Joseph McCann – Conductor on the White Pass Railroad

McCann House

Joseph McCann was born on May 3, 1879 in Quebec and came to Skagway in 1898 and like so many others,  he worked for the railroad. He worked as a carpenter, brakeman and conductor.  (He gave the photo of Jerry Quinlan to the family as we saw in yesterday’s post.)

Mary Kerwin came to Skagway from Ottawa, around 1904 and was in the Tuberculosis Sanitarium for awhile, recovered and then married Joseph. They had at least 5 children, one became a priest, one a nun and one a nurse at the hospital. They lived in Skagway until after 1930.  Joseph died in Vancouver, B.C. in 1936 and Mary in Beaverton, Oregon in 1969. They all lived in a little yellow house which sits right behind our house, on 13th, as seen above. When we moved to Skagway in 1998, Wanda Warner lived in that house and she brought over an entire dinner for us as a housewarming present. I will never forget her kindness to us, she was a wonderful lady.

1910 1920 and 1929 census; Alaska Yukon Pioneer Roster;

John McCubbin – White Pass explosion


John McCubbin died on December 2, 1898 in a premature explosion on the White Pass between camp 9 and 10. He is buried in the Gold Rush cemetery and that is all that we know about him.
In doing research about that name, we can tell that he was of Scottish heritage and that there were McCubbins in New Zealand, Ontario Canada, Yukon Canada, Scotland and in the U.S.

A good example of how difficult it is to trace someone with a somewhat common name and without any other information. So if you have any more clues please let us know – here is a link to help you on your search:

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp