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Arctic & Northern Biographies


Biographies from 'A' to 'E' are on this page;
continue on to 'F' to 'L',   and 'M' to 'Z'

Yukon Recipients of Honours, Decorations, & Medals
Yukoners who have received a variety of national and territorial honours.

Northern Cemeteries and Graves
Information and inventories of cemeteries and wilderness grave sites in the Yukon, Alaska, northern BC, and the NWT.

American Heroes of the Klondike Gold Rush
Short bios, listed by the person's home town.

Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery
This large site provides bios of the most prominent people buried here, and a master burial database makes finding a specific grave easy.

Drownings in the Yukon & Alaska
With tens of thousands of cheechakos on the trail to the goldfields, accidents along the waterways of the North were inevitable - here is a list of some of them.

Canadian Heroes of the Klondike Gold Rush
Short bios, listed by the person's home town.

Children of the Gold Rush
A review of the book by Claire Rudolph Murphy and Jane G. Haigh. .

Klondikers from Hollister, California
These very descriptive letters home originally appeared in the Hollister Free Lance newspaper in 1898.

The Naming of Alaska
Biographies of 120 of the people who gave places in Alaska their names.

Peace Officer Honor Roll - Alaska
A listing of all Alaska State Troopers and other peace officers who have been killed in the line of duty in the state.

Peace Officer Honour Roll - Yukon
A listing of all police officers (NWMP, RNWMP and RCMP) who have been killed in the line of duty in the territory.

U.S. Submarine Nautilus - 1931 North Pole Attempt
A photo of 11 members of the crew with a complete listing of crew members and some biographies.

Whitehorse Pioneer Biographies, 1900-1965
A wide variety of biographies and death notices related to people buried at the Pioneer Cemetery, which closed in 1965.

Wilderness Graves on the Route to the Klondike
One of the things that makes the Yukon "The Land of Magic & Mystery" is that there are ghosts everywhere!

Yukon Nuggets
In this series of historic Yukon stories written for radio station CKRW by former CBC producer Les McLaughlin are many pioneer biographies.






George Adams
In an article published in January 1898, The Dyea Trail claims that George Adams was the first American to set foot in the Yukon basin, in 1865 - was he really?

William & Ruth Albee
The almost certain death of William Albee and his wife in the wilds of northern British Columbia got extensive coverage in American newspapers in June 1930.

Dr. C. Earl Albrecht
Dr. Albrecht came to Alaska to work in the Matanuska valley farming community that had been established, and went on to become an internationally-known expert on Northern health issues.

Explorer Roald Amundsen the First to Force the Northwest Passage
An article from The Sunday Star (Washington, D.C.) of Sunday, December 17, 1905.

William Anstett - "Chicken Billy"
A lengthy article about Dawson farmer William Anstett, by Frank G. Carpenter, from the El Paso Herald of July 8, 1916, with lots of detail about Yukon agriculture.

Charles A. Bailer
A newspaper report of the death by suicide of trapper and miner Charles A. Bailer, who shot himself in a room at the Commercial hotel in Whitehorse.

Russ Baker - from Bush Pilot to President of Pacific Western Airlines
A lengthy illustrated tribute published in The Vancouver Sun the evening of his death on November 15, 1958.

Robert Bruce Banks
A moving collection of letters follow an attempt to earn money during the Klondike rush, which ended in tragedy.

Thomas Barnes
The death notice from the May 10, 1898 issue of The Caribou Sun (Caribou Crossing, Yukon).

Captain Edward Barrington (1866-1898)
An article from The Seattle Post-Intelligencer of September 17, 1898, describes the life and death of Captain Barrington.

Edward Lewis "Bob" Bartlett
A biography of one of the prime architects of Alaskan statehood.

Captain Robert Abram Bartlett
Deemed the greatest ice captain of the 20th century, "Captain Bob" worked as a sealer, Arctic explorer, ice captain and scientist.

Frank Worth Beaton
Beaton worked for the Hudson's Bay Company for 45 years, 30 of them as factor of posts in the Fort St. John region.

Charles Eugene Bedaux
In 1934, the French millionaire started north from Edmonton in a bizarre expedition to explore the country with 2 limousines, 5 Citroen half-tracks, and 130 horses.

Joseph-Elzéar Bernier
Between 1904 and 1911, Captain Joseph Bernier did more than any other person to solidify Canada's claim to the Arctic Islands.

Ellsworth Price Bertholf, USRCS, USCG
Commodore Bertholf's long career with the Revenue Cutter Service and Coast Guard included a rescue mission that earned him a Medal of Honor.

George and Martha Black
George and Martha came for the gold, but remained to play important parts in the Yukon's development.

George Black, 1930 Yukon Election Flyer
Distributed to combat rumours that Capt. George Black, Conservative candidate for election to Parliament, was an outsider and non-resident of the Yukon.

James F. Black
A series of affidavits regarding Black's death by drowning in the Stikine River near Glenora in April 1898, including a list of his heirs.

Henry Bratnober
A brief look at Henry's activities in turn-of-the-century Yukon and Alaska.

Thomas Crozier Brice
Sgt. Brice, RCMP, died in 1932 following a patrol out of Carmacks during which he froze his feet.

Thomas Brooks
"Tommy" (1882-1964) lived in Carcross for some 40 years, and wrote verse that some people think equals that of Robert Service.

Robert Bylot
One of the most daring of the early Arctic explorers is all but forgotten today.

Dr. Samuel J. Call
An introduction to a man who received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his part in one of the greatest of Alaskan rescue missions.

"Count" Charles E. Carbonneau
An article from The Baltimore Sun of September 17, 1906, reporting on the continuing adventures of Carbonneau, formerly of Dawson and husband of Belinda Mulrooney.

Kate Carmack
We'll never know for certain who discovered the Klondike gold, but it may have been Kate Carmack.

John Philip Clum
A very good biography of Clum, who arrived in Alaska in 1898 as a Special Commissioner for the Post Office, and was very influential until his departure in 1909.

John Newington Conna
A biography of this black pioneer of Washington State and Alaska, by Douglas Q. Barnett.

John Howard Conrad
This site gives a lengthy extract from the book Fractured Veins & Broken Dreams, the history of Conrad's Yukon silver mines.

Captain James Cook in Alaska
While his exploration of the coast of Alaska in 1778 was not one of his greatest accomplishments, it added an enormous amount of information to the blank spots on the maps of the northern coast.

Joseph Cooper
A fairly lengthy letter published in the Alaska Search Light of August 29, 1896 describes a trip up the Kenai River with Cooper.

Luis de Córdova y Córdova
This lengthy article by Arsenio Rey-Tejerina examines Cordova's influence on Alaska, and provides information on other Spanish expeditions.

Louis Dahlman
This article from the November 19, 1898 issue of The Dyea Press tells of Dahlman's death during a blizzard on the Chilkoot Pass.

Alexander Edward Dame
A brief article about the death of a former Yukon bush pilot being killed in the crash of a twin-engined bomber in 1943 led me on a search to find out more about his life.

Marie Drake
Marie was the author of the words to Alaska's State Song, "Alaska's Flag."

Tom Drury
A report on the death by drowning in the Yukon River of the 15-year-old son of one of the owners of the Taylor & Drury mercantile company.

Carl Ben Eielson
The story of one of Alaska's most famous pioneer fliers.

Charles Engel and family in the Klondike, 1895-97
An article from the Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York) of November 14, 1897.

Robert H. Ennis
Chief scout during the Riel Rebellion, Ennis later went north to the Klondike - a pair of newspaper articles from 1923 are posted.


Biographies 'F' to 'L'
Biographies 'M' to 'Z'