Tag: missionary

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Peniel picture

I saw this great photo on Ebay that sold recently. Other than the date of 1905 there was little information about it, but I recognized the woman in the center as being Victorine Yorba. Looking through my records I believe that the two men are C.W. Ruth and E.L. Wilson who were revivalist preachers at the Peniel in 1905. One could also be the Rev. H. M. Tourney who led revival meetings in the Peniel in 1906.  Miss Josie Barnett was also there working in 1905 and I do not know her date of birth so either woman on the ends could be her. Although the ebay seller thought this was at the Presbyterian church, I don’t think so. The interior does not match the Presbyterian Church, but could be the Peniel Mission. The signs on the walls do not match the somewhat staid Presbyterian dogma, but are more indicative of a revivalist clergy. “If God Be for us who can be against us” and “The son of man is come to Seek and Save that Which Was Lost” I can’t quite read the other ones. Also, note there is no altar but rather just a stage as if for preaching and note the extremely large Bible on the right.

Oct 3, 1905 local paper in park library;

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Ensign Rebecca Ellery

Rebecca Ellery was born in 1858 in Muskoka and Parry Sound, Ontario. From an early age the family was listed in the Canadian Census as “Bible Christian” and later as Salvation Army. Every reference to her trip to the Klondike in 1898 refers to her as an “experienced missionary” (a euphemism for old). The previous picture that I posted of the Yukon Field Force shows her huddled in furs looking quite old, but actually she was only 40 at the time.

The other woman, Laura Aikenhead said in 1945, that the 1898 party had two detachable canoes that they carried over the Chilkoot Pass on their backs. When they put the canoes together at Lake Bennett, they enjoyed paddling up the lakes and rivers. She said it was the most northerly post the Salvation Army ever had.

Anyway, here is a much later photo of Rebecca. She may have gone back home to Ontario to be with family. Note the “S” on her collar for Salvation Army. Laura said she was a staff captain on the trip.

familysearch, censuses.

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Bernard Behrends

Happy Birthday to Bernard M. Behrends born on this day, February 6, 1862 in Bavaria, Germany and emigrated to the U.S. with his parents in 1878. He came to Alaska in 1887 and worked for James Brady who would later be governor of Alaska. He married Margaret Virginia Pakle in 1889 in Sitka. She was a teacher and missionary at the Sheldon Jackson school. Sheldon Jackson performed the marriage ceremony. They moved to Juneau and opened the store in 1892 and his daughter Beatrice was also born in 1892 in Juneau. He then opened a bank about 1914. He and Margaret died within months of each other in 1936 in Juneau. Seen above is his store in Juneau. His store appeared in the 1902 and 1905 directories here in Skagway, but someone else managed it. Behrends Avenue in northwest Juneau is named for them. Seen above is the interior of the store.

Kinyradio placenames; 1902 and 1905 directories; Evergreen cemetery records.

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Samuel Hall Young

One of the most famous of preachers, Samuel Hall Young was born in 1847 in Butler Pennsylvania and became a Presbyterian Missionary. He was recruited in Pennsylvania by Sheldon Jackson. Hall was a sickly child and saw going to Alaska as an adventure. It would either make him famous or kill him. He came to Alaska July 10, 1878 and was never afflicted with the headaches and pains which he described as “living at a poor dying rate” ever again.

He was the author of Alaska Days with John Muir (Hall was the owner of the little dog Stikeen who hiked with Muir). He was appointed superintendent of Presbyterian missions in Alaska.

He was hit by a streetcar in Clarksburg, West Virginia on this day September 2, 1927.

Read the entire story here:

http://scenicwv.org/sketches/HS12%20Samuel%20Hall%20Young.pdf

Seen above is a photo of him taken in 1914.

Mission Klondike, Sinclair; Mills; Sheldon Jackson book; Fleming Revell Co NY in 1915; 1927 “Hall Young of AK: the Mushing Parson” Autobiography; 1916 The Klondike Clan a tale of the Great Stampede.

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The Princeton wreck


Today is Sheldon Jackson’s birthday and I was researching any connection he may have had with Skagway and found that in 1925 his mission purchased a motor vessel. This little 63-foot Diesel powered boat was used to transport orphans and students around Southeast Alaska. It was “a floating hospital, a children’s bus, and a gospel boat, which will cruise the perilous seas of the Alaskan coast. The little vessel is propelled by a gasoline engine and contains sleeping accommodations for nine persons besides a sick bay. It has been constructed of especially stout material to weather the rough waters of southeastern Alaska. The Princeton will regularly visit Alaskan Coast churches and villages, and in the summer season, the fishing canneries, where a large part of the native population are employed.”

