Category: Tragedy

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Two-Step Louie – the rest of the story

I just received this update to the Two-Step Louie story, turns out he died in Alaska at Nome Creek, not Nunn Creek in Colorado.

“I am the Great-Great niece of Two-Step Louis Schmidt. I have an original letter from the Fairbanks Comissioner’s office dated June 18, 1947.
The commissioner at the time, Eleanor Ely wrote to my Great Grandfather Ted Pollack to inform him of his Uncle’s death. The details of the letter state Louis was last seen in Fairbanks the latter part of Dec. 1945. He returned to his cabin at Nome Creek on Dec 26. The last marking on his calendar was March 3, 1946 indicating his death occurred after that date.
His long time friend, Blanche Cascaden found his body on May 29th when she was able to hike in to the cabin.
From all indications, death probably occurred while Louis was in bed, as he had on his underwear and wool socks. His hat hung on a nail on the wall, as did his other clothes. The provisions in the cabin were strewen and gave the appearance of having been eaten by animals. The chimney was down, evidently wolverines had made their entrance thru that opening and attacked his body. Whether he was ill at the time they entered, or dead, we can never know. There was no wood supply in the cabin which might indicate he had been ill, unable to cut wood and had frozen to death.
His wishes were that he be buried near his cabin on the land he loved. His remains were laid to rest under the only tree a short distance from his cabin and a name plate placed there with a cross marker.
I have in my possession a photo of his friend Blanche and an unknown male companion, placing the cross at his final resting place. He was buried June 8, 1946.
He is a legend in our family and I am happy to say at long last, I will be making the trip from Phoenix, AZ to Fairbanks this month to pay my respects.
Thank you,
Lynn Plesotis”

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Noscitur


There is a headboard in the Dyea Cemetery that simply says “Noscitur”. The first time I saw that it seemed like an odd name, but I found out later that it is a legal term which means “he is known by the company he keeps”.
The news report in the Dyea Trail on this day, May 7, 1898 started with “Someone has committed murder! ….Phil F. Hardesty found the dead body of an unknown man on Tuesday last. He hurried back to town and reported his discovery to Mr. W. S. Levens, by whom he is employed. Mr. Levens organized a party to bring the body to Dyea, the party consisting of Attorney McEnany, Theodore Houseworth, Ed Welch, Messrs. Hardesty and Levens, a teamster and a representative of the TRAIL. After an hour’s climb up the steep side of the mountain, a small bench of level land was reached, and there, stark and stiff, in the midst of the timber, lay the body of a man who had been shot either accidentally or purposely, by some hand other than his own. …

A careful examination of the wound was then made. It revealed the fact that the man had been shot from behind. The bullet had entered squarely in the back of the neck and had come out at the left side of the mouth, shattering the bones and flesh of the left jaw mercilessly. The man’s face, torn and covered with blood, presented a horrible and sickening sight.
Stooping over the body, one of the party remarked that evidently robbery was not the motive of the killing as the man’s watch was still in his pocket. That was the way it looked. The watch pocket in the man’s pantaloons was bulged out and shaped just exactly as it would be with a watch in, but when touched it gave evidence that while a watch had been there it had been taken.
The body was carefully wrapped in a large piece of canvas and tied to a pole. In this manner it was packed down the mountain, but only with great difficulty, several men with axes being required to cut a kind of a trail. The body was brought to Dyea and an autopsy performed by Dr. T. L. Price, who said the man had been dead from 24 to 48 hours,a nd that the wound had been made by a bullet of not less than 44-calibre, if not a 48. In the man’s pockets were found a Canadian $2 bill, a pocket knife, a match box, a box of 22 calibre cartridges, a small key tied to a piece of r..?.ou and three pieces of pilot bread. In a small purse secreted in the hollow of his [?] next to the flesh and tied just above the ankle was $80 in gold and greenbacks. He wore a black slicker-hat and striped mackinaw coat, a white and black checkered flannel shirt, blue overalls, and rubber boots. He weighed about 160 pounds, was muscularly built, about 5 feet 8 inches in hight, had bluish gray eyes, brownish black hair, sandy mustache and was between 35 and 40 years of age. It is judged that he was an Irish-American.”

So apparently an inquest was done and concluded that the man had come to his death as a result of a gunshot wound (duh!). Since no one came forward to collect the body presumably the $80 in gold and cash should still be in the sheriff’s office. Nope, missing….
Yep, things were getting bad at that time…

explorenorth.com bios noscitur; Dimitra Lavrakas for her insightful comment on legal terms.

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Alice Stanton Corliss


Alice Stanton was born in 1867 in Stanton, Minnesota and married Charles William Corliss in 1887 in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. He was a lawyer and they moved to Seattle. In 1898 they joined the gold rush and got as far as Lake Bennett before Alice was stricken with meningitis and died. Her husband took her back to Seattle to be buried.
The city of Skagway issued the death certificate for this day, April 19, 1898 but she probably died on April 17, 1898. She had a daughter, Muriel May who was 8 at the time, but it is unknown if she was with her parents on this disastrous adventure.
A year later Charles remarried and had 6 more children. Alice, Charles and Muriel are all buried in the Wright Crematory in Seattle.

