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New Photos of Governor Wilford Bacon Hoggatt!

Anne Cripps, granddaughter of former Alaskan Governor Wilford Bacon Hoggatt has graciously sent us these three new family photos all taken in 1905 at the Jualin Mine. Hoggatt  was part owner in this mine. In one, he is standing in front of his cabin.  In another it looks as though he’s wearing his Navy uniform; the man with him is someone named Alfred Nadeau. In the third photo, he is in the center, but  no identification for the other two gentlemen.

Many thanks for these great family photos, previously unseen by the public!

 

 

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“Packer Jack” Newman’s two loves

While most of us have heard the story of Mollie Walsh and her great admirer Pack jack Newman, I only just read the curious story of the second monument in Seattle. Mollie met Packer Jack in Skagway where he was smitten with her. He once shot a fellow in the legs right on Broadway so that he could not go up and visit Mollie at Log Cabin where she sold pies. Mollie later married Mike Bartlett who murdered her in Seattle in 1902.  In 1930 – 28 years after Mollie’s death Newman decided to honor the memory of his “Angel of the White Pass.” He commissioned a bronze sculpture of Mollie to be placed in Skagway.

And here the statue stands today, by a children’s playground that has become known as Mollie Walsh Park.

The inscription, written by the man who lost Mollie to the man who killed her, reads:

ALONE WITHOUT HELP / THIS COURAGEOUS GIRL / RAN A GRUB TENT / DURING THE GOLD RUSH / OF 1897-1898. / SHE FED AND LODGED / THE WILDEST / GOLD CRAZED MEN. / GENERATIONS / SHALL SURELY KNOW / THIS INSPIRING SPIRIT. / MURDERED OCT. 27, / 1902.

Jack Newman was unable to attend the dedication ceremony in Skagway, but sent a message.

“I’m an old man and no longer suited to the scene, for Mollie is still young and will remain forever young, her spirit lingers still reach across the years and play on the slackened strings of my old heart and my heart still sings – MOLLIE! – my heart still sings, but in such sad undertone that none but God and I can hear . . .”

However, his wife, Hannah let her husband know that she was less than thrilled with his tribute to his lost love.

To appease his wife, he quickly placed a dinner-plate-size bronze profile of Hannah on the exterior of the Washington Athletic Club, at Sixth Avenue and Union Street. The inscription:

MRS. HANNAH NEWMAN / WITH COURAGE AND FAITH IN THE / DEVELOPMENT OF OUR CITY OWNED / THIS GROUND FROM PIONEER DAYS / UNTIL THE ERECTION OF THIS BUILDING / 1930

Jack Newman died soon after Mollie’s statue was unveiled in Skagway – on May 4, 1931 of appendicitis. Although Newman had requested that he be buried in Skagway, beside Mollie’s monument, Mrs. Newman had him buried in Seattle. I could not find a photo of Hannah’s bronze on the WAC building on the corner of 6th and Union. If someone would like to photograph it, I will post it, but in the mean time here is a great picture of young Packer Jack. Cute guy!

HIs gravesite can be viewed by going to Findagrave and entering the Memorial ID number 104500403

I was contacted recently by Art Petersen who has spent years researching Mollie Walsh and Packer Jack Newman. In fact he has written a new book entitledMarch 2022 update

Promised Lands, MOLLIE WALSH: An Irish-American Story (2021 Klondike Research). available from Klondikeresearch.com

In this book he describes new corrections which I will now point out:

A few facts:

          Packer Jack never shot anyone.

          The statue was erected after Packer Jack died.

          Packer Jack wanted to be buried at Inspiration Point on the White Pass Trail.

          Leo Alphonse was born on August 27, 1900, not 27 May 1899. He forged his birthdate to be old enough to join the U.S. Army.

          Mike Bartlett did not put on a party to celebrate the birth of his son; he was not even on the boat.

          Mollie did not help Reverend Dickey establish the Union Church in Skagway.

          Mollie’s husband never entered an insane asylum; rather, he suffered torturously for six years after his trial before ending his own life before a horrified audience.

Here is the pic of the bronze, care of Lindsey Haight

IMAG1965

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Weston’s carrier pigeons

In 1898 everyone had their own scheme to get rich, and not everyone was goldrushing!

The Seattle Post Intelligencer sent a man on the “Portland” three days after the historic arrival in Seattle.  Samuel P. Weston’s idea was to bring cages filled with carrier pigeons to Skagway and send them south to deliver his reports. Apparently they were all lost on their way south, poor things, they couldn’t make the 1500 mile trip.  Seen above is the Portland.

 

Eccentric Seattle by J. Kingston Pierce, p. 120

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The Laughing Woman

This photo is from the Dawson City Museum and Historical Society Collection and is available from the Yukon Archives for a few dollars. I have always wondered what her story was, certainly she laughs with her wrinkled dress as if she doesn’t have a care.  Laugh on Lady – worthy of a bard’s ballad.