The Princeton apparently was not quite stout enough for Alaskan storms because on a stormy day in October, 1939, it ran aground in Lynn Canal. The captain, John Falconer stayed onboard but the other passengers: two men and three Native orphan girls went ashore on the rocks. Fortunately, they were all rescued, but the ship was reported lost.

Ellensburg Daily record of October 13, 1939:www.presbofak.org; wikipedia

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Rev. Wilmot Gladstone Whitfield


In the 1902 Report of the Commission of Education Rev. Whitfield was Superintendent of the “fine Methodist Episcopal Church and parsonage in Skagway”. They said it was worth about $4500, “In spite of the business depression in Skagway the church has been able to offset removals of valuable accessions to its membership, and is harmonious and hopeful for the future.”
Rev. M.A. Sellon was another preacher who worked with him and in Klukwan to “gather the Chilkat Indians into the Church.”
Wilmot Whitfield was born on this day, March 21, 1872 in either Luana, Clayton, Iowa or the Dakotas where his father, also named Wilmot Whitfield was the presiding Methodist Episcopal pastor for the Dakota territory.
After working in Skagway, Rev. Whitfield moved to Washington where he married and then became Superintendent of Schools in Yakima Valley, Washington in 1918. He died in 1931 in Tacoma.
Above is the Presbyterian Church in Skagway which I believe is the same church they are referring to here.

History of Yakima Valley online; famsearch; WA state records

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Justina M. Dickenson

“Jessie” Dickenson or Dickinson was born on this day, February 17, 1888 in Sacramento, California or possibly Juneau. In the 1900 census in Skagway she was living in the Peniel Mission as an orphan, but her birth date and place were not given. It is assumed she came up in 1899 from Sacramento with Victorine Tooley, a missionary.
She was baptized on June 4, 1901 at St. Saviours Church, actually then just a tent, in Carcross, by Bishop Bompas.
A family site on Genforum says that her mother and father were William and Helen who died in Sacramento before 1900 and that she was baptised at St. Saviours Church in Skagway, but I believe the only St. Saviours (Anglican Church) was in Carcross. (There was a St. Saviours Episcopal Church in Skagway a few years ago, but has no members now, it was only open for a couple of years and met either at the school or at someone’s house.)
It is also possible she was the daughter of George Dickinson, a partner of John Healey’s in Dyea since 1886. George died in November of 1888 in San Francisco.
She died on November 9, 1918 in Portland, Oregon.

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Father Pascal Tosi


Pascal Tosi was born on April 25, 1837 in Santarcangelo di Romagna, Italy. He was one of the first two Jesuits missionaries to set foot in Alaska. As the first Superior of Jesuits in Alaska (from 1886 to 1897) he is regarded as the founder and organizer of the Church in North-Alaska.

Ordained a (diocesan) priest in 1861, Tosi entered the Jesuits the following year in order to be sent to the ‘American mission’. In 1865 he arrived in the United States to serve on the Rocky Mountain Mission. For two decades he proved to be an able missionary to the Indigenous Peoples of the American Northwest.

When in 1886 Archbishop Charles John Seghers set out for northern Alaska on what was meant to be a reconnaissance expedition, he had with him as travelling companions Pascal Tosi and French Jesuit, Louis Robaut. The two were supposed to stay with the archbishop only on a temporary basis. The Jesuits had no intentions at the time of opening a new field of missionary activity in Alaska. However, the murder of Archbishop Seghers (November 1886) changed the situation, and their thinking on the matter. (see my earlier blog on Bishop Seghers)

Tosi and Robaut spent the winter of 1886-87 in Canada at the confluence of the Yukon and Stewart Rivers. When in early 1887, upon entering Alaska, they learned of the death of Archbishop Seghers, Tosi considered himself to be in charge, at least for the time being, of ecclesiastical affairs in Alaska. The following summer he made a trip to the Pacific Northwest to consult with the Superior of the Rocky Mountain Mission, Joseph M. Cataldo, who formally appointed him Superior of the Alaska Mission and entrusted him with the task of developing that mission.

In 1892, he made a trip to Rome. There Pope Leo XIII, moved by Fr. Tosi’s account of the state of the mission in Alaska, told him in their native Italian, Andate, fate voi da papa in quelle regione! (“Go and make yourself the Pope in those regions!”).

On July 27, 1894, the Holy See separated Alaska from the Diocese of Vancouver Island and made it a Prefecture Apostolic with Tosi as its Apostolic Prefect.

