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Media
Fairbanks Daily News Miner
June 17, 2007
By David James
Aunt Phil’s Trunk: Volume Two
By Phyllis Downing Carlson and Laurel Downing Bill
Laudon Enterprises
2007
376 pages
$19.95
“Aunt Phil’s Trunk: Volume One,” published last year, was an unexpected gem. The book was a compilation of historical essays about early Alaska, ranging from Native life in the pre-contact period through the era of Russian possession, and onward to the purchase of the territory by the United States and the gold rushes that ensued a few decades later.
Most of the book’s stories were compiled by the late Phyllis Downing Carlson, a near-lifelong resident of the state who published many of these tales in numerous publications. When she passed away in 1993 at the age of 84, her countless files fell into the hands of her niece, Laurel Downing Bill.
As luck would have it, Downing Bill also has a flair for writing and a passion for Alaskan history. As a memorial to her aunt and a gift to the rest of us, Downing Bill has been organizing these stories, adding her own details, exhaustively illustrating them with period photos, and publishing them in books which deserve to be snatched up by anyone with an interest in our state’s rich past.
Volume Two has arrived right on schedule, more or less continuing where the first book left off (although there is some overlap in the time period covered). And this edition is, if anything, better than the last. Where Volume One began and ended with a few stray stories that didn’t quite fit the flow of the overall book, most of Volume Two is tightly focused on how the territory went from a freewheeling frontier with little governmental oversight to being a true extension of the United States.
Downing Bill opens this volume with a summary of the first edition, adding a few new details in the process. This is followed by the book’s longest chapter, an account of early Fairbanks.
Our community, like any town of worth, was founded by a shyster. E.T. Barnette who recognized that supplying gold miners presented a more lucrative potential than the hard work of actually digging the ground in search of pay dirt. So in 1901 he finagled a ride aboard the riverboat Lavelle Young up the Tanana River, seeking to establish a trading post in the Interior. He was rather unceremoniously dumped on the shores of the Chena just in time to encounter Felix Pedro, a miner who had discovered “prospects” nearby. As quick as you can say “con artist” Barnette was building his new supply center and the town was born.
Downing Bill captures the essence of early boomtown Fairbanks with plenty of anecdotes and more than 40 photographs. Along the way she discusses the arrival of Judge James Wickersham, who helped civilize the new community and who established his offices here, assuring the town’s long-term viability. This leads into the next major portion of the book, which explores the development of law and order in a territory not known for either.
Early Alaskans were generally left to fend for themselves, and vigilante justice was far from rare. The situation was hardly improved by the arrival in Nome of the controversial sheriff Wyatt Earp, still running from the aftermath of the famous OK Corral shootout. Earp set up shop as a saloon keeper for a few seasons and also continued to fancy himself a lawman, much to the consternation of Nome’s residents.
Somewhat more successful were Frank Canton, the first officer of the peace in the Interior, and Capt. Michael Healy, who plied the waters off coastal Alaska, dispensing justice and encountering his own share of difficulties.
It was Wickersham who ultimately brought things under a semblance of control. Appointed to the territory in 1900, he cleaned up the cronyism that infested the legal system in Nome and then established a federal building and courthouse in Fairbanks.
Alaska had plenty of criminals about, and we learn here of claim jumpers, thieves, pirates, and murderers, including Robert Stroud, better known as the Birdman of Alcatraz, who was originally imprisoned for a Juneau killing.
Crime in the territory could also be more humorous in nature, and Downing Bill provides several examples including this one: “Dog teams routinely carried several hundred thousand dollars in gold on the trail, but there was only one dog team robbery, according to “Gold Fever in the North” editors Darcy Ellington and Angela Tripp. William Shermeier, owner of the Halfway Roadhouse, and a prostitute, known as Black Bear, got driver Bill Duffy drunk one night and stole $30,000 in cash from his sled. Shermeier went to jail, and Duffy married Black Bear.”
Those dog teams were also used to open up the territory for mail delivery. The establishment of postal routes, like the appointment of federal judges, was an important step toward solidifying the federal government’s presence in Alaska. The authors tell admiring stories of the efforts made by early postal workers to provide reliable delivery.
The book includes biographical sketches on such famous northerners as the poet Robert Service, artist Eustace Ziegler, and pioneer Arthur Harper. We learn that an 8-year-old Hoagy Carmichael entertained the residents of Nome with his piano playing. We read of the establishment of the towns of Seward, Valdez, and Cordova. The authors pay homage to the trappers, loggers, mushers, merchants, and mountain climbers who forged a life in the Last Frontier. And we get literally hundreds of pictures to help bring their stories alive.
All this and more can be found in “Aunt Phil’s Trunk: Volume Two.” After two enormously entertaining books with more than 700 pages between them, this series still hasn’t even made it much past 1913. With nearly a full century of history yet to be explored, we can all hope for many more volumes to come.
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