Category: Reporters and Photographers

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Arthur Clarence Pillsbury


Although you may not have heard his name, you most likely have seen one of his panoramic photos. Mr. Pillsbury was born in 1870 in Medford, Massachusetts. He attended Stanford University majoring in mechanical engineering and opened a shop in Oakland for bicycles, motorcycles and photography.

Arthur Pillsbury began his career in 1887 after inventing an early version of the Cirkut Camera. He used this panoramic camera to photograph Yosemite and the Yukon. In 1909 he filmed the first nature film of Yosemite and showed it at his studio in Yosemite. He had a business called Pillsbury & Cleveland. He invented cameras but did not patent them, saying he wanted them to be available to everybody. When he worked in Skagway in 1900, his company was the Alaska View and Photo Company. Here he is perched on a cliff, probably in Yosemite!

He died on this day, March 5, 1946 in Oakland, California.

1898-1900 online website: Tappan Adney; Arthur C. Pillsbury Foundation.

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Roy Minter


“Once you have breathed its early morning air after a light rain… Once you have listened to the silent hiss of the slowly flowing Yukon River… Once you have basked in a Yukon sun-tinged midnight dawn… And once you have seen the ice come in and the ice go out, you are beguiled and enchanted and you are never quite the same again.”

These words by Roy Minter to the Vancouver Yukoners annual dinner capture the spirit of Roy’s life long love of the Yukon.
Roy Minter was born in England in 1917, but came to Canada as a child. He later served as an officer in the Canadian Army.
In 1955, he began his long association with the Yukon while serving in the Whitehorse headquarters of the Northwest Highway System.
He later worked for White Pass & Yukon Route as marketing director. The picture above pictures him in the center – third from the right. This was a publicity shot to promote the Yukon. He started the Dawson Music Festival, the Klondike Defense Fund, and the Yukon Foundation to help researchers and historians.
He produced internationally acclaimed films, TV and radio programs, but the most memorable to me is his book “The White Pass: Gateway to the Klondike” which he worked on for twenty years. Anyone interested in the history of Skagway should definately read this book. It is much more factual that Pierre Berton’s somewhat romantic “Klondike Fever”.
A recipient of the Order of Canada, Roy Minter died on this day, February 8, 1996.

Hougen website.

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Louis Scott Keller


Dr. Keller was a dentist in Skagway from 1899 to about 1922. He also published the Daily Alaskan from about 1905 to 1915 according to the directories.
He was born in St. Paul Minnesota in 1860. The 1880 census in St. Paul Minnesota shows Mrs Aunice Keller with eight children that ran a lumber business. Her husband must have died in 1879 because the youngest child was still a baby.
Louis married Martha in 1891 and moved to Skagway in the Gold Rush. He was President of the Fraternal Order of Elks in 1900 and was a member of the Arctic Brotherhood in 1907. He was also president of the Chamber of Commerce in 1903. He was elected Mayor of Skagway in 1922 but became ill with throat cancer and died on this day, November 30, 1922 in Seattle. He and Martha had no children.
Louis’ brother, John Michael also moved to Skagway and started a drug store, “Keller’s” which is still run, but as a jewelery store today. John also helped to run the newspaper with Louis and Martha.
Seen above, in hard times before restoration efforts in the 1980’s is the store.

1900;1902;1905, 1915 directories; Skagway Museum Record

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George Gordon Cantwell


George Cantwell was born on this day November 5, 1870 in New York. He was a birder and wrote articles for the ornithology publications. He collected and photographed specimens and later wrote both popular and scientific articles and books. He wrote the “Report of the Operations of the US Revenue Steamer Nunivak on the Yukon River 1899-1901” in 1902, published by United States Printing Office, Washington D.C.

When Hegg’s Dawson studio was devastated by a fire, it was rebuilt in November of 1898 and George G. Cantwell joined the staff in Dawson to assist with outside photographic work.
In 1913 he wrote the screenplay for a silent movie called “The Golden Heart.” It is the story of a young gold miner meeting a young woman in the mountains, staking a claim and marrying her. Unfortunately, the Library of Congress holds only a five minute remnant of the last known print of this film.
Seen above is a picture of Cantwell (on the left smoking a pipe and scrubbing a pan) camping on the Yukon river.
He died in March 1948 in Los Angeles or Palms California.

wrote “Birds of the Yukon Trail” in 1898; The Klondike:a souvenier in 1901; CA death record; online records

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John Weir Troy


Governor Troy was born on this day, October 31, 1868 in Dungeness Washington.

John Troy came to Skagway with his wife Minerva on August 19, 1897 as a correspondent for a Seattle paper and stayed in Skagway until poor health caused him to return to Washington. John returned with Minerva to Skagway in 1898 and managed a pack train taking supplies over the White Pass. His daughter Helen was born in Skagway in 1899 and daughter Dorothy was born in 1901, although it is unclear if she was born in Skagway or in Washington. The Troy family moved back to Seattle, Washington in 1907.

While in Skagway, John joined the Arctic Brotherhood. He was also the city auditor, the city clerk from 1900-1901 and was the Vice President of Chamber of Commerce. He was the publisher of the Daily Morning Alaskan from 1899-1904.

