Biographies of Nome, Alaska
Biographies of Nome, Alaska
GEORGE T. WILLIAMS
George T. Williams is one of the organizers of the Northwestern Commercial Company, and is the vice-president of that corporation. He is president of the North Coast Lighterage Company, one of the leading companies engaged in the business of lighterage at Nome.
Mr. Williams was born at Philadelphia, March 14, 1872, and was educated in the public schools of Pennsylvania. He learned the trade of a machinist in Philadelphia and became an expert workman. He was employed in Cramp's ship yard, and has helped to build several of the large battleships which are now a part of the Navy of the United States. Mr. Williams was an employee of the Cramps during a period of nine years, and a part of that time his services were utilized in many departments of mechanical work where the highest degree of skill was required.He severed his relations with the Cramps in August 1897, and started for Skagway, Alaska. He was among the first men to go over White Pass, and arrived at Lake Bennett September 17. The lakes were crossed and the Yukon descended in a canvas boat, and Dawson was reached October 1. Ice was floating in the river when he and his party arrived.
He devoted some time to mining and in 1898-99 engaged in shipping goods from Seattle to Dawson. In 1898 he made the record trip from Lake Bennett to Dawson. This trip which never has been equaled was made in four days and seventeen hours. He was a pilot of one of the first boats on the upper Yukon.
In the fall of 1899, with others, he organized the Northwestern Commercial Company, which is now the largest commercial and transportation company operating in the Nome country. The North Coast Lighterage Company of which he is president, is composed of members of the Northwestern Commercial Company. It has the best facilities for lighterage at Nome that can be devised. In one day the company lightered 1,008 tons of coal from the steamship Quito, and stacked this immense quantity of coal in the yard. The superior facilities possessed by this company are due to Mr. Williams inventive genius and ingenuity. He constructed the first aerial cable way at Nome for discharging cargoes from the sea. This cable is 350 feet long and extends beyond the bar in the sea in front of Nome. Engines handle two endless surf lines. Connected with the lighterage plant is a ground and an elevated tramway, providing facilities for the easy handling and expeditious transportation of freight from the wharf to the company's warehouses.
Mr. Williams and Miss Amanda Harris were married in Camden, New Jersey, January II, 1900. If energy, industry, application, ingenuity and honest effort entitle a man to success, Mr. Williams should be among the most successful. (Source: Nome & Seward Peninsula, History, Description, Biographies & Stories, by E. S. Harrison, Seattle, 1905; page 257 - Submitted by Peggy Thompson)
Captain W. H. Ferguson a well-known sea captain on the different oceans of the world, and one of the pioneers of Seward Peninsula, was born in Philadelphia in 1860. He was educated in the schools of Philadelphia and vicinity, and in his carry manhood adopted a sea-faring life as a profession, rising rapidly to a command. After serving on the sea for twenty-two years, and hearing of the fabulous riches of the great Northland, he determined to try his luck at mining.
His first trip to Northwestern Alaska was in 1898. In 1897 he was employed by the North American Transportation and Trading Company as superintendent of construction at Dutch Harbor, and supervised the building of the company's river fleet at that place. After completing his work he went to SL Michael in September, 1898. While there he heard of the strike on Ophir Creek in the Council District, and in company with Dr.
Townsend, of New York, and a mining expert, he at once proceeded to the diggings. In those days there were no trails or well-kept road-houses, and traveling was different from what it now is. The traveler through this country pitched his tent where night overtook him, and cooked his meals over an open camp fire.Arriving at Council City the party found even at that early date mat the creeks in the vicinity of Council had been staked to the mountain tops, and not having time to measure fractions or to go far afield for new locations on account of the lateness of the season, the party returned to Golovin Bay. While waiting at the Bay for transportation to SL Michael the Captain met Dr. A. N. Kitulsen and many of the old-timers who had during the season of 1898 prospected different parts of Seward Peninsula, and hearing good reports from these men, he determined to return to the peninsula in the early spring of 1899. He was unable to remain in Alaska that winter on account of the necessity of having to go to the states to consummate some unfinished business.
