Category: Merchants

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“Cat Man of the Yukon”


James H. Wheeler was born on this day, July 25, 1871 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He worked for the Chicago Portrait Company in the late 1800’s on the West Coast. He was based out of Portland and met Father Duncan who founded the mission at Metlakatla. As a friend of Fr. Duncan he was invited to Metlakatla where he did business and was the first “white man” to stay overnight in the village. (Wouldn’t we love to see some of those portraits!)
Seeing another business opportunity in Skagway, he bought up stray cats in Portland for 50 cents each, brought them to Skagway and sold them to dance hall girls for as much as $300 each. This earned him the apt nickname of the “Cat Man of the Yukon”. If he thought of himself as a cat wrangler, perhaps that is why he moved not long after, to Wrangell. There he bought the Ft. Wrangell Hotel, sent for his fiance, and started a drug store which he ran for several years. The family also ran businesses in Petersburg. James died in January 1974 in Seattle at the age of 103.

Is this the source of the term “Wheeler Dealer”?

Family website: sandyhershelman.com

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Adison J. Hill


Adison Hill’s wife, Divena (born 1870 in Iowa) died on April 1, 1898 from puerperal fever or childbirth fever, in Everett, Washington. Adison came to Skagway with his three daughters to manage the Allen Brothers Hardware Store on Broadway.
Hill was the former Postmaster of Arlington, Washington.
On this morning, July 18, 1899 he shot himself in the head at the hardware store. He had for some time been despondent, and often expressed the wish that Mr. George Allen would return from Arlington soon and relieve him. Hill was thirty years of age. His remains were sent to Everett for burial. I wonder what became of the three girls? I found the two older girls, Eva and Helen, living with grandparents in 1910 on a Washington State census, but the baby girl born in March 1898 is missing.
The Allen Brothers Hardware store from 1898 to 1903 was at the location of the former Moe’s Bar.
Seen above is a cute picture of Mae Busch who was an actress who played with Oliver Hardy in early movies. She has nothing to do with the Hill family.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer 7/29/1899; rootsweb posting; Skagway death record.

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Edward Howard Hatch


Ed Hatch was born in 1872 in West Farmington, Ohio. He came to Skagway from Port Angeles, Washington in 1897 and was Secretary for the Brackett Road as well as a river pilot in the Yukon. He opened a store in Skagway which he ran until 1901 when he moved back to Washington and opened a clothing store in Bellingham. In 1913 he became the manager for the Pacific Brewing & Malting Company. However, prohibition was only a year and a half down the way, so his tenure there was short lived. He became a prominent industrialist in Everett and in 1917 moved to Seattle where he managed a manufacturing concern until his retirement in 1931.
Hatch was a counselor for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, at one time president of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and vice president and manager of the Arctic Club at his death. He died on this day, July 7, 1942 in Seattle.
Seen above is an ad from the B&M Company – they just don’t make ads like this anymore!

1900 Skagway census; Skagway News 12.31.1897; 1910 Everett census; Olympia pioneers website; Illustrated History of the Everett Brewing Company.

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George R. Dedman


Mr. Dedman was born in 1858 in Missouri and came to Skagway from Portland. He first started a laundry here in 1898. His wife, Clara, joined him several months after his arrival. She landed two days after Soapy Smith was shot. They purchased a two story mercantile building, moved it from State Street to Broadway and turned it into the Golden North Hotel in 1907. They had two kids, Henry Alaska and Nelda. Henry got into photography early on and the Dedman’s store is still in business on Broadway in the summer. His granddaughter and great granddaughter still live in Skagway year round and also have a store on State Street called Granny’s Gallery.
George died on this day June 27, 1925 in Skagway and is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery with Clara, Henry and his wife Bessie.
Seen above is Betsy acting goofy in front of Granny’s Gallery.

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Levi, Strauss and Company

Mr. F.A. Insly ran the Levi, Strauss Company sample room in Skagway, probably around 1900. A ‘sample room’ provided display space for the wares of visiting salesmen called ‘drummers’. This Barley photograph shows the various options someone would have in ordering. Reminds me of catalogs today and ordering online.

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Joseph Chisel


Joe Chisel was a member of the Arctic Brotherhood in 1905 and ran a gambling house and later a General Drug Store in Haines. Seen above is the store he ran with his brother in the 1920’s in Haines. Joe was born on this day, June 6, 1868 in Bavaria Germany
and came to the U.S. with his mother, Frances, in 1869 when he was nine months old. He came to Alaska during the 1897 Gold Rush and changed the spelling of his name to Chisel from Schisel.
His brother Albert was born in Wisconsin (see earlier blog on his untimely death in Haines over a dog.) Joseph died in 1946 in Portland.

family website;

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Daniel Hachey the shoemaker


Daniel Hachey was born on May 11, 1849 in Bathurst, New Brunswick.
This photo taken by Barley shows Hachey, a cobbler, standing with a shoe and hammer in his hands next to another man in front of his tent store in White Pass City. If your shoe was coming apart, he would be your new best friend.
Poor Daniel died only three years later, of starvation, in Seattle on June 28, 1902 in Seattle.

Washington Death records; familysearch; A Wild Discouraging Mess; Yukon Archives photo.

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Edgar H. Wilson


Wilson was a very early businessman in Dyea. He and Healy ran a trading post in the 1880’s. Wilson was born in 1842 and was married to Katherine or Kittie Brown and had a 6 year old son and girls Gladys and Ethyl, newborns, when he died, on this day, May 20, 1895 in Juneau. Kittie and family stayed on at least until 1900 and then must have moved on.
Seen above is the Healy and Wilson trading post as photographed by Anton Vogee on Decoration Day (Memorial Day) 1898.

Cohen; AK Searchlight obit 5/20/1895

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Frank M. Woodruff


Mr. Woodruff was born in 1853 in Wisconsin and came to Skagway in 1898 from Seattle. He was an early member of the Arctic Brotherhood and in fact donated the land where the AB Hall now sits. Woodruff was involved in several businesses, the Northern Commercial Company – a company that operated retail stores in Alaska from 1901 to 1992, the Bowen and Woodruff Crockery, and he was the Secretary and Treasurer of the Alaska General Electric Company.
The Northern Commercial Company stores throughout Alaska often served as the village courthouse and post office as well. Much trade in the stores was bartered, as few people had cash. The stores accepted such items as gold, fish and furs in exchange for merchandise. The stores were often the nucleus of small communities and communities often grew because of the stores. The company also owned several steamer boats that transported goods on the rivers. Seen above are some that belonged to the Northern Commercial Company in winter.

Frank and his family moved on to other parts of Alaska and he died on this day, May 19, 1920 in Alaska.

1900 census;1902directory;family chron; Skagway Museum Record; Fairbanks News list

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deadly Chamber of Commerce meeting


Henry Clay Parker was one of the members of the Chamber of Commerce meeting in Skagway held on March 28, 1900. During the meeting he had a heart attack and died. What were they discussing?
Mr. Parker was born on this day April 17, 1848 in Illinois and came to Skagway with his wife and son. He worked with Aggers in a business they called appropriately Parker and Aggers, but what they did is a mystery.
His wife had his funeral held in the new Arctic Brotherhood Hall, it was the first funeral held here in the hall. Henry was a member of the AB and apparently also the International Order of Odd Fellows as that is also on his headstone, seen above in the Gold Rush cemetery.

Alaska Weekly 1931 article;Skag death rec;