John moved back to Alaska in 1913 with Helen and Dorothy to be editor of the Daily Alaska Empire in Juneau. He purchased the newspaper in 1914. While visiting Seattle in 1916, John Troy married Mrs. Ethel Crocker Forgy, formerly superintendent of schools in Seward and also a licensed embalmer. The couple continued to live in Juneau, where in addition to being the manager and editor of the Daily Alaska Empire, John Troy was also Collector of Customs for the District of Alaska from 1919 until 1922.

He was active in politics and was elected Governor of Alaska from 1933-1939. He died in 1942 in Juneau and is buried in the Evergreen Cemetery.

1905 directory; 1900 census (listed as Tosy);Juneau Genweb;1909 AB book,Gold Rush participants website; Minervas papers online at Alaska Archives.

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Edwin Tappan Adney


Tappan Adney was born in 1868 in Athens, Ohio. He came to Skagway in 1897 as a correspondent, photographer and did sketches for Harpers Weekly. He used a 5X7 long-lens Premo camera.
He was one of the first photojournalists to pass safely through British Columbia. As a writer for Harper’s Weekly, he was sent with his camera to the Yukon from 1897 to 1898. His classic illustrated book concerns his experiences in the Yukon, of which numerous editions have been printed. He returned to Alaska to briefly report on the Nome Gold Rush in 1900.

He retired first to Montreal, then to New Brunswick, the place where his wife was born.
His famous book, the “Klondike Stampede” was published in 1899, by Harpers. It was dedicated to “The Noble Hardy Pioneers of the Yukon, this little account of some trouble they have caused”.

He died on October 10, 1950 in Woodstock, New Brunswick at the age of 82.

Klondike Stampede online; Wikipedia, Yukon-news.

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E. Leroy Pelletier


Mr. Pelletier came to Skagway from New York in 1897 to cover the Gold Rush. In addition to being a newspaperman, he was also a journalist. He was a man possessed of a small body, a large head, and nervous energy that was electrifying. As a newspaperman, he covered the Klondike stampede for The New York Times.
His dispatches to the Times, covering the period 1897 to 1900, provide enthralling reading: he narrated tales of precautions against starvation, delays due to selfishness, preventing a corner in supplies, smallpox comes to camp, getting ready for the greenhorns, pistols drawn many times, large loss of life and a murder, no time for legal trials. Sounds like an adventure movie.

Working for Henry Ford, first as a consulting engineer and later when it was obvious he was considerably more adept with words than machines, Pelletier worked as Ford’s private secretary and advertising manager.
He preferred the title “publicity engineer.” That he was. A brilliant intellect matched with a vivid imagination, he could think even faster than he could talk, and his conversation was routinely described as “rapid-fire.”

His September 5, 1938 Detroit obituary follows:
“E. Leroy Pelletier, 72, advertising manager for Henry Ford, died Sunday.
Pelletier was a former newspaperman who covered the Klondike Gold rush. He designed the first four-cylinder air-cooled automobile at the turn of the century and was president of the company which built his automobile the “Duquesne”.
Tales of Klondike veterans told how Pelletier, the energetic New York reporter, organized the “Jackson Money Exchange” and reputedly sold, through the agency, a third of the Klondike region.
Surviving Pelletier are his widow, Gertrude; 2 sons and a daughter; a brother Frank (Pelkey) of Vancouver,BC. Pelletier was a native of Houlton, Maine.”

In the fall of 1897 he founded the Yukon Telephone and Telegraph Company in Dawson w/big Alex McDonald.

photos from 1897-98: online from Tappan Adney; rootsweb; p206 The EMF co.book by Yanik

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George Herbert Kingswell

“Over six feet tall with a mighty stutter and matching temper.”

George Herbert Kingswell was born on this day, July 20, in 1867, the last of ten children, in Kew, Invercargill, New Zealand. His father was both a very successful sheep farmer and equally successful business man with interests in fellomongery, local rail, and property development. But George was a wanderer and traveled the world (Australia, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Alaska and South Africa) as a reporter for various newspapers. His life is so extensive that books have been written about him.

As a freelance mining correspondent for the Australian Press he went chasing the gold rush in Klondyke Alaska. Reaching Dyea Alaska in August 1897. To support himself as a journalist he took to trading fur coats. By mid-1898 he was back as editor of the Coolgardie Miner in Western Australia. He died in 1931 in Capetown South Africa. The picture above was taken in 1915 of his family in South Africa.

austenfamily.org; Kingswell, War Correspondent the biography of George Herbert Kingswell, written by his daughter Elma Kingswell; The Dictionary of South African biography.

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Andrews family


Clarence Leroy Andrews was born in Ashtabula Ohio in 1862 and moved to Oregon with his father in 1864. He and his wife Ida Swaggart and their three daughters, Annie Clare, Mabel and Washti or Vashti moved to Skagway in 1897. Clarence was the deputy collector for U.S.customs, a photographer, an auditor, and a representative for the Education Bureau. Although the family was here in Skagway until after the 1900 census, they returned to Oregon.
On this day, June 14, 1903 there was a terrible flood in Heppner. Mrs Andrews and the three girls drowned there. Clarence was here in Skagway and survived. He served as councilman for the town in 1901, and finally left in 1929. Clarence died in 1948 in Eugene Oregon. He took a number of unusual photographs, this one is from Glacier Bay and titled “The Father of the Glaciers” taken in 1902.

Clarence Leroy Andrews letters and photographs are in the University of Oregon.