The great strike on Anvil Creek late in the season of '98 intensified Captain
Ferguson's desire to return, and he was among the early arrivals in the Nome country in 1899. During this summer he prospected and staked some claims in nearly every section of the peninsula. In the fall of 1899 he engaged in business in Nome, and took a prominent part in the affairs of that community. He was an active member of the Citizens Committee that deported a number of bad characters that infested the camp, and later, in the spring of 1900, when it became necessary for the citizens to again organize and assist in the government of the place, the Nome Chamber of Commerce was formed and Captain Ferguson was unanimously elected the first president of this organization. The good work done by this body of men has heretofore been noted. They raised $20,000, most of which was used to drain the town and put it in a sanitary condition. In the spring of 1900 18,000 people arrived in Nome, but so thoroughly had the Chamber of Commerce performed its work that only a few cases of typhoid fever were reported during this season.
In January, 1900, Sam C. Dunham organized Camp Nome of the Arctic Brotherhood and Captain Ferguson was elected the first Arctic Chief of the camp. Ever since the organization of the camp he has been an ardent worker in the cause of the Brotherhood. In July, 1900, Captain Ferguson was appointed United States Commissioner at Council City, and filled this position until October, 1902. During that entire period he was feared by evil-doers and claim-jumpers. He would not permit any man to go on a claim and endeavor to hold it against the original locator. While Captain Ferguson was commissioner the Council District was well governed. He modestly disclaims the credit, but says it was due to the co-operation and support of the good citizens of that locality.
Since 1902 the Captain has been engaged in transportation and mining. He is also an attorney-at-law, having been admitted to practice before the courts of Alaska previous to his appointment as United States Commissioner. He is a rugged, forceful, energetic man, and was a good man at the helm during the first winter in Nome. The readers of this volume will see that he has left his footprints in the history of this country. (Source: Nome & Seward Peninsula, History, Description, Biographies & Stories, by E. S. Harrison, Seattle, 1905; pages 258-259 - Submitted by Peggy Thompson)
Success is the result of ability, aptitude and work. Failure, when it is not due to indolence, most often comes from inaptitude. Men try to do something for which they are not qualified either by nature or education and training, and they fail. Square pegs do not fit in round holes. Success waits on genius, but a musical genius might waste his life behind the plow, in the factory or the counting room. The Maker of man in His omniscience has fitted some for one kind of work, and equipped others for another kind of work, so that by natural selection and the exercise of our dominant faculties we should be doing that which we are best qualified to do. A. J. Cody was made to order for a detective and an executive officer of the law. Possessing great physical strength, although a man of not extraordinary size, agile and alert, with a mind quick of perception and an intuitive grasp of human motive, devoid of fear, yet cautious, and having withal a keen analytical mind, Mr. Cody has the traits of character that Conan Doyle has given to the hero of his great detective stories.
Mr. Cody is a native of Auburn, Oregon, and was forty-two years old November 10, 1904. He is a member of an old English family that came to America about 200 years ago. His father was a pioneer of California who emigrated from Indiana in 1849. A. J. Cody was educated in the public schools of Oregon, and began the serious work of life riding the range on a cattle ranch in Big Lake County, Oregon. At a later period he was engaged in the fish cannery business on Columbia River. From 1883 to 1889 he was in the hotel business in Portland. In all of these lines of business he achieved ordinary success, but it was not until he became an officer of Multnomah County, by appointment as deputy sheriff, that he found a vocation in which he excelled, and in which progress and promotion followed in the natural order of events. Subsequently he was appointed to a position on the police and detective force of Portland, Oregon. In 1896 when the patrol wagon was called out almost every hour of the day to what was known as the North End, Mr. Cody was assigned at the request of Mayor Pennoyer to duty in this tough part of the city. He remained on duty in this part of the city until June, 1898, and did his work so well that for three days covering the first Fourth of Jury after his assignment there was not a single call for the patrol wagon. He told the tough element that if there was any fighting to be done he would take a hand in it; and a few illustrations of what he could do in this line awakened a wholesome respect for him, which deterred the bad men from violating the law. During his connection with the police department of Portland he did a lot of clever detective work, embracing cases covering a wide range of crimes, from the discovery of stolen goods and arrest of the thieves to the capture of desperadoes who had sent word that they would never be taken alive.
