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.

Skagway Hostel Ghost


Skagway’s Alaskan Sojourn Hostel, which is situated in a local gold-rush-era house, recently had a guest report that he felt that his room had been visited by a benign ghost in the night. Although the identity of this ghost is well-known to the owners of the house, and ghost’s descendants in town, I am withholding the name out of respect for the family. Suffice it to say that it was a young man who tragically drowned at a young age in the early 1930s. The present owner of the house says that several years ago, she also saw the ghost calmly descending the stairs, and vanishing before it reached the last step.

Source: Local interview; http://www.alaskansojourn.net

Lake Bennett drownings


The Northwest Mounted Police reported that on May 28, 1898, Robert T. Veitch drowned at Lake Bennett. The news reported that Veitch was hit by the boom of the sailboat and knocked overboard.

On the same day, May 28, 1899 a year later, Mr. Hiliger and Mr. Schock also drowned in Lake Bennett.
“Two men, a Mr. Schock the proprietor of a road house on the upper end of Lake Laberge, and a man named Hiliger were drowned in Lake Bennett on May 28, about three miles from Bennett. Both were newly married, and their wives were on the shore and saw them drown. It appears they were on their way down with a scow, and, having forgotten something, started back for the same in a small boat. A gale was blowing at the time and the boat capsized, and before help could be secured they were both drowned. An inventory of the effects of the road house was taken and a full report forwarded to Dawson, and the public administrator notified.” from the NWMP record.

NWMP Annual Reports; familysearch; explorenorth; NY times June 18, 1898 online;

Shot at Lake Lindeman

There are several stories told of the shooting death of John Matthews. In one version his name is Frank Matthews, but the story is basically that while trying to move their load of supplies on Lake Lindeman, John and his father lost the load in the lake. After losing the load, he either accidently shot himself with a rifle or committed suicide. One version was that he was the former sheriff of Puyallup, but I could find no verification of that. John was born in 1872 in Idaho and had a wife named Jane and some babies. He died in May 1898 and is buried somewhere between Lindeman and Bennett.

Klondike Fever; “Every Trail has a story” by Henderson p 44; Mayer; “Two Years in the Klondike”.

A little Avalanche


On December 9, 1898 there was a small but deadly avalanche on the other side of the Chilkoot Pass at Crater Lake. Apparently 6 people were killed: Mrs Darling and her two sons, one unidentified man, Mr. Bert Jones and Mr. Harry Shaw. although I tried to find out any further details, I could not and there is no record of their burials here in Skagway although reports said that their bodies were perfectly preserved when dug out. Above is an 1898 image of Crater Lake from the summit of the pass.

New York Times December 21, 1898.

Explosion on the line

On December 2, 1898 there was a premature explosion on the White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad line between Camps 9 and 10. Three men were charging a hole when the explosion occurred. Charles Watson, John Hapin and John McGubbin or McCubbin were killed. McGubbin was buried in the Gold Rush Cemetery, there is no record of what became of Hapin and Watson. Although the headboard there says McCubbin, it was one that was replaced in the 1970’s and so is not 100% reliable, it could be either as there was a John McGubbin and several John McCubbins in the late 1800’s.
The photo above is of a blast on the line where the rubble is partially covering the Brackett Road. The railroad line later went over the Brackett Road.

New York Times December 12, 1898; Skagway death record.

An almost love story


Most folks have heard of the April 3, 1898 avalanche and how it swept away 100 people, with about 85 people dying and being buried in the Dyea Slide Cemetery. But have you heard of the strange case of Arthur L. Jappe and his “sweetheart” Vernie Woodward who saved him?
Pierre Berton wrote that when Jappe’s lifeless body was dragged out of the snow, Vernie was beside herself. Now, not being one to stand by and accept things, she worked on him for three hours, moving his arms and legs, pumping on his chest and breathing warm air into his lungs. Smart girl! It worked! Jappe came to – and supposedly uttered her name. We all assumed they lived happily ever after, but no, when I looked into it, I could not find Vernie at all, but I did find Mr. Jappe – and his wife and 5 kids back in New York. Turns out he had gotten married to Katherine Henrietta Reuflei in August of 1897 and had gone to Alaska soon after.
So he must have returned after his notoriety of surviving the avalanche. The Dyea Trail newspaper of the time reported that Jappe feigned ignorance of his relationships with Vernie, but it would seem that after the newspapers blew the story all out of proportion, poor Jappe felt the need to return to New York and do some explaining.

