Voila!

So this is as far as I have gotten with those sorry blocks (called Seven Sisters) but I still have a border to do on this, but here it is. From the calico patterns I believe they date from the mid to late 19th Century. The blocks in the corners predate the center ones, the cotton feels crinkly as it may have some linen in it.

My other secret passion

Having written over 600 posts to this blog, dear readers, you may think I do nothing but historical research. But no, in fact I also have another hobby which I will now reveal: Quilting.
Although there is an excellent quilt store here in Skagway, open year round, Quilt Alaska, which is about 300 feet from my office, I actually specialize in antique quilts. Specifically, I do quilt rescue. I acquire old, barely recognizable antique quilt blocks and tops, and I tear them down to basic designs then I repair, clean and re-construct them.
I recently invited 10 ladies to stay with us for the Buckwheat Ski race and suddenly wondered if I had enough bedding for them all. So I counted my completed quilts. Would you believe 50? And another 15 completed quilt tops, not counting the infamous "unfinished objects" in storage. After I finish the top, I put it together with natural cotton batting and back and then handquilt it, which takes up to 6 months. If it is not an antique quilt top, I sometimes machine quilt it, but I hate to do that.
Anyway, I may photograph one someday and post it if anyone is interested.
Some ladies who only buy new fabric must think I'm mad to use 100-150 year old fabric to make a quilt, but as I am fixing and finishing the project I think of the poor woman who started the quilt but for whatever reason never finished it. Did she run out of fabric, move and lose it, or die before she finished? We will never know, but the pattern and the tiny stitches often tell a story in themselves.
I will enter one or two in the art show in April here in Skagway, with a story.
Ok, that's all for now.... - Seen above is my latest acquisition in its sorry state, which I have already redone, I will post the transition tomorrow.

Draper photo

This photo taken by Draper in August 1911 says it is of "Indian Dave". No other information.

Engine No. 59

Built in Philadelphia, engine No. 59 was a Baldwin 4-6-0 purchased new in 1900. This ten-wheeler had a long-boiler that had substantially more heating surface area. The grates and fireboxes were relatively small, however. It was scrapped in 1941.

Steamlocomotive.com; whitepassfan.net

Whitehorse?

This photo of men working on the railroad line says Dedman Studio Skagway, but it looks like it is alongside the Yukon River with the Steamships. My guess it is Whitehorse, or possibly Carcross.

Henry Darling

Henry was born on this day, February 27, 1863 in Port Chalmers, New Zealand. His father John Darling founded the Union Steamship Company which ran steamships from New Zealand to Vancouver, later known as the Canadian Australian line. Henry was schooled in London and then apprenticed to John Gwynes, an engineer there. He then went to India and worked for the British India Steam Navigation Company and the British & Burmese Company of British India. In 1891 he came from Glasgow, Scotland, to British Columbia as the superintending engineer in charge of the building of three steamships for the Union Steamship Company.

Around 1899 he became the general manager of the British Yukon Navigation Company, Ltd., organized by the White Pass & Yukon Route. By 1902 he and his family of four sons and two daughters, living in Vancouver, started their own business in wholesale paints, oils and varnishes. Henry Darling must have died in Vancouver after 1914.
The Historic Darling House in Vancouver was built in 1905 and is recently undergoing renovation as seen above. It is of heritage value for its Arts and Crafts architectural details and materials. It was occupied by members of the Darling family from the time it was built until less than 10 years ago. Although I do not know for sure if this is the same family, I believe it is.

British Columbia. from the Earliest times to the present vol 4 1914.

Shipwrecks anyone?

