QUARANTINE BLOG # 537

September 18, 2021

In QB 523, I told you the story of Josephine Earp, wife of the legendary gunfighter and lawman, Wyatt Earp.  The photograph identified as Josie may not be Mrs. Earp.  The original has been identified as a woman named “Kaloma.”  That picture has a copyright date of 1914 – the year that Josie Earp would have been 54.  Here are two more photographs with better provenance, the first from 1880, and the second is the only confirmed picture of Josie and Wyatt together.

Kaloma

Josie, from 1880

Josie and Wyatt

And now more, “Women of the Klondike Gold Rush.”

ETHEL BERRY

Ethel Berry arrived in Seattle in 1897 as one of the first of the Klondike millionaires. She and her husband had less than $60 when she left California a year earlier, a 23 year-old bride. Newspaper headlines already heralded the arrival of the ship bearing a “ton of gold.” At Ethel’s feet was a bedroll so heavy she couldn’t lift it. Inside the bedroll was nearly $100,000 in gold ($3.1 million today).

Ethel Berry holding the gold pan.

Ethel had married her childhood sweetheart Clarence J. Berry in the fall of 1895. Their honeymoon trip was over the Chilkoot Pass.

With no luck at prospecting, Clarence was tending bar in Forty Mile the night George Carmack arrived to boast of his discovery at Bonanza Creek. The Berrys immediately headed for the new discovery and staked a claim on nearby Eldorado Creek; theirs would become one of the most valuable claims in the Klondike.

Ethel Berry with her arms folded.

While most of the “Klondike Kings” squandered their money, Clarence and Ethel Berry continued to work hard and invested their fortune wisely.

Ethel, who in 1897 had declared she would never go North again, couldn’t stay away. She traveled each year up the Yukon River to visit their claims until Clarence died in 1930. The wealthy widow lived in Beverly Hills, California, until her own death in 1948.

BELINDA MULROONEY

Belinda Mulrooney was in Juneau when word of the gold discovery filtered out of the Klondike. She invested in “silk goods and hot water bottles,” and set out for Dawson. She sold all her goods for a huge profit, especially the silk underwear she made for the stampeders. With the profit she financed new ventures.

In the spring of 1898, Belinda was making her second trip over the Chilkoot Pass, accompanying a shipment of expensive materials and fancy furnishings for the hotel she was building in Dawson. Belinda had signed a contract with packer Joe Brooks in Skagway, paying him $4,000 to ferry her goods over the Pass. Brooks, figuring a woman wouldn’t be hard to cheat, dumped her freight on the trail. Belinda immediately returned to Skagway,  seized Brooks’ pack train, retrieved her goods, and arrived in Lake Bennett riding Brooks’ own horse!

Belinda’s first hotel, the Grand Forks Hotel was an immediate success. Belinda heard men discuss who was selling mining claims and which claims were most valuable. She invested accordingly, increasing her growing fortune. 

Belinda sold the Grand Forks Hotel for $24,000 ($600,000) and opened a second hotel, the Fairview. Room rates were $6.50 ($162.50) per night, meals $5 ($125) extra. The bar alone took in $6,000 ($150,000) the first day of business.

Such success attracted many suitors, among them Charles Eugene Carbonneau, a Quebec champagne salesman who advertised himself as a European count. He and Belinda were married on October 1, 1900, an event that was a social sensation in Dawson. The Carbonneaus left for an extended honeymoon in Paris, where they paraded up and down the Champs Elysee in a coach drawn by white horses.

In 1904 Carbonneau was indicted on charges of embezzlement, skipped Dawson with Belinda’s furs and jewels, never to return.

Her resources depleted, Belinda saw the new gold strike in Fairbanks as a chance to start fresh. Within a month she had options for claims on three of the richest creeks in the district.

In May 1906, Belinda opened the Dome City Bank with profits from her mining claims. As miners brought in record clean-ups from the surrounding creeks, the bank prospered and Belinda made another fortune.

When she left the North, Belinda bought property in Yakima, Washington. She built a mansion, a local landmark that came to be known as Mrs. Carbonneau’s Castle. By the end of her life, her money had run out. She died in relative obscurity in Seattle in 1967, at the age of 95.

KLONDIKE KATE ROCKWELL

When her mother divorced for the second time, she and Kate Rockwell Warner Matson Van Duren, the “Queen of the Klondike,” fell on hard times. Sixteen year old Kate read a newspaper ad which said: “Chorus girls wanted. No experience necessary.” She answered the ad to help her mother avoid work in a sweatshop.

She was working in a vaudeville house in Spokane when news of the Klondike rush broke, and decided to follow the excitement. She headlined first in Victoria, B.C., and then in Juneau where she danced wearing a crown of candles. Kate said, “I could have skipped rope and the men would have been just as appreciative.”

In Dawson, she headlined at The Savoy. She wowed them wearing a rose-tinted, lace-trimmed gown, embellished by a Lillian Russell hat with ostrich plumes, while belting out old ballads. 

Hired to perform at the Grand Palace Theater, one of her successes was the Flame Dance, in which she moved to music in flashy costumes at a pace that kept about 200 yards of chiffon airborne. For this number she was paid $200 ($5,000) a week, and she claimed she often earned an additional $500 ($12,500) after each show as a percentage girl, receiving 50 percent on dances and 25 percent on drinks. She claimed to have accumulated more than $30,000 ($750,000) during her first year in Dawson.

Kate had a 30 year on again off again affair with Alexander Pantages. A waiter from Greece when she met him, and born Pericles Pantages, he re-christened himself after Alexander the Great. Alexander landed in Skagway with only 25 cents and a pair of boots wrapped in a copy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

“I’ll give you five dollars for that paper,” a man called when Alexander stepped off the boat.

“I’ll give you ten!” yelled another.

“Not for sale,” snapped Alexander, who that night hired a hall and a reader, selling tickets for one dollar a head to the news-starved community.

In the fall of 1929 Alexander Pantages was charged with raping a 17 year-old actress. He was sentenced to 50 years in San Quentin. He was acquitted two years later, but he suffered a heart attack from which he never recovered. Alexander lived only five years after he was released from prison.

In 1933, Kate later married Johnny Matson, a hopelessly shy Norwegian miner who had worshiped the dance hall queen from afar during the Klondike rush.

In 1948, two years after Johnny’s death, Kate Rockwell and William L. Van Duren applied for a marriage license in Vancouver, Washington, requesting a waiver of the three-day waiting period.

“Time is of the essence,” William, age 71, assured the judge.

“I was the flower of the North, but the petals are falling awfully fast, honey,” Kate quipped.

Kate died peacefully in her sleep in 1957.

The story of Women of the Klondike will conclude next week with “Good Time Girls and Soiled Doves.”

👉  Today’s close, “Prayers are Precious Jewels,” is by Max Lucado.

You can talk to God because God listens.  Your voice matters in heaven.  He takes you very seriously.  When you enter his presence, the attendants turn to you to hear your voice.  No need to fear that you will be ignored.  Even if you stammer or stumble, even if what you have to say impresses no one, it impresses God – and he listens.

Intently.  Carefully.  The prayers are honored as precious jewels.  Purified and empowered, they rise in a delightful fragrance to our Lord.  Your words do not stop until they reach the very throne of God.

Your prayers move God to change the world.  You may not understand the mystery of prayer.  You don’t need to.  But this much is clear: Actions in heaven begin when someone prays on earth.  What an amazing thought!

Your prayer on earth activates God’s power in heaven, and “God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.”

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