Category: Skagway families

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Adolf Gustav Arlitt


Adolph Gustav Arlitt was born August 27, 1865 in Waldenburg, province Schlesien, Germany. He was a baker and immigrated in the 1880’s, settling first in Austin, Texas, where he worked at the Lundberg Bakery. In 1888, he moved to Seattle and was employed at a number of bakeries including A.W. Piper Bakery, Queen City and Eureka Baking Company, and the O.H. Thrall Bakery. In 1897, he and his friend, Fred Olshewsky opened The German Bakery & Restaurant in Skagway.

Gus returned to Seattle in the spring of 1900 to be with his family, while Olshewsky stayed on in Skagway for about another year. Gustav remained in the bakery business in Sumas, Sehome, and Olympia, Washington, where he started the German Bakery and Coffee House, and later, Arlitt’s Bakery. In 1921, he became one of the original 125 investors in The Olympia Veneer Company, and worked there mixing glue for the plywood until 1935. He died on August 3, 1937 and is buried in the Masonic Cemetery in Tumwater, Washington.

thanks to John Arlitt, great grand-nephew

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Engine 61


There are very few photos of Engine 61, so I have been told, so here is one of Theresa Weise about 1920 posing on the front of it. The engine was purchased new and built in 1900 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. It was a 2-8-0 wheel configuration and weighed 17,600 lbf.
Here is a description from a railfan’s site: “This single Consolidation had the same power dimensions as the converted #56 (Locobase 10678), but was a road engine. Like most of the WP & Y locomotives, 61 had an outside frame (to make room for the Stephenson link motion inside) and it stayed in service an equivalent amount of time before retirement in the early 1940s.”
Sadly it was used as riprap along the Skagway River in 1949.
I believe it was John Bush, who worked in Skagway as the head of the train works here, who had it retrieved and moved to Skagway Shops in 1990. He was involved in trading abandoned narrow gauge trucks (railroad car wheels) to other narrow gauge train companies. He was also responsible for trading these trucks to a town in the midwest for Engine 69, which eventually made its way to Skagway. When White Pass traded for this engine, it had been sitting in the town center of some little town in Nebraska (?) for many decades and the town was quite attached to it, so it was moved out of there under cover of darkness and hidden in Washington State for a couple of years until it was brought up to Skagway.
Anyway, the fate of little engine 61 is not as lucky, it was sold to Mid-West Locomotive & Machine Works in 2007. Narrow gauge engines and parts are getting difficult to find these days.

photo courtesy of John Weise. Wikipedia for engine info; steamlocomotive.com

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Sophie Matthews


On this day, September 27, 1938 Sophie Matthews died and was buried in the Pioneer Cemetery. She was 76 years old, a Tlingit native born in Klukwan in 1862 and her native name was Kxa Gis Ooh. She married William Edward Matthews who came to Skagway in 1888 from St. Louis Missouri and was a farmer.
Their son William Clarence Matthews also married a woman named Sophie who died young, at 26, in 1921 and is buried in the Cemetery in Dyea. See her grave in the picture above. Their two daughters, Julia and Mable died as little girls in 1920 also probably from the influenza epidemic and are buried together in Dyea. There are quite a few descendants of the Matthews clan that still live in Skagway.

Skagway death record.

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Ellen Orr Batson


Born on this day, September 22 1879 in North Carolina, Ellen Orr was married to William Burt Batson the town butcher in Skagway. They were here at least from 1910 to 1915 but probably longer. William managed the Frye Bruhn Meat Company.
Ellen Orr Batson died in 1967 in Randall Washington and is buried in the Silver Creek Cemetery there.

There were actually two buildings associated with the Meat Market, one is on 5th, seen above, and this summer was the “Bombay Curry” Restaurant. This was the actual store and is being considered for historic building status, the other is the building on 5th and State. This building, the Frye-Bruhn’s cold storage building, was once used to refrigerate the company’s meat products. It has been recognized as historically significant by the National Park Service, which took ownership of the building in 2004. A contributing element of the Skagway and White Pass National Historic Landmark, this building is also in the process of being nominated to the National Register of Historic Places by the Park Service.

Late breaking news about the restoration of the cold storage building:
a revolver was found in the walls of the building last week, no news on its age, but a photo of it is flying around Skagway. Earlier in the summer one of the archaeologists was impaled in the eye by a flying nail but she is now recovering. Who knows what other evil spirits the building hides?

Alaska Library Archeaology; 1915 directory, family website, Silver Creek Cemetery list, Skagway News, Skagway Museum Record.

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Infant Mortality


On September 20, 1900, three babies died, Elias Rudd, Constant Schemich, and one of Kitty Smith’s babies. The only cause of death listed on the Skagway Death Records was for Constant and that was for brain fever. They were buried in the Gold Rush Cemetery. The influenza which spread over the world in 1918 reached Alaska in force in 1919 and 1920.
Then in 1935 on September 20 Leonard A. Sweeney, another newborn, died and is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery. In those days folks had a curious penchant for photographing dead people in their coffins.