In 1898 Mr. Cody was appointed deputy collector of customs for Alaska. He came to St. Michael and ascended the Yukon to the boundary line, establishing customs houses at Rampart, Fort Yukon and Eagle. He resigned this position the following year and came to Nome, engaging in mining. In the fall of 1900 he was appointed to the position of deputy marshal by U. S. Marshal Vawter. Mr. Cody is the man who broke up the worst gang of malefactors that ever infested Nome. Sixty men of criminal instincts had formed a compact to swear alibis and thereby keep each other out of the penitentiary for their misdeeds. Judge Noyes, Marshal Vawter, District Attorney Wood and U. S. Commissioner Stevens had a joint interview with Mr. Cody, and requested him to break up the ring. He agreed to undertake the work upon the condition that warrants should be issued at his request and the arrested men confined in jail without the privilege of any one visiting them, and that there should be no writs of habeas corpus. By pursuing this method an opportunity was given to obtain testimony, and fourteen convicts were deported to McNeil's Island the following spring. The gang was effectually broken up, and since then Nome has been comparatively free from the depredations of criminals.
Being a field deputy in the office of the U. S. Marshal Mr. Cody had the privilege of conducting a detective agency, and was employed by all the big companies to protect their interests. He resigned when Marshal Vawter went out of office, and devoted his time to the work of his detective bureau and to his mining interests. In 1903 Marshal Richards tendered him the position of office deputy, which he accepted, and filled until the close of navigation, 1904, when he resigned to return to the states, the main object of his going being to give his son a collegiate education.
Mr. Cody owns extensive and valuable mining interests in the Nome District. He owns all of Extra Dry Creek, comprising fourteen claims, and owns property on Anvil Creek. He and Miss Alice V. Caiftpbell were married in Portland, Oregon, in June, 1884. They have one son, Albert R, a bright young man twenty years old. Mr. Cody has had an eventful career, filled with thrilling experiences, but there is another phase of his character of which the world knows less than it does of his public career. He is an affectionate and devoted husband and father, a loyal friend, and he has a soul that feels keenly and suffers from the sorrow and misery of the world with which he is inevitably brought in contact. (Source: Nome & Seward Peninsula, History, Description, Biographies & Stories, by E. S. Harrison, Seattle, 1905; pages 259-261 - Submitted by Peggy Thompson)
CAPTAIN E. W. JOHNSTONCaptain Johnson has been identified with the lighter age business in Alaska since the first stampede to the Klondike in 1897. When the news of the gold discovery on the upper Yukon electrified a large part of the civilized world. Captain Johnston was a resident of Seattle and was engaged in building lighters, operating a stone quarry and conducting a general freighting business on the Sound. He immediately saw the business opportunity of lightering freight and landing passengers from steamers at Skagway, and was the first man to engage in this business at that place. The smallest lighter that he took from Seattle had a carrying capacity of 400 tons, and when he was preparing to sail with his equipment, horses, men and supplies, there were people who talked loudly about invoking the law to prevent his departure. They knew that he was taking the poor dumb brutes and deluded people to certain death.
At that time the public's knowledge of Alaska was very indefinite, and the conception of conditions in the far North was hazy or distorted.
Captain Johnston conducted this business during the seasons of '97 and '98. He worked almost incessantly. Only a person of extraordinary physical stamina could have stood the strain to which he was subjected. He made money and made friends. Probably there is no man in the North who knows more of the Klondike than Captain Johnston.The Nome gold discovery and the development of these gold fields in 1899 convinced Captain Johnston that there would be another business opportunity in his line of work on the waterfront of Nome. He fully understands and appreciates the wisdom of the old Spanish proverb: "Opportunity has a long forelock, but is bald behind." Being a man of prompt decision, he immediately set himself to the work of constructing a lighterage plant to take to Nome in the spring of 1900. Every year since that memorable season he has been in Nome, and has handled a great many thousand tons of freight that have been shipped into this country. From the beginning of his work at Nome he saw the necessity of a harbor to provide better facilities for discharging cargoes and to provide a safe anchorage during storms for the small craft of the sea. He held this idea in abeyance, knowing that the time had not yet arrived for the inauguration of such an enterprise. The public questioned the permanency of the camp, and educated wiseacres said that a pier could not be built to withstand storms and the impact of the ice.
