Dwight B. Fowler


On this day, August 8, 1897, Mr Fowler was found on the Chilkoot trail with a 100 pound pack on his back, drowned. I shudder to think how this happened…
His body may have been shipped out – another good reason to belong to a fraternal organization that promised to bring a brother home if he died in some god-forsaken place.

Bond p. 26; Skagway death record; Wells

Patrick Comer and John Stanley

On this day, August 2, 1903 two men went out fishing and never returned. They both drowned when they ran into trouble out in Lynn Canal. Patrick Comer was buried in the Skagway Gold Rush Cemetery but Mr. Stanley or Standley was shipped down to Seattle to be buried.
Stanley was the first Mayor of Skagway and joined the Arctic Brotherhood in 1899, he was 50 years old when he died. Comer was a fisherman and was 45 years old when he died.

Also died on this day was Herman Meyer, famous in this town for his building “Meyer’s Meat Market” which is now under reconstruction by the National Park Service on the corner of 5th and State Streets.
Meyer was a butcher, owned the Arctic Meat Company, and also managed the Arctic Telephone Company. He moved to Valdez in 1903 and died in Alaska on August 2, 1923.

Skagway death records; 1900 census; 1902 directory.

Orin Howard Babcock


Born on this day, July 26, 1874 in Aurora Illinois, Orin moved to Port Angeles and ran a dairy there, he later operated a large dairy farm in Eden Valley.

In 1898 he joined the throngs of goldrushers and came to Skagway.
He moved back to Ellensburg, Washington where he died in a car accident on Christmas Day 1948.

His great grandfather Orin Babcock was from New York and was coincidentally distantly related to my husband’s side of the family, the Babcocks of New York.

Isn’t genealogy fun? Here is a picture of the proud family coat of arms.

Olypen.com Pioneer obituaries

John Harte McGraw

Born on October 4, 1850, in Penobscot County, Maine, John McGraw arrived in Seattle in 1876 broke and friendless. While growing up in Maine, McGraw’s father drowned, his mother remarried, and he found himself running a general store at age 17. He arrived in Seattle from Maine during the 1870s at the age of 26, and got a job as a clerk in the Occidental Hotel. He joined Seattle’s tiny police force and that was the beginning of his successful Pacific Northwest career in law enforcement, business, and politics.

John McGraw’s Seattle police job was occasionally exciting. Those young years, the wide-open town saw the toleration of a certain level of lawlessness. On January 17, 1882, businessman George B. Reynolds was threatened by two armed men as he walked down the street. Reynolds refused to cooperate with the robbers and was fatally shot in the chest. Reynold’s murder aroused Seattleites who caught the suspects and turned them over to authorities.

A mob formed, demanding custody of the accused. Seattle Chief of Police McGraw and King County sheriff Lewis Wykoff (1828-1882), both of whom were armed, held firm, but the next morning at the preliminary hearing the mob grabbed the prisoners and hanged them from two maple trees in Occidental (Pioneer) Square. Then they returned to the jail, extracted another prisoner, and hanged him as well. (Wykoff died suddenly of heart disease two days later.)

John McGraw ran for governor in 1892 with the slogan “Build the Lake Washington Canal and Build it for 1893.” (Ground was broken for the canal in 1911 and it opened for navigation on May 8, 1917.)

During his term as governor, McGraw was considered “a zealous friend of the University of Washington,” leading the effort to purchase a tract of land for $28,313.75 that became catalyst for the future campus. The cornerstone of the first building was laid during ceremonies on July 4, 1894.

Similar to many Pacific Northwesterners, McGraw was bitten by the “gold bug” following the July 17, 1897, arrival from Alaska of the steamship Portland with its “ton of gold.” Following his term as governor, and a spell of ill health, McGraw headed north as a first class passenger aboard the famous Portland on her return trip to Alaska. He arrived in Skagway in 1897. In 1900, he returned without striking it rich, but wiser and in better health.

John McGraw died on this day, July 23, 1910 in Seattle. After his death, a bronze statue of him, made in Paris by sculptor Richard E. Brooks, was erected in Seattle’s Times Square.

Historylink.org

Duncan B. McFadden


Mr. McFaddeen was born in Cape Breton, Whycocomagh, Inverness, Nova Scotia in 1850. He moved to El Cajon California by 1880. According to the El Cajon historical website, in 1882 Duncan McFadden and his wife built a house and blacksmith shop on the main road across from the Knox hotel. He died on this day, June 7, 1898 in Skagway from meningitis and is buried in the Gold Rush Cemetery.

http://www.elcajonhistory.org/echs_timeline.htm

Jonas Fred Whitcomb Jr.


Mr. Whitcomb was born in Keene New Hampshire in 1873 and came to the Klondike in search of gold. He died on this day, May 25, 1898 at the south end of Lake Tutshi, accidently by gunshot. He was buried at the south end of Windy Arm.