Skagway Death Record

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Robert Lee Guthrie


Born in 1862 in Texas, Mr. Guthrie came to Skagway in the gold rush. By the spring of 1898, he owned the Board of Trade Saloon.
“A shrewd saloon man could make a mint selling liquor, running gambling tables and offering female entertainment upstairs or in the alley behind his place, all of which Mr. Guthrie did. He quickly reinvested his money in Skagway’s real estate, buying up property as soon as it hit the market. By 1900, Guthrie was building the most expensive home in Alaska, now known as the White House on Eighth Avenue, costing $10,000 to build.. He was on the first three city councils of Skagway”

Guthrie married Abbie Atkins in 1901 in Salado, Texas, the daughter of a Baptist minister and his childhood sweetheart. They returned to Skagway but left in 1908. Lee Guthrie died on this day, September 20, 1934 in Stockton, California.

Skagway News Historical Features;

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Matthew M. Sundeen


The Sundeen family came to Skagway in 1898. Matthew was a master mariner and had a steamship business as well as being a quartz miner. His wife Ida ran the Pearson and Sundeen laundry. Matthew was born in 1866 in Sweden and married Ida Louella Crosier in Oregon in 1892. They had three daughters, Carrie, Lucille Loraine and Etta who was born here in Skagway in 1903. Mrs. Sundeen died in 1914 at the age of 38 in Portland but Matthew stayed in Skagway for many years and died on this day, September 9, 1941 and is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery.

Just prior to his death in 1941, Sundeen wrote an article that appeared in The Fairbanks Daily News. Back in 1898, Sundeen said he was in the hardware store opposite the Juneau Wharf and had been first on the scene when he looked out to see Smith and his gang confront Tanner and the boys. He remembers Reid’s revolver failing to fire three times, as Smith fired four shots into the surveyor. Then he watched Jesse Murphy struggle with Smith, trying to wrestle the Winchester away from him before he killed anyone else. In the process, Smith shot and killed himself. Well, enough people had remembered seeing Reid kill Soapy through the years to put into question one old miner’s 43-year-old memory.

Sundeen claimed no one else but him, Smith, Reid, Tanner, Murphy and Landers were on the wharf approach when the killing occurred. Further he claimed that Tanner, Murphy and Landers all agreed to lie to the officials to let Reid think he’d died a hero. Who knows, the story has a certain amount of credibility. I have tried to find record of what became of Jesse Murphy, but with such a common name, he disappeared after 1898. Certainly White Pass who employed Jesse Murphy had much to gain from the end of all the lawlessness in Skagway.

Here is picture of the schoolkids in 1906 in front of the school, no doubt Carrie, Lucile and maybe even Etta are here.

censuses; familysearch; Fairbanks Daily News.

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Harriet arrives in Skagway


Although we have covered Harriet Pullen before, it was on this day, September 8, 1897 that she arrived in Skagway full of hope for a new life. She left behind a bankrupt farm and four children to join her husband here to scratch out a living. Starting a restaurant in a tent and cooking meals, her husband ran a string of horses across White Pass. After earning enough money, she bought a log cabin and then sent for her boys to help her.
Soon after, she and her husband split and sold the packing business. She told people that she was a widow. She purchased a large frame house from Captain Moore and named it the Pullen House. All that is left today is the chimney, which is now more clearly seen since the city has cut down all the trees in the area in the past month. Nasty trees, who needs them?

from Alaska: Saga of a Born Land by Borneman

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Willie Egbert Feero


Happy Birthday to Willie Feero born on this day, August 31, 1883 in Maine. The family came to Skagway from Auburn, Maine via Tacoma arriving on October 19, 1897. His father, John Eleanor or “Sandy” Feero worked as a packer until he froze to death in December of 1898 on the Chilkoot Trail.

Willie and his mother, twin sisters, and brother stayed in Skagway. Willie worked and lived in Douglas and Skagway until his death in 1950. During that time he married, had a family and worked as a White Pass engineer/fireman and a carpenter.

There are descendants in Skagway today who I am sure would have better stories than mine. Here is a picture of his son John taken in front of their house in Douglas about 1935.

1900 census;1915 directory; WWI registration; Skagway death record; Pennington.

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James Edward Lilly

Mr. Lilly had a grocery from the time he came in 1897 to 1900. He worked with his sister, Francis, and his brother, John at the Lilly Brothers hay feed and flour. By 1901 they had moved to the Yukon. James was also a lawyer. James was born in 1861 in Champaign Illinois, he died on this day, August 27, 1912 in Alaska.

This Barley fond shows a skit with people holding banners of various businesses in town in April 1900. You can see the Lilly Brothers banner in the lower left.

1900;1902;family chron; Univ of IL record online; Fairbanks news list