In 1904 a better general sentiment about the Nome country prevailed throughout the United States, and Captain Johnston concluded that the time was auspicious to undertake the work which he believed could be successfully done, the value of which if consummated was obvious. During the session of Congress in the winter of 1905, a charter was secured to build jetties from the mouth of Snake River into Bering Sea, the work to be done, under the supervision of the war department This work involved the expenditure of a quarter of a million dollars, and to secure the necessary funds was the next task. The plans proposed required the construction of rock-filled cribs covered with edge-bolted timbers, the cribs extending from the mouth of Snake River out into the sea a distance of 750 feet; the construction of wharves and the building of necessary warehouses. Captain Johnston believes that "Where there's a will there's a way," and by using the facts of Nome's commerce and all available information concerning the sea and beach at Nome, he was able to secure the organization of a company which subscribed the necessary funds and gave him the contract to perform the work. He is making a Nome harbor this season. He believes that the Nome harbor will effect a saving to the residents of Seward Peninsula of $200,000 the year. It will furnish a facility for landing passengers in roughest weather; it will lessen the danger of longshoring and will be a great benefit to the town of Nome, and should be a profitable investment to the men who have shown faith in the enterprise by subscribing the money to perform the work.
Captain Johnston was born in Chicago November 30, 1860. He is a son of Dr. Johnston, a well-known citizen and pioneer who settled in the "Windy City" in 1834. Captain Johnston is self-educated. When a small boy he was sent to school, but had the misfortune in the very early part of his scholastic opportunities to be challenged by the bully of the school He gave the bully an unmerciful thrashing and the paternal rebuke caused the independent youngster to leave home. He began life for himself by catching minnows and selling them to the fishermen for ten cents the dozen. He got a berth on a sloop sailing on Lake Michigan and worked for a year at a salary of two dollars and fifty cents the month. When he was sixteen years old he and his elder brother bought the schooner El Painter and sailed her on the lake. At the age of twenty be was in command of the lumber schooner Dan I. Davis. He sailed the lakes for many years, and has built piers on Lake Michigan and is consequently familiar with the kind of work in which he is now engaged.
In 1886 he went to Seattle and engaged in the hardware business for two years prior to resuming the line of work on Puget Sound with which he has been familiar from his early boyhood.
Captain Johnston possesses great force of character. In the lexicon of his youth there was no such word as fail, and in the brighter days of successful manhood there is no impairment of his courage and energy. (Source: Nome & Seward Peninsula, History, Description, Biographies & Stories, by E. S. Harrison, Seattle, 1905; pages 261-262 - Submitted by Peggy Thompson)
FREEMAN B. PORTERF. B. Porter was in Seattle in o the early part of 1898 when he decided to join the Kotze but Sound expedition, and arranged for transportation on the schooner M. Merrill. He wrote his fiancee. Miss Stella H. Scofield. of New York, and she came to Seattle where they were married May 27, 1898. Never did bride start on a more remarkable wedding tour-a trip to a bleak, inhospitable wilderness beyond the Arctic Circle a trip in quest of gold.
Mr. and Mrs. Porter spent the winter of 1898-'99 in the Kotzebue Sound country. They built a habitation on the upper waters of the Inmachuk, not far from the hot springs, and as a section of this river near the hot springs never freezes in the winter, Mrs. Porter found divertisement in trout fishing. They were the first white people who ever wintered in this part of the Arctic slope. From New York to Kotzebue Sound represents the extremes of social life, and yet they look back upon this winter of loneliness and isolation with many pleasant memories.
When the news of the Nome strike reached the Kotzebue Sound prospectors a number of Mr. Porter's party made the trip across the peninsula during the winter, and located several claims in the Nome District At the opening of navigation Mr. Porter and his wife abandoned their cabin and took passage on the steamship Towns-end for Nome. During his sojourn on the Arctic slope he found prospects on the Inmachuk River, and had an idea when he left for Nome that he was leaving a better country than the one for which he was bound. The "destiny which shapes our ends" sent him back to the Inmachuk during the latter part of the season of 1904. He went back with a lease upon property which had been developed to the extent that proved it to be among the best mines of the country.