For those of you interested in shipwrecks, here is a great site for finding what ship sank on this day in history! Seen above is the S.S. Cottage City in Skagway in 1900. It later ran aground on January 26, 1911 in a blinding snowstorm and heavy fog off Quadra Island, Northern British Columbia. Equipped with a radio they were able to send for help and everyone survived but the wooden-hulled ship was lost.

http://www.wrecksite.eu/wrecked-on-this-day.aspx?26%2f01%2f2012

George Edward Carson

George E. Carson was born in 1846 in Maryland. He moved to Indiana where he met and married Matilda. They had two sons and a daughter there from 1876 to 1886. In 1898 they all moved to Skagway. In February 1898, as the U.S. Customs officer, he logged in five thousand stampeders.
In Skagway and Dyea he had help from U.S. Customs officers William Denny, Lewis C. Harman, C.L. Hobart, I. Myre Hoffstad, J.W. Ivey, A.I. Jones, DeWitt P. Lea, L.S. Luke, Oliver McCulloch, Thomas G. Payne, William H. Robertson, W.H. StClair, Clarence Leroy Andrews, R.W. Bellman, and others in later years.
Georg's son, George C. also worked for U.S. Customs in Skagway in 1906 and the family stayed until George E. died on February 20, 1931 in Skagway. He is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery.

Seen above is City Hall in Skagway, it is perhaps where the Customs had their office, but maybe not.

Alexander Pantages

Alexander was born in 1867 in Andros, Greece. He ran away from home at the age of nine while with his father on a business trip in Cairo, Egypt. He then went to sea and spent the next two years working on merchant ships all over the world. Although he left Greece at a tender age he never forgot his home country and seems to have been conscious of his ethnic identity. Thus, he changed his name to Alexander after hearing about Alexander the Great.
He came to Skagway in 1897 and worked for Ma Pullen as a waiter. He later used Klondike Kate for money and ran the Orpheum in Dawson. In 1902, Pantages left Dawson and moved to Seattle, Washington, where he opened the Crystal Theater, a short-form vaudeville and motion picture house of his own. By 1920, he owned more than 30 vaudeville theatres and controlled, through management contracts, perhaps 60 more. In 1929 he was accused of raping a 17-year old woman. Pantages was tried, convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison, despite his claim that he was "set up by Joseph Kennedy." (Kennedy had offered to buy his theaters in 1927 but Pantages refused.) He was later acquitted in the appeal trial, after his lawyers portrayed the victim as a woman of low morals.
Pantages died on February 17, 1936 and was interred in the Great Mausoleum, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Wikipedia; Highjinks, page 156

The "Snow King" and the last spike.

Charley Moriarity or Moriarty (otherwise known as the "Snow King"), was the head of the track-laying gang on the White Pass. He was a silent, red-headed Irishman and had a great capacity for working himself, and getting others to work.
Many people have been given credit for putting in the last spike on the White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad at Carcross on Sunday, July 29, 1900.
In the book "On the White Pass Payroll" Graves describes a list of people attempting to drive the last spike with pathetic results. After all the pomp and ceremony, he states,
"Then everybody cheered and a continuous clicking noise announced that the films yet remaining in their Kodak’s were being used up, and there was a lot of hand-shaking. In the middle of this the corner of my eye caught the “Snow King” sneaking up with a spike puller which he stealthily applied to the dilapidated last spike. Poor thing, it didn’t take much pulling z- it was glad to go, and Charley quietly marked the hole with a piece of chalk for the subsequent attention of his track men. I was rather pleased with the evidence of strict attention to business even in the midst of pleasure."

Joseph Victor Begin

NWMP Inspector Begin was in Dyea in 1897. He was born on this day, February 15, 1856 in Quebec and spent several years working on steamboats on the St. Lawrence River and then served in the militia for three years before joining the NWMP in 1885. He served in several provinces before coming to the Yukon. In 1891 he married to Alexina Chartrand and in 1893 had a daughter, Renalde, and then two sons: Francoise Begin born in 1894, and Jean Berchmans Begin, born in 1897. His family must have lived in a larger community, not Dyea, certainly, judging from photos of the family.
From here he went to South Africa and later served in the Great War - a euphemism for WW1 which was big but not all that great. In 1929 he moved to Atlanta Georgia where he died.
The photos of Captain Begin were small and grainy but the fellow on the horse in this poster looks like he posed for this.

various Canadian history sites online.