Seen above is the boat building yard at Lake Bennett in 1897-98.

Skagway death record; Washington birth record; familysearch; Washington State Bar Assn. obituary 1914;

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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;

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A “Superb” Disaster


On this famous date of the Titanic disaster, here is a local marine disaster. I first saw a number of deaths on the 4th of July 1914 and for years tried to find out about what happened. You will not find this story anywhere else.

On the evening of July 3, 1914 a few young guys in Skagway decided that they did not want to spend the holiday in town, but instead go to the big city, Juneau. So they piled in the little gas-powered boat “Superb” piloted by Captain George Black. On the 3rd of July at 9 p.m it was still light, and would be for another two hours. As they sped away from the dock, these 20 men waved goodbye to their friends as a light wind from the south picked up. By the time they passed Haines and got to Seduction Point, they were making little headway in the fierce south wind. Capt. Black decided to turn around and head for Haines where they pulled in about 1 am. There, 4 passengers off-loaded and 4 other passengers, including Myrtle Burlington, an African-American woman known as the “Smoked Swede” got onboard. At 2 am they decided to push on to Skagway, only 12 miles away. Capt. Black crossed Lynn Canal and tried to stay close to the east side. When they got to about a half mile south of Sturgill’s wood mill, the boat lurched throwing the passengers to the port side. Now the boat flipped over throwing everyone into the dark water. This was at 4 am and dawn was just beginning, but they were in the shadow of the mountains. Three men who were sleeping below were barely able to get out, Mr. Orchard broke a window to get out, badly cutting his hand.
The shock of the cold water must have been bitter, but once their clothes became waterlogged it was all they could do to cling onto the sides of the overturned boat as it drifted out away from shore. By now, Jud Matthews tried to save the Austrian, Amerena and Myrtle by tearing off her clothes and hooking her arm onto the boat. Tom Running finally decided to swim to shore and once he reached Sturgill’s, he ran back through the woods, losing the trail, to town where he got Charles Rapuzzi and Wirt Aden as well as Tom Ryan who headed out in boats. It was now 6:30 am. When they reached the boat which was now clearly seen from shore, the only survivors were Arthur Boone, Sam Radovitch, Orchard, Cassie Kossuth (see earlier blog), Jud Matthews, Peterson, and George Black. Rescuers recovered the body of John Logan and searched for the other 11 all day, cancelling the town’s festivities.
Lost were: Stanley Dillon, age 18, Henry Bernhofer, age 27, John Eustace Bell, Oscar Carlson, Bob Saunders, Lynch, Sam Rodas, Myrtle Burlington, Thomas Mateurin, Monte Price and Nicholas Amerena.
Later that day when it was realized the bodies had sunk to the depths of the ocean, the search was called off. Because so many people had come to town for the baseball games and the dance it was decided to go ahead with those events.

A few days later there was an editorial questioning why there was not an inquest into the accident, but it would seem there was none. Seen above is the scene of the accident, on a calm day.

from the Skagway Alaskan of July 5, 1914.

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McCafferty and See


On this day, April 10, 1898 two men in Dyea died of tuberculosis. John McCafferty was from Montgomery County, Missouri and was described by his friend, William Thomas Painter in a letter: “John McCaferty was a big strong man. Went to Alaska in the Gold Rush 1898, most likely died on the Chillcoot Pass (where many failed to get over the terriable mountain) never heard from.”
The other man who died, Thomas E. See was also from Montgomery County Missouri and they traveled together from Missouri. From Mr. See’s obiturary: “…It seems that they died of an influenza peculiar to that climate. Mr. See was a brother to R. E. See, Marshal of the Missouri Supreme Court.” Everett Barton was a County Clerk and he traveled with both See and McCafferty. Seen above is the photo of that party. (Mr. See was 32 years old, McCafferty was 37. So See is probably the fellow on the lower left.)
Here is part of Barton’s journal:
“Our party, four in number, Lee Gregory, Thomas See, Frank White and myself left Montgomery City, August 9th, 1897, to embark on a journey of thousands of miles fraught with many hardships and dangers, passing through and making changes at Kansas City, Mo., Billings, Montana, on to Seattle, Washington, where we purchased our outfit and boarded the steamer City of Kingston, which plied the waters known as the Inside Channel extending north.”
Barton later mentioned McCafferty being part of the party:
“The toll from our county alone, being Thomas See, John McCafferty, Charlie Nebal, Mr. Frank Purcell who met his death at Seattle, also a Mr. Watson who died soon after reaching his home in Callaway county. As one Writer has said in writing of the many deaths in the early gold mining in Colorado. “Many with folded arms and rigid faces were consigned by strangers to hill-side graves with no child’s voice to prattle its simple sorrow, no woman’s tears to be-dew their memory”. Charlie Nebal or Nebel was 24 and died on the Chilkoot Pass also, but there is no record of his burial.

