Intrepid Women of the Klondike

     When we learn about the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98, the names we usually hear are male – those Klondike “kings” who struck it rich. But many women also caught the “gold fever” that ignited the frenzied stampede northward in search of treasure, a fever that spread quickly thanks to an economic depression. They came from all walks of life, some with husbands but many alone. Their reasons for venturing into the unknown were as varied as those of the men, ranging from desperation for money to feed themselves and their families to a desire for adventure.

     About 1500 women crossed over the White Pass or the Chilkoot Trail in their quest to reach Dawson City and the Klondike River region. Here are four of them.

  Mollie Walsh Bartlett

      Mollie Walsh left her home in Butte, Montana to join the Klondike Gold Rush in the fall of 1897. On the boat north, she met a Presbyterian preacher who began building a church upon his arrival in Skagway. Mollie raised money and helped build the structure, then became active in the congregation.

     In March 1898, Mollie bought restaurant supplies and had them packed up the White Pass Trail to Log Cabin, in Canadian territory. There she set up a successful grub tent and roadhouse, where she served freight packers and gold stampeders. She became known as the “Angel of White Pass Trail.” Many men became enamored with Mollie, and she had her share of suitors.

      She moved to Dawson in June, opened a restaurant and became involved with Mike Bartlett, a pack train driver with a drinking problem. They were married in December. The next summer, she left the Klondike with enough money to make a home in Seattle, Washington, with her newborn son. Her husband went to seek gold in Nome, Alaska.

     When Mike joined her in Seattle, their marriage deteriorated and she left him. In 1902, Mike shot her in the back outside her home. He was acquitted of the murder charge by reason of insanity and sentenced to an asylum. The court called it a "crime of passion," as they often did in those times. After his release he hung himself, leaving their two-year-old son orphaned.

   Kate Rockwell

     Kathleen Eloise Rockwell lived in New York City working as a chorus girl and performing in vaudeville houses. She moved to Spokane, Washington, following a job opportunity with a variety theater where she lived on dance and drink tips. When Kate heard of the Klondike Gold Rush, she and a friend immediately left for the Yukon.

     After arriving in Skagway in 1899, she continued northward, with stops at Lake Bennett, Whitehorse and other settlements along the way where she tap-danced to support herself. In Dawson, she was offered a job with the Savoy Theatrical Company, the largest theater troupe in the Klondike. Her risqué “Flame Dance” was very popular, and she earned as much as $750 a night performing for newly rich, but lonely, miners. She became known as “Klondike Kate, the Belle of the Yukon.”      

      Kate amassed a significant fortune. Working with her lover, Alexander Pantages, she sold bottles of watered-down champagne to inebriated miners, thus adding to her riches. Dawson’s prosperity began to wane in 1902, and Pantages convinced Kate to leave for the West Coast of the U.S. There he used much of her money to buy theaters in the Pacific Northwest and persuaded her to take her show on the road to earn more money to support his pursuit. She returned from one such tour to find he had married another woman.

       To support herself, she again took her act on tour, performing in saloons and theaters up and down the West Coast.  This life took its toll on her and she retired from the stage, nearly broke. She traded her house in Seattle for a homestead claim of 320 acres near Brothers, Oregon. She stayed at her claim for the requisite seven years, making improvements to the land and outbuildings then sold the land and moved to Bend, where she built a lodging house.

      She had a short-lived marriage to a cowboy followed by a happier one that lasted thirteen years to a miner who died in Alaska. Two years later, in 1948, she married again—this time to a longtime friend and accountant Bill Van Duren. They retired to Sweet Home, Oregon, where Rockwell died in her sleep in 1957 at age 84.

  Lucille Hunter

     In 1897, nineteen-year-old Lucille Hunter left Michigan with her husband, Charles, for the Klondike. They were among the few African Americans who joined the gold rush.  After leaving with a group of stampeders from Wrangell, Alaska, they followed the Stikine River through the coastal range and then overland to Dawson. This was considered one of the most difficult routes to the gold fields.

     Lucille was pregnant at the time. She and Charles stopped at Teslin Lake, where she gave birth to a daughter. The indigenous Tagish community apparently had not seen black people before and were at a loss for what to call them. They referred to the Hunters as “just another kind of white person.”