Bill Gates and the eggs

"Swiftwater Bill" Gates, or Charles H. Gates was born in 1855 in Minerva New York. He was working as a boatman in Idaho in 1896 when he decided to go to Alaska. He and some partners leased "Thirteen El Dorado" which later paid out and made him a millionaire. Enjoying his new wealth, he would walk the streets of Dawson in top hat, white shirt and jacket (and said to bathe in champagne). He apparently loved women and gambling. He had the hots for Miss Gussie Lamore in Dawson and offered her her weight in gold to marry him. She however spurned him, and was seen in the restaurant with a new boyfriend ordering fried eggs - the most expensive item on the menu. So, to get even, Bill bought up all the eggs in Dawson and fed them to dogs, in another version fed them to the other dance hall girls. Miss Gussie loved eggs and so he hoped to get her attention. Apparently it worked as she offered to meet him in San Francisco and marry him (despite already being married). He married her younger sister, Grace, then divorced her and remarried and divorced several times in the next few years.
Swiftwater Bill was known to be at the gold fields of Nome, Alaska at the same time as William H. Gates I, grandfather of the Microsoft founder. However, despite the similarity in name and coincidences of geography, there is no apparent family relationship between "Swiftwater Bill" and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
In any event, some versions say that in 1933 he went to Peru and was mining silver there, when on this date, February 13, 1933 he died in mysterious circumstances, perhaps murder.....another account says he was murdered on February 21, 1937 and still another that he died of pneumonia following surgery back in Neillsville, Clark County, Wisconsin on February 13, 1933.
In any event, he certainly lived an exciting life.
Seen above with Joe Boyle-left, "Swiftwater Bill" on the right.

Source: Neillsville Press (Neillsville, Clark County, Wis.) 16 Feb. 1933 obituary of "Swiftwater Bill" Gates.
http://wvls.lib.wi.us/ClarkCounty/clark/data/1/bbs16/16906.htm

Man kicked by horse

Never stand behind a horse.

"Mother of the Klondike Missionaries"

Emilie Fortin was born on January 4, 1872 in Saint-Joseph-d'Alma, Quebec. When she was fifteen, her family emigrated to Cohoes, New York where she met Nolasque Tremblay whom she married on December 11, 1893. In 1894 she claimed to be the first white woman to have crossed the Chilkoot Pass, but was actually the fourth after Bell Healy, "Dutch Kate" Wilson, and Bridget Mannion who we met yesterday.
The couple spent the winter in Miller Creek in a little log cabin. That year, Émilie decided to invite the miners to share their Christmas dinner. On the menu was stuffed rabbit, roast caribou, boiled brown beans, King Oscar sardines, dried potatoes, butter and sourdough bread and prune pudding. Her reputation quickly spread throughout the Yukon. In the spring, Émilie and her husband made a garden on the roof of their cabin and harvested an abundance of radishes and lettuce. After a trip south, they came back by the Chilkoot pass in the middle of the Gold Rush. In 1906, they travelled in Europe for four months. Until 1913, Mr. and Mrs. Tremblay walked from one mining claim to another in the Klondike. Later, they settled in Dawson. She opened a women's clothes store that is now an historic building.

Émilie Tremblay was a very courageous woman who distinguished herself by her social involvement and her devotion to others. She was the founder of the Ladies of the Golden North, President of the Yukon Women Pioneers and a life member of the Daughters of the Empire. The numerous medals that she received and some of her souvenirs were placed in the Saguenay Museum in Quebec. She was godmother to 25 children in addition to raising the daughter of her sister who was a widow with 9 children to feed. Émilie kept open house for travellers, missionaries and widows. Msgr Bunoz called Émilie the "mother of the Klondike missionnairies". During the war, Émilie knitted 263 pairs of socks for soldiers, in addition to the ones she gave as gifts.
Her husband Jack died in 1935 so she visited her family and friends in Quebec and the United States.
She spent the last years of her life in a retirement home in Victoria, B.C.
Émilie Tremblay died on April 22, 1949, at the age of 77. In 1985, to commemorate her exceptional devotion to others, the authorities named the first francophone school in the Yukon École Émilie-Tremblay.
She is seen above.

Yukon Government website celebrating women in the Yukon; franco.ca; Gates; Acadian roots.com

No. 70 on ground

Now here is not the way an engine should be....J.D. True in the foreground.

The Queen of Alaska

Bridget Mannion was born on February 1, 1865 in Rosmuc, County Galway, Ireland. She emigrated in 1885 to St. Paul, Minnesota. Bridget worked as housekeeper for Seattle Pioneer Henry Yesler, before settling in Chicago, where she became cook to the wealthy family of Portus B. Weare, head of the North American Trading and Transportation Company which operated merchandise and transportation facilities in the Yukon. In 1892 her employer held a dinner party for Captain John J. Healy, another Irish born adventurer and his wife Bella. Whether it was the prospect of becoming wealthy or her innate sense of adventure, Bridget became determined to go to Alaska and persuaded the Healy’s to offer her a job as Mrs Healy’s maid. From the Healy trading post in Dyea, she moved up to the Yukon. By the winter of 1894-95 there were only twenty eight white women living in the Yukon amongst one thousand men. Unsurprisingly, Bridget received 150 proposals of marriage before she had got fifty miles up the Yukon, but it was Edward Aylward who would capture Bridget’s heart.

Edward Alyward was born in County Kilkenny, Ireland in November 1849 and emigrated to the US in 1867. He went mining for gold in Alaska in 1884 and in 1894 he met Bridget at a Yukon River Trading Post and convinced her to marry him. Their wedding was the first ever held in Fortymile, about 150 miles southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Around 1900, Bridget and Edward left Alaska with their fortune and moved to live on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. A Seattle newspaper dated 3rd September 1896 carried an article about Bridget calling her the ‘Queen of Alaska’.
Edward died on 29th March 1914. He is buried in Seattle’s Calvary Cemetery. Following the deaths of her sister and a friend, Bridget longed for home. She acquired property in Rosmuc and eventually returned home to Ireland in 1948.
Bridget died at her beloved Turlough, Rosmuc, County Galway in January 1958, just weeks short of her 94th birthday. She is buried with her mother in Cill Eoin graveyard . Even in death her generous spirit lived on, and apart from bequests to family, neighbours and the local church, she set up a trust fund for the education of local children.

Irishclub.org

1905 White Pass train

This Case and Draper photo of the train in 1905 shows how much of the landscape was "scalped" for building and firewood. I don't know exactly where this was, somewhere on the other side of the pass in Canada.

First woman over White Pass trail

On July 24, 1897 the Juneau Searchlight reported that a Mrs. Ed Lord claimed to be the first woman to climb the White Pass as she got off the Steamship Rustler. I believe that she was not married to Edward Eldridge Lord (born July 9, 1874) who traveled with his brother Joseph Lord (born July 31, 1864) of Hornitas, Mariposa County, California and maybe David S. Lord another brother. I think there was a mixup in the reporting and she was actually Clara Latchaw who was married to Joseph. They were part of a large family in Hornitas. Their father Samuel had come to California in the gold rush from England. So, despite the fact that they had two small children, they may have left them with family in California while they went to the Yukon.
Joseph's obituary stated that he spent a year and a half in Alaska during the 1898 gold rush.

Edward died in 1957, Joseph in 1939, David in 1949 and Clara in 1960 - all in Fresno, California. Joseph and Clara are seen above.

Rootsweb; Yukon genealogy; familysearch; California death records; Juneau Searchlight

Muir and his buddies

From July to September 1890 John Muir and his friends toured Glacier Bay. Dr. Henry Platt Cushing did the meteorological, geologic and botanical studies on the trip. He was a prominent geologist who taught at Western Reserve University . He was joined by his collegue Dr. Henry Fielding Reid of the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio. (Today these two universities are combined to be Case Western Reserve University).
Their students were:
Comfort Avery Adams, who had just graduated from Western University with a degree in mechanical engineering and later taught at Harvard for 45 years in electrical engineering.
R.L. Casement of Plainesville, Ohio.
Mr. James H. McBride later physician at CalTech.
John F. Morse (presumably taking the photo) who later was a physician in San Francisco, but died at the age of 40 in 1898 there.

In 1890 Muir's health was poor and he suffered from snow blindness. He expressed irritation with the "stream of tourists habitually snapping their Kodaks and asking naive questions, and with the haste at which they ceased gazing at glaciers whenever a dinner bell sounded." However, like many tourists today, Muir returned to Glacier Bay in 1899. All of his friends later had glaciers named for them.

Bernard Behrends

Happy Birthday to Bernard M. Behrends born on this day, February 6, 1862 in Bavaria, Germany and emigrated to the U.S. with his parents in 1878. He came to Alaska in 1887 and worked for James Brady who would later be governor of Alaska. He married Margaret Virginia Pakle in 1889 in Sitka. She was a teacher and missionary at the Sheldon Jackson school. Sheldon Jackson performed the marriage ceremony. They moved to Juneau and opened the store in 1892 and his daughter Beatrice was also born in 1892 in Juneau. He then opened a bank about 1914. He and Margaret died within months of each other in 1936 in Juneau. Seen above is his store in Juneau. His store appeared in the 1902 and 1905 directories here in Skagway, but someone else managed it. Behrends Avenue in northwest Juneau is named for them. Seen above is the interior of the store.

Kinyradio placenames; 1902 and 1905 directories; Evergreen cemetery records.

Another legal question

On June 6, 1900 the U.S. Congress passed the Alaska Penal Code which provided for a tax to be collected on certain trades and businesses in Alaska. This tax was to fund local governments in the territory. Mr. Wynn-Johnson represented the Moore Wharf (seen above) which of course preceded the law. He decided to ignore the new law which required a license for the wharf. He was then arrested in 1902 by Marshal Shoup. Wynn-Johnson refused to post bail and instead sued the Marshal and the U.S. Government saying that his incarceration was unconstitutional based on the fact that the license and taxes were also unconstitutional. His reasoning was that the U.S. Government did not impose such taxes anywhere else and that Alaska was singled out. Further that such tax and license laws in Alaska were in place already. Section 8 article 1 of the U.S.Constitution reads:
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and pay for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises, shall be uniform throughout the United States."
In 1904 the U.S. Supreme court ruled that the law was legal and that 1/2 of the money collected from licenses and taxes would go to local schools. The remainder would go into the U.S. Treasury.
Presumably Wynn-Johnson did alright because he then sold his house and moved to the Alkali Ranch in British Columbia.
The lawyer that represented him, George C. Heard, died not long after, on June 6, 1906 in Skagway. Below is the link to the legel language of the law, if anyone cares to interpret it better than I have, please be my guest!




http://books.google.com/books?id=o-IKAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA630&lpg=PA630&dq=%22c.+e.+wynn-johnson%22&source=bl&ots=TFxiKyfyUP&sig=OsYthY1Ah9RaHjHkrkV0f6Wq_hA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jo8pT8WCCZTXiQKR2qXHCg&sqi=2&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22c.%20e.%20wynn-johnson%22&f=false

Another train wreck

The date on this photo was 1900 and based on the snow level it must be September or October. I did not previously have a record of a car "on the ground" as railroaders put it. I don't have any records of anyone dying on this date by accident, so perhaps it was just an "Ooops".