Mr. Porter is a native of Freeport, Maine, and was born May 3, 1869. He is descended from the Pilgrim Fathers. Through his mother he is a descendant of Col. Ethan Allen. He received a public school and academic education, and at the age of sixteen went to Boston where he obtained a business course under a private tutor. He began the serious work of life as a stenographer, and was at one time stenographer for John Alexander, first vice-president of the Equitable Life Assurance Company. He filled the position of private secretary for Congressman Logan H. Roots. He has also filled positions in the offices of Kimball & Bryant, of New York, and the Mingo Smelting Company of Salt Lake. While employed by the latter company he acquired a knowledge of ores and an inclination for mining. At a later date he was connected with the Smith Premier Typewriter Company, and was in the employ of that company when he contracted the gold fever and joined the Kotzebue Sound stampeders.
When he came from Kotzebue Sound in the spring of 1899 he resided in Nome continuously until 1902. He then returned to Portland, Oregon, and took up his old line of work as manager of the typewriter company, but still retained his mining interests on the Inmachuk and Kugruk Rivers and Candle Creek. Mr. Porter leased the Polar Bear Group on Inmachuk River and in the fall of 1904 took in thirty tons of fuel and supplies. He intended to work with two thawers and take out a large winter dump from the rich pay-streak that he knew to run through this group of mines. As this book goes to press, news comes from the Arctic region that the spring clean-up of dumps on Inmachuk this year will show a splendid profit for operators.
Mr. Porter is an educated gentleman, a man who has filled responsible and important positions, and has succeeded in doing well whatever he has undertaken to do. (Source: Nome & Seward Peninsula, History, Description, Biographies & Stories, by E. S. Harrison, Seattle, 1905; pages 263-264 - Submitted by Peggy Thompson)
JERRY GALVINIt was not long after the discovery of gold on Anvil Creek and other streams in this neighborhood until most of the available ground was appropriated for mining purposes. The beach strike in 1899 furnished profitable employment for all the men in the camp who were not employed on the creeks or engaged in business in Nome, but when winter stopped active mining work there began a period of exploration and prospecting in remote parts of the peninsula. Jerry Galvin, who arrived in Nome from Dawson late in the season of 1899, was one of the first prospectors to go to the Kougarok District, the great interior and as yet comparatively undeveloped district of the Nome country. White men had been as far inland as Mary's Igloo, but beyond this the country was unknown. Jerry Galvin and George Ostrom were the first white men to enter this unknown region.
Piloted by an Eskimo who told them he knew where gold could be found, they went up the Kuzitrin to Idaho Bar, where prospecting revealed colors in the ruby sand. They were the first white men to visit the mouth of the Kougarok River. At this place they camped a couple of days, prospecting in the bars and discovering gold. They went up the Kougarok as far as the mouth of Windy Creek, but did not go farther because above Windy Creek there was no fuel. The only wood in this country is willow, and it is a stunted growth, attaining a height of only a few feet. A stick with the diameter of a man's arm is big timber. The winter season of 1899-1900 was the mildest in the recent history of this country, and the pioneer prospectors did not suffer any great hardships. While the ground was frozen, they were able to do considerable prospecting, and Mr. Galvin became convinced that there were pay-streaks in this region where prospects could be found with so little difficulty in the bars. He worked all winter in this part of the country, excepting the time spent journeying to and from Nome, 200 miles by the coast trail, distant from his camp in the solitude of the treeless hills, for the purpose of obtaining food supplies. He found a pay-streak which has yielded as much as $225 the pan, and he has since discovered other pay-streaks, and therein is com-pensation. He is the discoverer of gold on the Kougarok, and one of the pioneer miners in this district Jerry Galvin is a native of Wisconsin, and was born in Eau Claire April 22, 1869. The family moved to Michigan, and he was educated in the public schools of that state. He began life for himself at the age of sixteen in railroad work on the line, beginning as a freight brakeman, and going through the list of promotion for efficient service, until he was a passenger conductor. In this last capacity he worked for the Northern Pacific for twelve years. After he was promoted to freight conductor on the Duluth, Superior and Western Road, he had charge of the construction train on his division, and it was here that he learned a lot of useful lessons about expeditious and economical methods of handling earth, which he has found of great value in mining. In railroading he was both successful and fortunate, and he never had an accident during his entire career as conductor.