     Most of the others in their group stayed at Teslin Lake for the winter, but the Hunters decided to go on alone by dogsled over hundreds of miles of snow in temperatures that dipped as low as 60 degrees below zero. They and their infant daughter arrived in Dawson just after Christmas in 1897, well ahead of most of the stampeders. This allowed them to stake three claims along Bonanza Creek, where they lived in primitive conditions, digging gold and raising their daughter.

      A few years later, Charles also staked some silver claims near Mayo. The couple mined gold and silver until his death in 1939. Lucille continued to operate the mining claims and raised her grandson, since her daughter had died earlier. When construction began on the Alaska Highway in 1942, Lucille and her grandson moved to Whitehorse. She set up a laundry business and her grandson made the deliveries around town. 

     In later years, she lost her sight but kept up with current events by listening to her radio. She died in 1972 at age 93.

  Martha Black

      Martha Purdy and her husband Will left Chicago and their wealthy society life for the Klondike in 1898. Her brother George accompanied them, but they left their sons with Martha’s mother in Kansas. When they reached Seattle, Will was called on business to San Francisco.  While there he changed his mind and suggested they go to Hawaii instead. Her biography, My Ninety Years, states: "I wrote to Will that I had made up my mind to go to the Klondyke (sic) as originally planned, that I would never go back to him, so undependable he had proven, that I never wanted to hear from or see him again. He went his way. I went mine."

     Martha persuaded her brother to accompany her on the trip north. They arrived in Skagway in July and joined a party that set out on the Chilkoot trail. A fashionable woman, she found her clothes ill-suited for the climb. "As the day advanced the trail became steeper, the air warmer, and footholds without support impossible. I shed my sealskin jacket. I cursed my hot, high buckram collar, my tight heavily boned corsets, my long corduroy skirt, my full bloomers, which I had to hitch up with every step."

     As she was traversing the trail, Martha discovered she was pregnant. The party stopped at Excelsior Creek, where she and George staked placer claims, which they planned to work the following spring, then went on to Dawson. Single and pregnant, she was shunned by Dawson society. The town was overrun with stampeders and there were few accommodations available. George rented a cabin across the Klondike River, in a less reputable area near the brothels. She gave birth to a son in the tiny cabin.

     While she was still in Dawson, her father arrived and convinced his reluctant daughter to return home with him on the condition that she would return if her claim, left in George’s care, panned out $10,000 worth of gold or more. In June 1900, she received word that her claims had surpassed that level of production. She returned to Dawson, where she established and managed a successful sawmill and mining camp financed by her family. This and her original claim made her financially independent and she was finally welcomed into the local social scene. In 1904, her divorce from Will was finalized and she married Dawson City lawyer George Black.

      George became Commissioner of the Yukon in 1912 and later served four terms in the Canadian Parliament. When he resigned for health reasons, Martha ran in his place in the 1935 election and won. At age 69, she became the second female Member of Parliament to serve in the House of Commons. She was known as the First Lady of the Yukon.

      “What I wanted was not shelter and safety, but liberty and opportunity,” she wrote in her autobiography. On October 31, 1957, Martha died in Whitehorse at the age of 94.

*** 

     I often include real-life historical figures in my novels. Although I didn’t include any of these women specifically, they and several other women of the Klondike provided the inspiration for Katie, Millie and Grace in The Claim. Intrepid female trailblazers of our past, like Mollie, Kate, Lucille and Martha, paved the way for the courageous female leaders of our present and our future.  

Ann Markim

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The Father of the Yukon – Jack McQuesten

      The Yukon River is the third longest river in North America. It flows northwest from the Coastal Range mountains of northern British Columbia, Canada, through the Yukon Territory and Alaska to the Bering Sea. Long before ships carried loads of gold to Seattle and San Francisco in 1897, sparking the Klondike Gold Rush, trappers, miners and traders inhabited areas around the Yukon River and there was a lot of movement back and forth between Canada and Alaska Territory. One of the most prominent of these early settlers was Jack McQuesten, the Father of the Yukon.