The Dyea Trail said that both See and McCafferty were buried in the Dyea Cemetery.

Dyea Trail: March 12, 1898: website: http://www.spiddyskids.com/
Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma, 23 March 1898

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Walter T. Chestnut


Walter was born in 1873 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Although he was an accountant, he and his brother came west and were working on the ship Islander in 1898. Walter contracted pneumonia while onboard and had to disembark in Skagway where he died in the Hotel Rosalie, on this day, April 8, 1898. His remains were taken to Victoria where he was buried.
The Hotel Rosalie was located on the corner of Broadway and Bond (4th). It was a one room hotel where patrons curled up in corners. The building changed hands pretty soon after the Gold Rush and became Brownell’s Hardware Store. Then in 1903 Mr. John Anderson bought it and transformed it into the Pantheon Saloon. Charles Walker, who had done such a grand job of decorating the AB Hall, was hired to do the same with the saloon. Today you can see some of his artwork (restored by the Park Service) on the front of the Pantheon. In past years the Pantheon was leased to jewelers as part of the Klondike Gold Rush NHP’s leaseback program, but like many other businesses on Broadway this summer, it has gone vacant and will be used for meetings/training again this summer.
Several years ago, I worked in this building and I can say I never saw or felt the ghost of poor Mr. Chestnut, perhaps he just wanted out of here. Seen above is the building – labeled Hardware Store. The photo was taken at midnight in June by Barley.

Skagway Death Record; Victoria Daily Colonist April 15, 1898.

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Two step Louie


A couple of years ago I was working in Arizona manning (womaning?) a booth for the City at the Quartzite show when the great-grandson of Louis Pollak (born 1883 Missouri) told me this story. Perhaps it qualifies as a tall story for today:
Louie came to the Yukon in the gold rush but did not do so well, so after the rush he returned to Chicago. Not satisfied with the city, he set out for the West again. He built a cabin at Nunn Creek (?) and was attacked and eaten by wolverines. Hmmm.

Ok, so it isn’t the best tall story, but it is true according to his great-grandson, and family stories are sometimes the best.

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Francis Mawson Rattenbury


I love this story.
Francis M. Rattenbury was born in 1867 in Leeds, England. Rattenbury emigrated to Canada in 1892, first working as agent for Bradford investors in Vancouver. His experience in commercial and civic design, structural systems, architectural historical vocabulary and office practice furthered his career quickly. Aided by his prize-winning ability as draftsman, Rattenbury quickly supplanted the earlier generation of immigrant architects in the province. He won the 1893 competition for the new Provincial Legislature in Victoria a building which is beautiful and which is open for tours today. Despite cost overruns, the building opened in 1898 to considerable praise. He also designed the famous Empress Hotel in Victoria which overlooks the bay.

Rattenbury’s demonstrated competence at architectural display won him patronage from the leading institutions as well as government. I read once that he designed the White Pass administration building in Skagway that today houses the National Park’s administration. Rattenbury also was a promoter of the Bennett Lake & Klondyke Navigation Company.

Unfortunately for one so talented in architecture and business, he failed miserably in his personal life. Rattenbury married Florence Eleanor Nunn on June 18, 1898 and had a son Francis Burgoyne Rattenbury that same year. Rattenbury and Florence did not get along and fought often when he was at home, but he stayed away on projects in the Yukon during the gold rush. Eventually he divorced in 1925 and married Alma, who at the time of their marriage was 26 to his 56 years of age.

Hastened by scandal attaching to his divorce and remarriage, Rattenbury returned to Britain in 1929. He was murdered by his 18 year old chauffeur, George Stoner, Alma’s lover, on this day, March 28, 1935. (Stoner crept up behind Rattenbury and struck him on the head three times with a mallet.)
Stoner was found guilty of murder and sentenced to hang. Mrs. Alma Rattenbury, although chastised for being an adultress, was found not guilty of any crime and released. Despite her freedom, Alma was distraught. Four days later she waded into the Avon River and resolutely stabbed herself six times before delivering a fatal wound. Ouch, how Shakesperian!
Stoner’s death sentence, because of public pressure, was commuted to life imprisonment. After serving seven years he was released in 1942 to join the army. He took part in the Normandy Invasion on June 6, 1944.

The Right Way On, Olive p 165; Alaska State Archives; www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com

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Patrick Michael McFadden


Patrick McFadden had a few too many drinks and on his way home down Broadway, he fell into the creek, face down and drowned. Since poor Mr. McFadden was a stranger, no one knew him so it was assumed he was about 42 years old. He died on August 22, 1902 and is buried in the Gold Rush Cemetery.

Now you might think this was an unusual case and that it could not happen again – but no fellow sleuthers! Two years ago, a fellow in town did exactly the same thing! Fortunately for him, his friends found him and dragged him out before he drowned too! If you are in Skagway this summer, look for a young fellow with a wicked scar on his forehead. Above is a picture of this wicked creek.

Skagway Death Record.