Category: Merchants

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A story of two orphan Jenji’s

Jenjiro Ikuta was the adopted son of the Keeler family here in Skagway in 1900. Frank Truman Keeler was a wealthy man in Skagway – a moneylender, optician, jeweler and landlord of brothels on 7th Avenue. Jenjiro was born on this day, November 14, 1881 or 1883 in Japan but said that he came to Skagway from Oakland, California in the gold rush. He may have come to Skagway with family who died, but who knows.
Anyway, he learned jewelery from Frank Keeler and started his own store, Totem Jewelery which was here until about 1920. He married Lena Estella Worth from Michigan and they had three kids, Carol a son born 1918, Edna a daughter born 1910, and Truman a son born 1915. In 1920 Jenjiro and his son Truman decided to go back to Japan while Lena took Carol and Edna to Oregon. (Both Truman and Carol married and their descendents have posted most of this information on genforum and rootsweb). Lena remarried and later died in Kennewick, Washington. Perhaps Jenjiro stayed in Japan, as no one seems to know and their are no records of him back in the states.

When I was down south we went to a funeral service for my father in law, Bill McCluskey, who went to Japan right after the war ended. The story was told that when he was on a train he found a child curled up in a pile of rags. He asked where the parents were and was told by the train personnel that he was an orphan. So Bill “adopted” him for a year and fed and paid for him to go to school. At the end of his service time in Japan, he collected money for little “Jenji” to continue in school. He never was able to reconnect with him. I wonder how many times he wished he could have found out what happened to little Jenji!

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William J. Blackwell


William J. Blackwell was born in 1843 in New Jersey. He married Adelaide M. Blood in 1883 in California and owned bottling and brewing companies in Seattle and Slocan, British Columbia before he came to Skagway in 1898. Here he started the B&B Bottling company with Mr. S.E. Beazley. He moved on probably to Nome where he was a member of the Eagles until 1915. He was also a member of the Arctic Brotherhood from 1898 to 1902 in Skagway. One account says he died in Alaska on this day, October 5, 1922. Washington state census records show him in a Sedro Wooley mental institution in 1930 and that he died there in May 1930. Not sure which is correct, but nevertheless he did have a business here on 5th Avenue until 1907. He manufactured and bottled soda water, sarsaparilla, ginger ale, champagne cider, sarsaparilla and iron, as well as all kinds of mineral waters with syrup.

Washington state records; business directories; 1900 census; Daily Alaskan 1900.

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Calantha Alica Bracktle


Happy Birthday to little Calantha who was born on this day, September 28, 1896 in Angel’s Camp, Calaveras County, California. Her father, Wallace was a jeweler from San Francisco who seemed to follow the gold. In 1887 he was a watchmaker in Sacramento. He and his wife, Annie Dorothea Westfall and Calantha came to Skagway from Oakland about 1899. Calantha may have attended school in 1900 when they were here for the census, or maybe not.
Wallace invented a portable weighing scale and received a patent on it in October of 1899. It would have been a good thing to have in the field where gold dust was the method of payment.
They moved back to Oakland where he was a jeweler. Calantha married in 1916 and had a son. She died in 1971 in Fairfield, Solano County, California.

1900 Skagway Census, 1880 San Francisco Census; pfawr and mytrees online

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William Smith Cobleigh


William Cobleigh was the assistant postmaster in Skagway in 1897 and part of 1898 until he moved to Dawson. He succumbed to typhoid once he got there. Should have stayed in Skagway. Here is the obituary from his home state where he was an esteemed birder:

“THE Cooper Ornithological Club has suffered the loss of an esteemed member in the death of Mr. William S. Cobleigh, who was perhaps best known to our readers as a worker in Illinois ornithology, although, for three years past he had been an active member of the Club. His excellent writings on the birds of his native State, Illinois, in many of the older magazines have made his name familiar to all the older workers. In August 1897 he left California for the gold fields of Alaska, where, a year later he was stricken with typhoid fever and died at Dawson [on this day] September 14, 1898.

