Tag: Atlin

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Alfred Cyril Hirschfeld


Mr. Hirschfeld was born on this day June 8, 1866 in London, England. He came to Dyea and Atlin in 1898 and took many famous photographs including one of the goldrushers heading up the Golden Stairs.
He worked the Alaska and Klondike towns in 1898 and moved to Atlin by April 1899. Hirschfeld’s Atlin photo studio, seen above, was destroyed in the August 1900 fire. He purchased an Atlin Claim in December 1900 and sold it the following year. He was also the manager of the Atlin Lake Lumber Company that year.

Hirschfeld married and settled in Vancouver, but appears not to have practiced photography professionally there. He died on November 8, 1926 in San Francisco, California.

Cameraworkers website; BC archives.

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Alexander Grey


Alexander Grey, known as Sandy, lived in New Westminster, British Columbia but was on his way to Atlin when he checked into the St. James Hotel. The St. James Hotel building is still standing and is directly behind the Hardware Store on 4th. Sandy Grey was born in 1858 in Ontario but had moved to B.C. by 1880. At the age of 41, he died of heart failure on this day, May 26, 1899 in Skagway. His brother George was in New Westminster but it was decided to bury him here in the Gold Rush Cemetery. The headstone, obviously replaced is wrong on two things, the spelling of his name and his age, both of which are from the census and death records. I don’t know what the little saying on the bottom says, I will have to go up and check it out.
Does his ghost still haunt the St. James? Ask one of the hardware employees.

Skagway death/coroners inquest record; 1880 BC census.

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William Henry Trewolla Olive

Happy Birthday to Mr. W.H.T. Olive, an architect, born on September 29, 1865 in Truro, Cornwall, England. He was the architectural helper to the famous Rattenbury who built the Parliament in Victoria among other buildings.
Olive was the manager of the Bennett Lake & Klondyke Navigation Company where he managed passengers and provisions and was responsible for two all-important kinds of shipment: mail and liquor. He lived in Atlin until 1904 when he moved to Carbon, Alberta.
He died in 1940 in Calgary.

His amazing memoir of his time in the Gold Rush is told in his book “The Right Way On” which he wrote in 1939. This photo is in the frontpiece of the book, and boy was he one sexy looking guy!

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Major Lorenzo Dow Kinney


Major Kinney arrived on the Steamship Elder in 1897. He joined the Arctic Brotherhood and built a bridge over the Taiya River. He had the “Chilkoot Tramway Company” one of several companies that built tramways up the Chilkoot Trail. He later platted the little town of Atlin.
Born on this day, August 26, 1855 in Jacksonville, New Brunswick, Canada he moved around quite a bit. After leaving Alaska he moved to North Bend Oregon.

Sight unseen, Lorenzo singled out Coos Bay as a development plum ripe for the picking. Coos Bay was already a burgeoning seaport with lumber, shipbuilding and fishing as solid economic foundations.
Kinney was fresh from failures in Alaska and Canada, and had no money. Still, Kinney had rich friends and an intense personality plus a persuasive speaking style that readily secured money and credit. From 1902 to 1914, he was Coos Bay’s chief promoter and pitchman or “instigator,” as he preferred to be called. He was a man with a prolific capacity for words and whose name was a household word around Coos Bay. But by any measure, Kinney fit the category “odd.”

According to a posting on genforum, he was something of a rogue and spent time in the Oregon State Mental Hospital: Diagnosis: manic-depression. He died there of pneumonia on Aug. 9, 1920.

The book “Instigator: The Troubled Life of Lorenzo Dow Kinney”, 2008, by Richard and Judith Wagner chronicles Kinney’s life. It reviews his beginning in New Brunswick his time in Virginia, Utah, Alaska, British Columbia and focuses on his years 1902-1914 on the Coos Bay in Oregon where he promoted railroads, streetcars and land.

Picture above is of a Tram on the Chilkoot Trail, possibly his.

1900 census; National Park Service Dyea info; genforum Kinney family; Minter; Oregonlive article by John Terry from October 30, 2009.

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Robert Purves McLennan

Robert McLennan was a lumber businessman. He came to the area in 1899 and had lumber companies at both Atlin and Bennett. Although many stampeders built their own boats at Lake Bennett to float to Dawson, after the first few months, the nearby forests had been cut and it opened the opportunity for boat builders and lumber companies to operate.
McLennan was born in Pictou, Nova Scotia in 1861, and he died on this day July 27, 1927 in Vancouver.

The picture above is of a steam powered lumber mill. Another lumber company, owned by Albert Kerry packed a steam engine over the Chilkoot Pass to set up at Lake Bennett. Kerry and his brothers later used the engine to build their own boat and go to Dawson.
These steam engines were very dangerous and had a nasty habit of exploding at the worst moment. Reed’s g-grand uncle, John McCluskey was killed by one in 1868 in Owaneco, Illinois. This was after he had survived 4 years of the Civil War.

from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography online; personal genealogy story

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Rev. John Pringle


The Reverend John Pringle was a Presbyterian minister who came to Skagway in 1898 and went on to build the first hospital, St. Andrews, in Atlin 1900.
Pringle was born in 1852 but died on this day April 20, 1935 in British Columbia.
His brother George was also a Presbyterian Minister (who married Klondike Kate to her husband) and his brother James was a Sergeant with the NWMP who delivered mail from Dawson to Skagway. His sister Lucy worked as a nurse in the Atlin Hospital in 1922.
Quite a family!
The picture above taken by Anton Vogee in 1899 shows Pringle, perhaps his sister and the Presbyterian Church in Atlin.

explorenorth.com; Mitchum p 81; Klondike Mission, Sinclair; Mills; Yukon site

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The Golden Gate



A bad weekend for the Atlin-Skagway Mail carriers. On the 28th of November 1902, John “Jack” McIntyre and Joseph Abbey and their mail team all drowned while crossing Atlin Lake at the “Golden Gate”. The Golden Gate is a narrow passage leading into Taku Inlet and Atlin, about 42 miles south of Tagish, an area said to have rich deposits of quartz gold.
The photo above shows the tramway that was built to connect the Taku Inlet with Atlin Lake. The little Dutchess engine which sits in Carcross used to be used on this line.

From the Geological Survey of Canada, 1926; ExploreNorth; Graves “On the WP Payroll”; rootsweb postings.

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Unlikely survivors of the Princess Sophia


On October 24, 1918 the Princess Sophia with all 356 human passengers onboard sank after running aground on the rocks at Vanderbilt reef in the Lynn Canal. There were however, two non-human survivors: one was a dog that jumped ship and swam ashore to save itself (very un-Lassie like, surely he could have dragged a couple of women and children ashore with him).
The other survivor is less known: Polly the Parrot.
Now Captain Alexander and his supposed wife left the mine near Atlin to head south for a holiday (like many of us do these days). Along the way he dropped off his parrot, Polly, who he claimed was over 45 years old, at the hotel in Carcross which also had a bar. When the good Captain and “wife” did not return Polly was left in Carcross where he spouted obscenities at the patrons for the next 50 years. When Polly died he was buried in the Carcross cemetery with a little brass plaque near the gate. Over the years people have added little toys to the grave, although I admit I haven’t been there in 2 years.
When the courts were settling the estate of Captain Alexander, his wife and daughter in England set the record straight that they were not with him on the Princess Sophia. Then who was this mysterious woman who drowned? Hmmm, the clot plickens….

In this photo Capt James Alexander is seated in the middle and “Mrs. Alexander” is holding the bird in the doorway.