Stories and Folklore from Skagway, Alaska
Gettysburg address by President Lincoln.
The address given at Gettysburg by Mr. Lincoln was only 35 years before the Gold Rush that hit Skagway with thousands of hopefuls. Some of these goldrushers would remember the date just as we might remember what we were doing in 1987! It doesn’t seem so long ago really.
This picture of page 315 of theUnited States Coast Pilot ALASKA Dixon Entrance to Yakutat Bay 9th Edition show the Wharfage Dockage and other facts about the harbor facilities in 1941. Also mentions the depth of the bay in places.
Nellie Flynn (1869-1935) lived with her family in Skagway. Her husband is featured in another post. Her grand-daughter has requested that anyone who might have a better photograph of the above image please contact her: Kim Metcalfe at kimmetcalfe@gmail.com
This from the online book: 20th Annual Report, British Columbia Board of Trade
I recently saw this Case and Draper photograph of Mr & Mrs McIntyre online. John was a postal carrier for White Pass on November 28, 1902 when he drowned in Atlin Lake. This according to an account by Graves in his book “On the White Pass Payroll” and also on a Rootsweb posting. His grave is in the Atlin Cemetery – Findagrave # 78004440
Seattle based photographer caught many cool images of people coming and going to the Klondike from the docks. Here in this picture from the Elmer A. Rasmuson Library collection at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, is a picture taken in July 1899 of nearly $4 Million in gold dust packed into crates. Labeled as the Royal Canadian Force Collection, note the Mountie on the left. Everyone looks sooooo serious!
I took this photo last year when I visited the Carcross Visitor Center. It is interesting that it shows 4 Sikh workers there in 1906. They were part of a White Pass & Yukon Route Section Crew. I do not have any more information on them, but if anyone has more to add, please add a comment.
George G. Shaw was born in Long Lake, New York on July 15, 1872. At the age of 15 he started working as a guide to sportsmen in the Adirondacks. In 1894 he went to Seattle and was thus poised to head to the Klondike in the Gold Rush of 1897 with two fellow goldrushers, Clem Frazier and Alvin Cook. They arrived in Skagway and headed up the Chilkoot trail with thousands of others. They made it to Dawson and made a claim but when he arrived back home, he had little to show monetarily, but a wealth of stories for his family. He traveled across Alaska by himself and took a whaling schooner to Siberia. He married in 1920 and passed away in 1958 back in Vermont.
I purchased the book today at a Farmer’s Market and will happily sell it to anyone who is interested. $15 plus shipping.
Herein is a fascinating and tragic family story of one of the foremost Historians of Skagway and the Gold Rush written and posted online in 2006 by Heidi Gurcke Donald.
In the midst of the 1918 Influenza epidemic and World War One, another big marine disaster occurred in the cold waters of the Lynn Canal.
Capt. Charles John Bloomquist was a passenger on the night of the grounding of the Sophia. The story of the Princess Sophia loss on October 24, 1918 in a blinding snowstorm, has been well documented, with a number of White Pass employees onboard heading back to Victoria for the end of the season. One report in the Daily Colonist on November 3, 1918, stated that only 2 of the victims drowned, the rest suffocated in the crude oil spilling from the ship.
I was curious to know a bit more about the Swedish Captain Bloomquist. He was born in 1867 in Stockholm, Sweden and came to Canada in 1883. He lived with his wife, Catherine at Shawnigan Lake, a small farming community 28 miles north of Victoria. He was listed there in the 1909 directory of Vancouver Island, also he kept a room at the Dominion Hotel in Victoria. He left behind 4 sisters but no children.
He had worked for 20 years on the boats in the Yukon. He was the master of the White Pass Steamboat Dawson. Before that he had worked for the Canadian Government on the Quadra and the Sir James Douglas.
The Princess Alice brought many of the bodies back to Victoria on the 12 of November 1918. On November 15 he was buried in Victoria with the Victoria Columbia Masonic Lodge as pallbearers. Rev. F.A.B. Chadwick gave the service. Catherine is buried with him at the Ross Bay Cemetery, she died November 27, 1969 at the age of 92! Here is a picture that Anne Scott made of the grave in Victoria! Posted on Find A Grave for this story – Thank you so Much Anne!!!
from the Daily Colonist October 29, 1918