Pierre Berton, The Klondike Fever p 265; Snowstruck: in the Grip of Avalanches by Jill Fredston; familysearch; One Came Late by Allen p 319.

Avalanche survival story


On April 3, 1898 there was an Avalanche on the Chilkoot Pass that buried 80-100 people. I have unique names of 85 people who were reported buried and suffocated to death.
However there were several survival stories. There was a dog and an ox who were dug up after several days who seemed none too upset by the experience. There reportedly was a woman who had been buried head-down and was “hysterical” when dug out (who wouldn’t be?). But the best story of all is that of Vernie Woodward and her beau Al Joppe. Joppe was pulled from the snow and Vernie was shown his lifeless body. But she had not come this far to bury her man. So she “flung herself hysterically upon Joppe’s limp figure” [why do men love the word hysterical?] She yelled at him to return to her, moved his arms and legs, rubbed his back and breathed warm air into his lungs and prayed. For three hours she persisted despite men trying to drag her away, and LO! Joppe suddenly opened his eyes and spoke her name! Voila!

Seen above is a profile of the trail, picture going up this in spring with tons of snow hanging above you.

from Pierre Berton, The Klondike Fever p 265-266.

Captain Hamilton R. Foote


H.R. Foote was born in 1848 in Ireland.
Captain Foote had run the Steamer Danube and later the Steamer Islander. As mentioned before, he was the drunken captain who was asleep when the Islander struck a massive iceberg that had calved off of the Windom Glacier near Taku Inlet. In 1955 when Gordon Newell wrote “SOS North Pacific” he stated that cruise ships in the area would blow their whistles which was all that was needed to “coax the great ice mountain into its sensational act. A frozen mass as tall as a city skyscraper slowly detaches itself from the parent glacier, topples majestically on the brink, then makes its awesome plunge in to the sea, culminating a drama that has been thousands of years in the making.”
So when the ship’s pilot steered the Islander down Lynn Canal in the dark on August 15, 1901, the events were eerily similar to the Titanic’s crash with an iceberg.
I earlier said that all souls were lost but actually only 42 lives were lost. Onboard that day, were 77 first-class passengers, 30 second-class, 5 children too small to need tickets, 3 stowaways, 5 “workaways,” and a crew of 61 totaling 181 souls.
The survivors were picked up after Chief Engineer Brownlee walked up the beach toward Juneau in search of help. He reached the Treadwell Mine where the ship Flossie was docked. One of the casualties of the sinking was Capt. Foote, who purportedly said, “Tell them I tried to beach her,” before he died.

But the story certainly did not end there, for many years the stories of gold being on the sunken ship drew salvagers, but they did not find anything. In 1934 some salvagers raised the rusted hulk and found a bit of gold, but it was only a hundredth of what they hoped for. Above is a picture of the rusted hulk that lay on the beach until 1952 when it was cut up and sold for scrap.

Gordon Newell, “SOS North Pacific” 1955.

Thin Ice


On this day, May 10, 1898, two men drowned near camp Cozy Cove, 14 miles north of the Lake Bennett camp. They were Luc Richard from Frenchtown, Montana and Thomas A. Barnes from Kansas, ages 38 and 35 respectively. It all started when four men started across Lake Bennett with a dog team, but the ice was thin and they broke through with their dogs. The bodies of the two victims were buried a few days later on an island. About a hundred and fifty men attended the “short and impressive” funeral service. “It was virtual suicide to venture out on the ice at such a time the way these boys did,” Ole J. Wold wrote in his diary on the day of the burial.

page 79 of Klondike Saga by Lokke.