By 1897, Tosi was physically worn out by a tough daily life and strenuous labors in an extreme climate. He was succeeded both as Superior of the Alaska Mission and as Prefect Apostolic in March of that year by French Jesuit Jean-Baptiste René (1841-1916). From St. Michael, on September 13, 1897, Tosi sailed, reluctantly, for he hoped to stay on in northern Alaska, for what turned out to be a brief retirement in Juneau. As the ship left the harbor, a salute of four guns was ordered as a manifestation of the universal esteem in which he was held.

Tosi died in Juneau on this day, January 14, 1898 and is buried in the Evergreen Cemetery under the false name of Father Tozier.

Wikipedia; LLORENTE, S. Jesuits in Alaska, Portland, 1969;TESTORE, C.Nella terra del sole a mezzanotte. La fondazione delle missione di Alaska. P. Pasquale Tosi S.J., Venice, 1935; ZAVATTI, S., Missionario ed esploratore nell’Alaska: Padre Pasquale Tosi, S.I., Milan, 1950.; Newadvent.com

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Bishop Charles John Seghers


Seghers was born on December 26 1839 in Ghent, Belgium. Left an orphan at a very early date, he was brought up by his uncles. After having studied in local institutions and in the American Seminary at Louvain, he was ordained priest on 31 May, 1863. He then left for Vancouver Island, where he was engaged missionary work among the pioneer whites and the natives. After several years of hard work establishing missions in the Northwest, the Pope appointed him Archbishop of areas in the Northwest including Alaska.

When Bishop Seghers arrived at Dyea in 1886 he was slapped in the face by the Klanot chief of the Chilkoot tribe. Undeterred, he decided to climb the Chilkoot Pass with four other men, Father Pascal Tosi, Father Aloysius Louis Robaut, the cook Antoine Provost, and a man named Frank Fuller.

When the men reached the confluence of the Yukon River and the Stewart River, Seghers decided the other two priests should spend the winter there, while he and Fuller would press on to Nulato. Father Tosi expressed concerns about this proposal, noting that Fuller had displayed signs of emotional instability. Seghers acknowledged the concern, and how the lateness of the season would likely impact his work. He gave as his reasons for going ahead anyway as his wish to fulfill a promise made to the people of Nulato to return eight years earlier. As they continued down the river, Seghers came to realize that, as traveling conditions and the boat deteriorated, Fuller’s mind did as well. On October 16, he wrote in his diary:
“Peculiar conversation with (Fuller) in which, for the third time, he gives evidence of insanity.”
On November 27, Seghers and Fuller, with two native guides they had acquired at Nuklukayet, decided to spend the night at the fish camp at what is today known as “Bishop’s Rock”. Seghers was in high spirits, laughing frequently, thinking that he would finally reach Nulato the following day. Fuller, however, remained sullen, looking suspiciously at his companions and remaining agitated throughout the night.

Between six and seven the next morning, the party arose and prepared for the final leg of their journey. As Seghers bent over to pick up his mittens, Fuller fired a single shot which killed Seghers instantly. Seghers died on this day November 28, 1886 at the age of 47.

Fuller was then arrested, taken to Sitka for trial and sent to prison for eight and a half years. When let out, in Portland, Oregon, he got into a violent quarrel with a neighbor and was himself murdered.

The remains of the bishop were ultimately transferred to Victoria and he is remembered as “the founder of the Alaska missions.”

-from AK Tribunal Papers, 1904; newadvent.org ; Gates, 1994; “Mgr Seghers,l’apotre de l’Alaska” by Maurice de Baets;

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Bishop William Ridley

William Ridley was born on this day, July 22, 1836 in Devonshire, England.
In 1896 Bishop Ridley (of the Anglican Diocese of Caledonia – the area of Northern British Columbia, Canada) arrived after his travels up the Stikine River with the first miners on their way to the Klondyke. After he returned he looked for someone to carry out missionary work with the miners and Tahltans. Ridley translated the catechism into the Tsimshian language, in collaboration Odille Morison, a Tsimshian. This became the so-called “Ridley orthography,” the language’s first practical spelling system.

Previous to coming to the Klondyke he had been working in India. He was Bishop of Lake Bennett, Tagish, and Carcross 1898, but retired to England where he died in 1911.
Ridley Island, now an industrial site near Prince Rupert, British Columbia, is named for him, as are numerous Tsimshian extended families with the Ridley surname in Metlakatla, Alaska, and in Hartley Bay and Kitkatla, British Columbia.

Yukon genealogy; “From sea to sea the Dominion” by Tucker; Wikipedia