Jack McQuesten

      Leroy Napoleon (Jack) McQuesten was born in New England in 1836, but grew up on a farm in Illinois. At age 13, he accompanied family members on a quest for riches in the 1849 California Gold Rush. Even as a young man, he was an imposing figure, standing well over six feet tall and weighing more than 200 pounds.

     By 1858, Jack had trekked north to British Columbia, Canada, where he became a voyager for the Hudson‘s Bay Company. A few years later he left and established a fur trade of his own, and by 1863 he was mining for gold on the Frasier River.

     In 1871, McQuesten learned that the United States had purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. Two years later, the Hudson’s Bay Company (which Russia had permitted to operate in Alaska) was forced to leave, and the Alaska Commercial Company (ACC) assumed the property they left behind. The ACC established trading posts all over the Alaska Territory. He and a group pf cohorts went to Alaska, where they prospected for gold and became involved in the prosperous fur trade.

     At the request of an indigenous chief, McQuesten established a trading post in 1874. The post, which he named Fort Reliance was located in Canada on the east bank of the Yukon River, seven miles downstream of the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike Rivers. Fort Reliance became the center of the fur trade and mining activities in the upper Yukon River and remained so for more than a decade.

McQuesten's Family

     In 1878, McQuesten married Satejdenalno, an indigenous woman who became known as Katherine or Kate. She was from the Kokrines village, and had attended the Russian mission school. Fluent in Koyukon, Russian, and English, she often acted as an intermediary for her husband and his partners when communicating with the local indigenous people. 

   

     McQuesten belonged to the Yukon Order of Pioneers. This was a fraternal organization established to provide for the welfare of its members and for local policing and adjudication in the absence of government authorities and formal law. Later, McQuesten helped to found a similar brotherhood, the Alaskan Order of Yukon Pioneers, and was its first elected president. Their motto was the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you."  

                                                             

Remains of Fort Reliance Chimney

     Fort Reliance also served as the compass for the region. Two examples remain today. The mouth of the Fortymile River and settlement there is 40 miles downstream from Fort Reliance. The mouth of the Sixtymile River is 60 miles upstream from Fort Reliance. Gold was discovered at Forty Mile in 1886, and it became the first major frontier settlement.

     By then, Fort Reliance was in decline. McQuesten and two partners built a store at Forty Mile in 1887. The three men grubstaked prospectors, giving them credit on their supplies until they could mine enough gold to pay off their bills.

 

McQuesten's store in Circle City, Alaska

     When gold was discovered downriver at Birch Creek in 1892, McQuesten grubstaked half the miners who set off to check out the new area. When the prospectors proved  the area even richer than Forty Mile, McQuesten followed in 1894 and set up a successful store at Circle City, Alaska. 

     Yukon Jack, the 100-proof Canadian whiskey, was named after Jack McQuesten. He met Jack London in 1897 and their meeting is believed to have inspired some of London’s novels that were set in the northland. 

     Predicting food shortages as a result of the influx of prospectors after the Klondike gold strike, McQuesten moved his family to California in 1897. He died there in 1909.

     In Yukon Places and Names, R.C. Coutts wrote (p.175): “His name was a byword for integrity and honesty. His trust in his fellow man was unbounded and seldom wrong. Nowhere in the literature of the Yukon is it possible to find a critical or unkind word about him. It is rare anywhere to find a man as highly regarded during his own lifetime as was Jack McQuesten.”

     Is there a better way to be remembered?

     McQuesten makes an appearance in my novel, The Claim. The Jack referred to in the excerpt below is Jack McQuesten.

EXCERPT:

     “I’m goin’ to get me a room for the night.” Will turned toward the door.

     Erik started. “You’re not going to camp with me on the riverbank?”

     “Naw. Men up here are honest. No need to police your gear and the skows are tied up secure.” Will grinned. “This here is the Paris of Alaska. With some of that money ya paid me, I intend to have myself a spree before we head back to Forty Mile.”

     Erik’s brow furrowed. “A what?”

     “Spree.” Jack said. “Miners let off steam by going to all the saloons buying drinks and cigars for everyone. They don’t get to town often so they’re wound tight as a tick.” He frowned. “When they get out of hand, they can bust up a place pretty bad.”