The “Klondike Nugget” says: “William S. Cobleigh, formerly assistant postmaster at Skaguay, who came to Dawson in July last and who recently died at St. Mary’s Hospital, was buried Sunday afternoon (Sept. 25) in the Dawson cemetery under the auspices of the Order of Elks, attended also by members of the Masonic Fraternity and Knights of Pythias, of which organizations he was a member. In life he was a mgnificent specimen of physical manhood, being over six feet in height, and in good health, weighing 225 pounds. Contracting typhoid fever, despite the most diligent attention medically and otherwise he succumbed to the dread disease. At the cemetery a simple but beautiful service was rendered, the Rev. R. J. Bowen officiating. Bro. Captain Jack Crawford, the famous poet scout, made some feeling remarks after which Bro. George Noble of Seattle Lodge of Elks sang Nearer My God to Thee, ‘his magnificent voice and the beautiful rendition of this hymn touching the hearts of all. It is expected to forward his remains to his former home at the opening of navigation next spring.’

William S. Cobleigh, whose portrait we present, was born in Pekin, Illinois, August 30, 1868, being 30 years of age at the time of his demise. In 1880 he moved to Peoria, receiving his education in the public schools of that city and Pekin, after which he spent two years at Knox College, Galesburg Ill. In 1889 he removed to Canton, Ill., where he followed farming til his departure for California in 1897. He was married to Miss Jessie Justus of St. Cloud Minn., on Dec. 1892, but no children survive him. He leaves a wife in Peoria, Illinois, father, mother and sister in Los Angeles and a brother in Canton, Ill. He was an authority on the birds of Illinois and donated his large collection to the Peoria Scientific Association a few years since.”

Bachelder diary; jstor.org; The Condor Vol 1 Issue 1 obituary online by Chester Barlow; familysearch

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Charles Spurgeon Moody


C.S. Moody was born in 1867 in Kirkwood Illinois. He came to Seattle in 1889 to work in banking. He then came to Skagway around 1897 and worked with Hawkins to purchase land for the railroad. He and some investors started the First Bank of Skagway which later went broke in 1899. He was involved in some lawsuits after that. He moved to Washington and started another bank and worked as a special deputy state bank examiner for other banks that went under in 1917.
In his book Alias Soapy Smith, Jeff Smith says that some people believed Moody to be one of Soapy’s “silent partners.” In Seattle, where Moody went in August of 1898, he strongly and emphatically denied the story that he was run out of Skagway by the citizens who thought he was involved with Soapy. He said “All talk detrimental to my reputation was started by my enemies…” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer 08/05/1898, p. 6)
Still, there was no money or gold from Soapy’s estate when his wife Mary came to Skagway to claim his effects. Certainly there was a conspiracy to clean out his estate by some. Perhaps Moody was an innocent that was thrown in with the other clan members. In any event, he returned to Skagway for a short time until the bank went under.
Charles Moody stayed in Washington, married and had a family and died on April 28, 1956.

Klondike Centenial Scrapbook, p.94 ad; Minter; Victoria Daily Colonist 6.6.99;Rootsweb posting; Washington death record.

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List of Lawyers

Here is a list of 59 lawyers or attorneys in Skagway in the early days:

Acklen, Adams, Agner, Barnes, Bennett, Blackett, Bowman, Boyce, Burton, Carrier, Cassidy, Church, Corliss, Dautoff, Day, Dixon, Dillon, Elliot, Erwin, Goldschmidt, Grant, Gunnison, Hall, Hamilton, Hartman, Harding, Hartners, Helmcken, Hills, Jennings, Knapp, Lightfoot, Lilly, Lovell, Marquam, McEneny, Miller, O’Donnell, Ostrander, Paulsell, Perkins, Pratt, Price, Rasmuson, Sehlbrede, Shackelford, Shorthill, Shoup, Smith, Stevens, Taylor, Tupper, VanHorn, Webb, Weldon, Wilcoxen, Williams, Winn, Young.

