Lorene’s list”

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Ezra Meeker


Another great character, Ezra Meeker was born in a log cabin on the family farm in Huntsville, Ohio in 1830. He married Eliza and moved to Puyallup Washington by covered wagon in 1852. They had a hops farm in 1891 but then in 1892 a plague of hop lice struck the Pacific Coast, devastating crops. Meeker’s crop sold for a fraction of the expected price. He later wrote, “All my accumulations were swept away, and I quit the business — or rather, the business quit me.”

In 1896 Meeker traveled to Alaska, opening a store in Dawson and filing a mining claim. Despite four trips to the Klondike, he never found gold, however, in 1898 at the age of 68, he formed a company with George Cline and John F. Hartman to dry vegetables for soups, Mrs. Meeker helped dry the vegetables for the Klondike Venture. In the spring, Ezra went north with his son Fred over the Chilkoot Pass with 15 tons of dried vegetables and chickens. On one stretch of 2000 feet they paid $40 a ton for freighting. They went down the Yukon in a flatboat where Ezra fell in the White Horse Rapids. They sold potatoes, onions, chickens, sugar and condensed milk. Later they sold fresh vegetables that were brought up individually wrapped.

In 1901 Ezra Meeker left the Yukon and came home to stay, arriving two weeks before his golden wedding anniversary, but without the gold. He made four trips to the Klondike and had saved possibly $19,000, which he lost in the final mining enterprise. A deep freeze came a month earlier than usual and prevented his thawing the ground, and cut off water for sluicing. A later report stated that the mine he lost proved profitable.

Meeker worked for many years to preserve the famous Oregon Trail (it became part of the National Trails System in 2004). In October 1924, he flew over a portion of the trail in a single-engine, high wing Army Fokker T-2. By ox, Meeker made two miles per hour crossing the Trail in 1852 with his family. His plane flew the route at 100 miles per hour.

Ezra said he never spent even one day sick in bed during his entire 58-year marriage. He died on this day, December 3, 1928 in Seattle (of senility) and is buried in the city he founded, Puyallup, Washington. He is seen above shortly before his death, in 1928 with his Model-A Ford with covered wagon.

historylink.org; Klondike Stampeders Reg p252; Yukon site; Washington state records;

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John Albert Baughman


Dr. John Baughman was a Physican and assayer. He was born in Barberton, Ohio on March 10, 1856. I read somewhere that his family was Jewish which would add to my growing list of Jewish families in Skagway in the gold rush, but I cannot find that source again, so just a possibility there.
After graduating from college as a doctor, John Baughman married Mina Barber in Manistique, Michigan on February 25, 1897. Struck with gold fever Dr. Baughman joined the stampede to Dawson in 1897. Expecting to practice medicine there, he found the profession barred from him because he was not a Canadian citizen, so he joined in the search for gold.

Later her returned to Michigan where he brought his wife to Skagway in 1899. Dr. Baughman practiced medicine in Skagway until 1905. Their first son, Paul was born here in 1899 but died in 1904. Their second son born in 1903 also died in 1903 and both are buried in the Gold Rush Cemetery. Their daughter Dorothy, born around 1905 lived a long life and is buried in Juneau.
After leaving Skagway in 1905, the family moved to Seward where Dr. Baughman was a doctor for many years and established the Pioneer Hospital, ministering to a large section of Alaska. While in Seward, he was Game Warden of the Third Division for eight years. He also operated a drug store. The Daily Alaska Empire obituary said he was Alaska’s oldest physician when he died on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1937 in Juneau. He was a life member of the Masonic Order, affiliated with the organization for 45 years. He is buried in the Juneau Evergreen Cemetery.

1902 directory; Juneau Evergreen records; family search; The Daily Alaska Empire–Friday, 26 November 1937-Page 1 & Page 8.

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George B. Goldschmidt


What does the Arctic Brotherhood have in common with the Titanic?
The answer is George Goldschmidt. Born in New York on October 16, 1840 he came to Skagway in February 1899 on the ship City of Seattle with 10 other men, who, on their way to Alaska decided to form their own secret society for good fellowship and brotherly love: The Arctic Brotherhood. However, he does not show up later on any of the later membership rolls, he was a man on the move!
Here is his obituary from the New York Times:
“George B. Goldschmidt, lost in the sinking of the Titanic, was one of the oldest members of the Bar Association, having become a member in 1870. He was born in this city in 1840, admitted to practice in 1882, and was one of the best-known conveyancers in this city. Mr. Goldschmldt served in the Twenty-second Regiment, N. G. N. Y., at Harper’s Ferry and in the Gettysburg campaign, and was afterward Major in the Fifty-fifth Regiment, N. G. N. Y. He was a member of the Union League, Army and Navy, New York, Lotos, Hamilton of Brooklyn, and North Woods Clubs and of the Museums of Art and of Natural History.”
He boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg as a first class passenger (ticket number PC 17754, £34 13s 1d). He occupied cabin A-5. Goldschmidt died in the sinking. His body, if recovered, was never identified.

Alaska Weekly article by Moore 1931; family search; NYTimes April 20, 1912

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Charles Davis


Charles Davis was born in 1840 in Ohio and claimed to have fought in the Civil War. He was a prospector and a laborer in Skagway from before 1910 to his death, on this day, November 22, 1938. His peculiar cause of death was detailed in Robert Dahl’s book. He said his father, Dr. Dahl, told the nurses to bathe him because he smelled bad since he never bathed. Davis thought that bathing would cause death. In his case it did.
He is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery.

1910; 1920 1929; Dahl book; Skagway death record