     Erik swallowed his reproach. He’d met men up here with Oxford degrees, and the long summer days and winter nights made customs of Outside society seem absurd. Will had taught him not to pass judgement.

     “Ya want to join me?” Another grin spread across Will’s face.

     “No, I’m going to turn in early.”

     Will shook his head. “Then, I’ll see ya in the mornin’.”

     Jack turned to Erik. “Now let’s talk turkey.” 

Ann Markim

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Nellie Cashman and Her Long Reach by Patti Sherry-Crews

"When I saw something that needed doing, I did it."--Ellen "Nellie" Cashman

Nellie Cashman: The Angel of  Cassiar, The Saint of Sourdoughs, The Angel of Tombstone, The Miner's Angel, and Champion Woman Musher of the Yukon

Whoa, Nellie!
Described as "Pretty as a Victorian cameo, and when necessary, tougher than two penny nails," this five foot tall force to be reckoned with was a legend in her own time.

If you look up Nellie Cashman, the word following her name is restaurateur. And though she certainly did open boarding houses and eating establishments, she did much more. Her real legacy was her philanthropy, which included building schools, hospitals, and churches in frontier towns from the Mexican border to Alaska--wherever she temporarily put down her roots. In addition to entrepreneurial pursuits, which included a boot store and a general stores, Nellie became a successful prospector herself. She made and gave away several fortunes in her life time. Did I mention she was also friends with the likes of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday?

Her story begins in 1845, Ireland at the start of the Great Famine, or an Gorta Mór (the Great Hunger). This was the year Ellen "Nellie" Cashman was born to a poor Catholic family near Cobh, Co. Cork. When Nellie was five her family emigrated to America as a matter of survival. Somewhere along the way she lost her father (bit of a mystery there. History doesn't tell us what happened to him), leaving her mother to raise Nellie and her sister, Fannie, by herself within the Irish community in Boston. 

Both girls took jobs as soon as they were old enough, and it was while working as a bellhop that Nellie was reportedly* advised by none other than Ulysses S. Grant to go west where there would be better opportunities.

The three Cashman women set off for San Francisco. This was during the Gold Rush, and the opportunity the ladies grasped was the miners need for creature comforts. They went from boom-town, to boom-town, opening boarding houses and restaurants. These were not places for the faint of heart and where many of the only other women were prostitutes.

Nellie continued successfully on her own, opening boarding houses, restaurants, and retail ventures all over the west. Though, not forgetting her family's own struggles, she wouldn't let a miner go hungry even if he couldn't pay for his meal. She befriended the homeless, prostitutes, outlaws, and other people on the fringe of polite society. Her restaurant, Delmonico's, was the first business in Tucson. Later she would raise money to open St. Mary's Hospital and a church.

She always had her ears cocked to gather information, and so was often among the first to go to the next big strike, pulling up stakes and moving on. It's said that just by sweeping the floors of her restaurants, she collected about $100 in gold dust a day. Over time, she learned the skills needed to be a prospector, at one time owning up to 11 mines.

Nellie Cashman covered a lot of ground and was active wherever she went. I'm going to concentrate on two of the more significant events in her life: her years in Canada and Tombstone, Arizona.

The Angel of Cassiar:

In 1871, Nellie, being the sole woman, joined a team of prospectors who headed for British Columbia. She continued, in her way, working and raising funds for charitable institutions, in particular her favorite, the Sisters of Saint Ann. She was on her way to deliver $500 to the sisters when she heard that nearly 100 miners had been trapped in a winter storm and were suffering from scurvy.

She organized a rescue team and they began the perilous journey. Wearing snowshoes they pulled sleds through sometimes 10 feet of snow, to deliver provisions, including limes to combat the scurvy. The Canadian army, deeming this effort too dangerous, set out to stop the party. When they caught up to them, Nellie explained over tea that she had no intention of calling off her rescue mission. Though she accepted that she might die in the attempt, she couldn't leave the miners to perish. The army let her proceed.

Seventy seven days after setting out, the rescuers reached the miners. They nursed them back to health and returned the men to safety, saving as many as 75 men and earning her the title of "The Angel of Cassiar."