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Golden North Hotel

I received this photo of the landing upstairs in the Golden North Hotel from a visitor who said he had stayed here in 2001. He said it was a pleasure to sit and read here and talk with the other people staying here. Although the furnishings are all still in place, the hotel no longer hosts guests. Downstairs, the restaurant and bar have been replaced with jewelry and souvenir stores. I have often enjoyed a sandwich and latte at the Glacial Smoothees shop across the street and looked up at that big double window and wondered what was behind it!

P.S. It has not been a hotel for many years, the only guests are ones that never checked out……Whoooooooo!

 

photo credit to William Mann

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Mary Mason

Mary was a Coastal Tlingit woman maybe born near Haines – probably Klukwan in 1874. I say maybe because her mother was living there and talked to Angela Sidney about Daisy, her granddaughter years later. They were members of the Raven Clan who bore the name Lukaax.adi.

Mary is famous because of her husband, Skookum Jim or Keish Mason. They were married around 1893, and Daisy was born June 22, 1895. Jim died in 1916 in Carcross and Mary died on this day, December 28, 1927 in Alaska, perhaps Haines or Skagway. Daisy died only a few years later in Seattle but she was also buried in Carcross with her father. I do not know where Mary’s grave is, I would assume in Carcross also, I will look for it the next time I am up there. The plaque above is in Carcross and was put in in 2000.

 

Life lived like a Story p. 101 and note #45;

1901 Canadian census in Carcross; news acct from list in NPS library

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Marion D. K. Weimer

Mr. Weimer was born in August 1853 in Ohio. He married Ella J. Tribby in 1879 in Trenton, Iowa and had a son named Howard L.

M.D. K. as he preferred to be called, and Ella were both teachers. In 1897 with so many other goldrushers, M.D.K. came to Alaska and settled in Eagle where he was the editor of the Eagle Reporter in 1898. He returned to Ohio by 1900 and then the family moved to Nebraska and then on to Los Angeles. Their son worked as a linotype printer in Alhambra and married there.

In 1903 he wrote a book called “The True Story of the Alaska Gold Fields” which can be found online for sale.  He died on February 2, 1931 in Los Angeles.

In May 2009 ice and floodwaters swept away more than 100 years of history with the destruction of Eagle Village. The small log cabins that had once populated the long-established community known as Ninak’ay to the Han people lay strewn along the banks of the Yukon River. The homes, which had been handed down from one generation to the next, were demolished. But now, three years later, a new village stands three miles away on higher ground, safe from floods. Seen above was one of the destroyed cabins from the gold rush.

familysearch; Yukon the Last Frontier by Melody Webb p. 137; 1900-1940 censuses; Rootsweb database of Iowa cemeteries; Alaska Gold Rush History of Alaska Newspapers; Fairbanks Daily News.

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Steamship Willamette

 

On page 66 of The Inside Passage to Alaska, Anderson says that the S.S. Willamette left Tacoma on August  7, 1897 with 800 passengers and 300 horses and bales of hay stacked so high on deck that forward view from the bridge was obstructed. In Tacoma 7500 people watched her leave and almost miraculously she arrived in Skagway and was photographed by Winter and Pond unloading, seen above. J.M. Houghton was the ship’s engineer, and H.W. Skinner was the purser, along with a crew of 22. Eighteen men deserted the ship when they arrived in Dyea. The ship had to pay a $50 dockage fee and $1 a head for the horses and cattle to dock there. The ship stayed for 9 days while the Captain and Engineer tried to find a crew to head south.  Apparently Robert Bonine shot a film of the Willamette leaving Tacoma in 1897 which is saved somewhere:

http://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/S/SSWillametteLeavingFor1897.html

“The Oregon Improvement Company’s old steam collier Willamette was quickly converted to carry 600 passengers in temporary berths erected in her coal holds, and she made her first voyage to Skagway and Dyea on August 3. The best that can be said of her as a passenger liner is that she carried a lot of passengers; but the stampeders of 1897 were not fussy about accommodations. Among the first passengers was Capt. Everett B. Coffin of the side-wheeler Idaho, who went north with Fred Fickeff as representatives of a Port Gamble grubstake pool.” Gordon Newell, Maritime events of 1897, H.W. McCurdy, Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. Seattle: Superior, 1966, p. 15.

In 1903 The Pacific Coast Company renamed her the S.S. Montara or Montana which later ran aground in 1920 near Nova Scotia.

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Holman and Nurnberg store in Dyea

Although I have absolutely no record of either Holman or Nurnberg having a store in Dyea, this is how the photo was labeled that sold on ebay recently for $300. If you can blow up the photo note the odd decorations on the sign at the top corners.