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)

James Vincent Tropea


Mr. Tropea was born on this day, June 15, 1873 in Italy. He came to Skagway in 1897, he was a baker. Sometime later he married another native Italian, Clara, and they had two daughters born in 1918 and 1919: Marie and Rosie.
James was a Councilman in 1933-34 here in Skagway. He bought the Golden North Hotel in 1937, and died in Skagway in 1946.

census data; Alaska marriage records; World War 1 registration.