“In May 1898, Whitcomb and A. P. White, of Houghton, Massachsetts, went ahead to clear a trail from Tutshi Lake to Windy Arm. On the 25th, while leaning over to start a rock rolling down the hill (possibly during a hunting excursion), Whitcomb’s revolver slipped out of its holster and fell to the ground, discharging it. The bullet hit Whitcomb in the chest, killing him immediately.

On May 27th, he was buried in a Masonic ceremony at the south end of Windy Arm. His father sent a brass plaque for the grave, and it was mounted on a piece of slate. His death was briefly reported in the July 2, 1898, edition of The Klondike Nugget.

There appears to have been two other burials beside Whitcomb – right beside on the left is a slate marker with “H. M. H.” chiselled into a piece of slate by the same hand as the initials “J. F. W. Jr.” on the back of Whitcomb’s slate marker, while several feet to the right is an apparent exhumation. The 1898 diary of Stewart L. Campbell reports that on Monday, May 9th, 1898, “a Mrs. Howe [was] buried at end of lake. 72 years old”, and on May 15, “3 men drowned around the point.” He also reports that he took a photos of the graves at the south end of the lake, so the deaths he reports are possibly related to this site.

The graves are accessed from the South Klondike Highway – there is lots of room to park at the south end of Windy Arm . There is no trail, and you have to wade across two creeks (waist deep at mid-summer water levels) and crash through the forest to avoid lakeshore cliffs.”

quoted from Murray Lundberg’s website “explorenorth.com”

Denzaburo Nakano


Mr. Nakano is one of the few Asian people buried with markers in the Skagway cemeteries. He died on this day, May 21, 1900 of typhoid. His marker is in Japanese and can be found up the hill behind Soapy’s marker.

Skagway Death Record

John Williams


John Williams was probably not his real name, since he was born in 1870 in Russia and came to Skagway shortly after the Gold Rush. He managed the St James Hotel for decades.
The St James Hotel is famous for a meeting which occurred between Michael J. Heney and the scouts sent from British investors to determine if the building of the railroad was possible. Despite the story that they came to agreement based on Heney’s influence, there had actually been years of scouting, measuring and evaluations on the project by the British. In the book “The White Pass” Minter spends chapters – at least 1/4 of the very large book describing those years of efforts.
No, the investors saw in Heney someone who had the determination and on-hands experience to carry the project of building the White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad to completion.
Back to John Williams, he lived in Skagway until he died on this day, May 9, 1938 and is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery. Pictured above is the St James Hotel that sits adjacent to and just behind the Skagway Hardware Store on 4th Avenue.

William E. Britt


Mr. Britt was a druggist born in 1873 in Norway. Like many Scandinavians (my grandparents included) he came to Chicago. From there he came to Skagway in 1898 to seek his fortune. He stayed for many years and was a member of the Arctic Brotherhood and Skagway City Council. He was also very involved in gardening. He ran a drug store in a building which is still standing, but forgotten, on 5th Avenue. It is known as the Board of Trade Saloon, but it was acquired by the city and used for many years as the city hall and as the library. It sits next to the old Mabel G’s, between there and the “Wandering Wardrobe” little crib building.
Mr. Britt eventually moved to Juneau and died there on this day, May 4, 1932 and is buried in the Evergreen Masonic Cemetery.

The picture above is of that building when it was used as city hall.
censuses; Skagway News; AB book

Francis Mims


Although we know very little about Francis Mims, we do know that he was probably born in Oregon about 1893 and definitely died in Skagway on this day, April 29, 1898 at the age of 5 from meningitis. Francis’ remains were shipped home to Oregon.

The Mims family did not stay until the 1900 census in Skagway. There are family records online that point to the Matlock family in Pendleton where Nellie Mims was living with her father and her kids: Hazel born 1896 in Oregon, Lulu born 1899 in Alaska, Pauline born 1894 in Oregon and Wesley born 1897 in Oregon. Oregon records show that Nellie divorced her husband Edwin in 1901. If that entire family came to Skagway in 1898, they were lucky to have only lost one child. The photo above is of Pendleton Oregon in 1905.

UPDATE:
Edwin was convicted on November 4, 1899 of manslaughter and was sentenced to 5 years in prison and $1000 fine. He had been involved in a barfight with a bouncer when Mims pulled out a gun and shot J. Henry Miller.
On April 10, 1901 Governor T.T. Geer of Oregon granted him a full pardon. Presumably that is why Nellie divorced him. Edwin died in 1925 in Tonopah, Nevada.

http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~szmatlok/Bailey/3-4.html;
Citizen Call of Phillipsburg Montana of April 10, 1901 – online.
http://www.archive.org/stream/reportscasesdec45oregoog/reportscasesdec45oregoog_djvu.txt