In 1898 the microbe that causes the gold fever got into his system, and he quit the business in which, by years of work and painstaking attention to details he had become proficient, and started for Dawson. He acquired a bench claim off Upper Discovery on Dominion Creek, and mined it successfully until the latter part of the season of 1899, when he sold it and came down the Yukon on the last boat down the river, arriving in Nome in October. His first experience after arriving in Nome was a thrilling adventure on Sledge Island where he and a party of prospectors were marooned for twelve days. The story of this experience will be found on another page of this book. Soon after this adventure he and George Ostrom got a dog team and started for the Kougarok, where as told in a preceding paragraph, he spent the winter. He staked Discovery claim on the Kougarok March 2, 1900. During the winter he made two trips to Nome. On the third journey back to this region he was accompanied by Griff Yarnell, and they crossed over to the Arctic slope.
The next spring he and Martin Dahl, Griff Yarnell and AL Kerry went over the ground to fix up the stakes, which could not be put in the ground properly in the winter time. They stopped for lunch on a bar of Quartz Creek, where panning showed values of from five to fifty cents the pan.
Mr. Galvin went up the creek to the confluence of a small tributary. He washed out some gravel on his shovel and found coarse gold. This was the discovery of gold on Dahl Creek, now the most famous creek of this district. This is the pay-streak where $225 was obtained from one pan of gravel picked out of the frozen ground. During the subsequent seasons Mr. Galvin has mined in this district, principally on Dahl Creek. Notwithstanding the short seasons and the difficulty of getting supplies into the country have been a serious handicap, a large quantity of gold dust has come out of the Dahl Creek claims.Mr. Gahrin has a host of friends in the Northland. Being a young man, be m not in appearance the type of a pioneer, but he lacks nothing in character to deprive him of the appellation. Generous, affable and kind-hearted, he deserves the good fortune that does not come to all the men who blaze the trails. (Source: Nome & Seward Peninsula, History, Description, Biographies & Stories, by E. S. Harrison, Seattle, 1905; pages 264-266 - Submitted by Peggy Thompson)
GRIFF YARNELLGriff Yarnell is one of the pioneers and successful miners of the Kougarok District He came to Nome from Dawson in 1900, and immediately went to the Kougarok region. He arrived in Nome during the month of April, and his first trip to this great interior district was made over the snow. He staked mining property on Dahl and Quartz Creeks. In the following season, 1901, he began mining operations on Dahl Creek. When he arrived in this country he was without means, and first began work with a rocker, living on the miners fare of bacon and beans. In 1902 he put in a line of sluice-boxes and was able to hire a force of from five to ten men. The following year the force was augmented, and he became interested in ditch construction. And thus his business of mining has grown from its modest inception to extensive and successful operations. Two hundred dollars the pan has been taken from his Dahl Creek claim. The prospects of the gold production of his properties, with water supplied from ditches, and with the aid of modern appliances, are very encouraging.
Mr. Yarnell was born in Center County, Pennsylvania, in 1869. His early life was devoted to hard work, and he has fought the battle of life single-handed and unaided since boyhood.
He went to Dawson in 1898 to try his luck at mining in the northern gold fields. He was not one of the fortunate men, and in the winter of 1899-1900 he traveled down the Yukon over the snow and ice, arriving at Nome as before stated in April. Mr. Yarnell, in the language of the West, is a hustler. The good fortune that has come to him in the Nome country is the result of his great capacity for work and his willingness to try to do that which seemed best, regardless of difficulties or obstacles. He is genial and honorable, and a highly esteemed citizen of Seward Peninsula. (Source: Nome & Seward Peninsula, History, Description, Biographies & Stories, by E. S. Harrison, Seattle, 1905; page 266 - Submitted by Peggy Thompson)
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