Most had some other profession such as retail, lumber, teaching, hospitality, secretary, tax collection, judgeship, mining, hay & grain and engineering. Some worked for Soapy (Van Horn, Weldon, Dixon, and O’Donnell) and some worked for White Pass (Elliott, Harding, Cassidy, Hartman, and Helmcken).

Seen above is a likely set of characters.

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Cheechako money

William Hiscock related that one day while walking in Dawson City he saw a man throwing silver coins out into the river. Someone had just purchased goods in his store and paid in Cheechako (silver) money. “He said nothing but would have preferred the gold dust currency so he calmly takes the money and walks out to the bank of the river and disposes of it, so that it will not come into the shop again.”

Hiscock said that everybody carried their gold dust in a small buckskin bag and when a purchase was made in any of the stores, large or small, you poured the gold into a small tin scoop and then shook it in to a small set of gold scales. The amounts for convenience were dollars and cents stamped on the weights.

At the time gold dust was worth about $16 an ounce. Today gold is in the $1750-$1800 range per ounce. Seen above is a fellow paying for a loaf of bread with gold dust.

A Kiwi in the Klondike by Hiscock; Yukon archives.

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Duped!


Ok, two more good citizens duped into investing hundreds of dollars in the “Evanston Klondike Gold Mining Company”. The so called promoter convinced both George B. Winter Jr., a successful grocer and Dr. Josiah Jones, a physician and surgeon, both of Evanston Illinois to give him the money up front to purchase supplies and set up camp for them. He was also supposed to help them stake gold claims. When they arrived in Alaska, the promoter and their money was no where to be found. Shocking!
Seen above is their camp at Sheep Camp.

BL Singley photo of 1898 Univ of Fairbanks; Evanston directory 1897

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E.A. Harnson


Mr. Harnson was a business associate of H.R. Latimer who was the director of the Horton Bank in Seattle. (Dexter Horton Bank, the first bank in Seattle, became Seafirst Bank and is now Bank of America).
Harnson was presumably from Braddock, Pennsylvania and died on this day, July 27, 1904 (June 29, 1904 according to the Washington records) in the Golden North Hotel in Skagway of heart failure. His body was shipped back to Bradford, or Braddock,  Pennsylvania for burial. Curiously, his friend’s employer, Dexter Horton the epitome of a rags-to-riches pioneer, died the next day, in his Seattle home on July 28, 1904.
I have never heard of a ghost in the Golden North, aside from the made-up story of Mary the ghost.

Skagway Death Record (E.L. Hanson) ; Washington death record online (E.A. Harnson)

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Skagway Monkey Business


In her book of stories from the Gold Rush, Ella Lung Martinsen in “Trail to North Star Gold” remembered an organ grinder in Skagway in 1898.
She said the monkey was putting on a “Soapy Smith street show”. It was dressed in a tiny man’s suit, a red striped vest, a derby hat and high topped boots. Across his chest dangled an imitation nugget watch chain, and in his belt was stuck a toy pistol.
“…His little green eyes roamed furtively over the crowd, as he kept up his odd little jig. The gypsy organ grinder energetically pumped out lively, bouncy tunes, but “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” seemed to be a favorite with the crowd. It greatly pleased the monkey too, who almost went berserk when the tempo was increased to a fever pitch. Jumping up and down, flapping his arms, he grabbed up tiny pieces of soapy from a container and flung them in wild frenzy at the audience, just like a jungle beast throwing coconuts! Of course his antics hightly pleased the crowd, They dodged and grabbed and got souvenir soap. At quick intervals, the little fellow hopped down from his box and passed his hat among the crowd for donations. When the hat was full of nickles and dimes, the monkey would rush back to his master. Greedily, he would sweep the contents into a small tin box, then he would pat the little fellow and give him peanuts.”

I haven’t seen an organ grinder with a monkey since about 1969 and that was at Knott’s Berry Farm in Anaheim. As kids, I remember my brothers and I would beg pennies from our dad to give to the monkey who would grab them and put them in his little bag. Seen above is a picture from 1892 but not from Skagway.

Trail to North Star Gold by Martinsen p 24-25.