The Angel of Tombstone:

In 1880, Nellie set up shop in Tombstone, AZ about the same time as the Earp brothers. She would stay in this town on and off for the next six years, becoming one of the prominent citizens during her time there, even contributing articles to the Arizona Daily Star.

Nellie's house on the corner of Toughnut (appropriately named) and Six St.

Here she was joined by her newly widowed sister, Fanny, and her five children. Concerned that her family had no church to go to, she persuaded Wyatt Earp to close his Oriental Saloon on Sundays so she could hold church services there. She was able to collect enough in donations to open Tombstone's first Catholic church. Besides establishing the church she also was able to raise funds to open the first public school in Tombstone.

She would solicit money from anyone for her charity projects saying, “Whether the money comes from an upstanding citizen, or a member of the outlaw faction makes no difference to me. The money doesn’t know the difference either. What matters is what it is used for, and I see to it that in one way or another, it helps humanity.”

She continued her charity work and took up nursing at the local hospital in addition to opening a restaurant and boarding house. When one customer complained about the food, Doc Holliday pulled out his pistol and said something along the lines of, "Do you want to repeat that, son?" To which the man said, "Best I ever ate."

Nellie's Restaurant Exists to this Day

Unfortunately, Fanny died of tuberculous. Nellie took on her orphaned nieces and nephews as her own.

In 1883 there was an event known as the Bisbee Massacre where four innocent people, included a pregnant woman were shot and killed during a robbery attempt. The town was incensed and wanted revenge, and in fact the leader of the gang was lynched by an angry mob. The four remaining participants were thrown in jail. 

When Nellie heard there was going to be a public execution and grandstands were being built for spectators, she was horrified, saying that no death was cause for celebration. She befriended two of the prisoners, visiting them in jail and offering spiritual guidance in their remaining days. The night before the hanging, Nellie got together a crew who went out in the night and tore down the grandstands. Then upon learning that the bodies of the executed men were going to be donated to science, she hired two miners to sit watch at Boot Hill day and night for 10 days to prevent the bodies from being "resurrected". 

Final Years and Legacy:

Nellie left Tombstone in 1886 to move to other parts of the state, taking her sister's children with her as she went looking for the next big strike--continuing to do what needed being done.

You may wonder, as I did, did she ever find love amidst all these men she worked alongside? She was romantically attached to a fellow prospector, Mike Sullivan. Their intentions to marry were even mentioned in the newspaper. But for whatever reason, the couple never made it to the altar.

On the subject of marriage: "I haven't had time for marriage," she told an American reporter. "Men are a nuisance, anyhow, now aren't they? They're just boys grow up."

In 1898 she took off for the Yukon looking for gold. She built a home in the Koyukuk River Basin, Alaska, an isolated community of 200 people of whom only a handful were women. She made the arduous journey back to civilization once a year for provisions. In 1922 the Associated Press documented her journey to Anchorage. Even though she had been tagged as an angel, it was said she was anything but in defense of her property. She could be aggressive and not above bending the law.

Not one to retire quietly, she set a new record with her dog team, covering 750 miles in 17 days. She was in her late 60's or early 70's at the time.

She died of pneumonia in 1925 in one of the hospitals she helped establish more than 50 years earlier.

Legends of the West Series, Postage Stamps

Nellie is gone, but happily she has not been forgotten.

• In 1994 the United States Post Office gave her a stamp in the series Legends of the West. She is one of three women to get a stamp in this set of twenty along with Annie Oakley and Sacajawea.
• The Alaska Mining Hall of Fame inducted her posthumously in 2006.
• In 2007, she was inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Fort Worth.
• A monument was erected to her in 2014 in Co. Cork, Ireland near her hometown. 
• Every August Nellie Cashman Day is celebrated in Tombstone, AZ.

* I use the term "reportedly" because as she was a legend even in her own time, tall stories started cropping up.

For instance, on the back of the postage stamp is this inscription: "The Angel of Tombstone, Anti-violence peacemaker who ran a boarding house, raised orphans, campaigned against public hanging, and once saved a man from an angry mob."

The story goes that she once drove her buggy into the middle of a mob who were intent on lynching a man. She rescued and then spirited him away to safety. She could have done. But there isn't much evidence that she did, and this might have been made up.