Laurel Downing Bill's Blog, page 13

Inmate No. 594 has ties to Alaska history

The federal maximum-security prison known as Alcatraz sits on an island off San Francisco, Calif. This cell is similar to the one in which the Birdman spent a portion of his life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before he became well known around the country, one of America’s most famous prison inmates had ties to Alaska history. He dug gold nuggets out of a mine in Juneau during 1908.

But justice proved swift and sure after he killed a man on Jan. 18, 1909, on a dark street in the territory’s capital. A coroner’s jury convened the evening of the murder, and after hearing testimony from the various parties, returned its verdict that Charles F. Damer met his death at the hands of the rival suitor for the affections of a woman named Kitty O’Brien. The jury included O’Brien as an accomplice.

The man who killed Damer, Robert Stroud, was working as a part-time bartender in Juneau at the time. He and O’Brien both were charged with murder and arraigned on Jan. 21. Authorities later dropped the charges against O’Brien, and Stroud pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to serve seven years at the federal penitentiary on McNeil Island near Tacoma, Wash.

While the convicted killer served his sentence in Washington, his mother and sister continued to work in Alaska, spending most of their earnings on attempts to have him pardoned or paroled.

Authorities transferred Stroud to the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan., in 1912, where he kept to himself at the maximum-security facility for hard-case prisoners. Convict Morris Rudensky described him:

“Physically he was a disgrace – tall, thin and as attractive as a barracuda or a herring bone without the herring. He seldom spoke to anyone, including the cons, and vice versa. He was a ferocious misanthrope.”

Just before his scheduled release on March 26, 1916, he walked into the Leavenworth mess hall and stabbed to death prison guard Andrew F. Turner in front of 1,200 convicts and prison officials. No one knows why. Later he said to Rudensky:

“The guard (Turner) took sick of heart trouble. I guess you could call it heart puncture. I never have given them any reason for my doing it, so they won’t have much to work on; only that I killed him, and that won’t do much good. I admit that much.”

Convicted of Turner’s murder, Stroud was sentenced to die in April 1920. However, his mother successfully gained an audience with President Woodrow Wilson’s wife. She begged Mrs. Wilson to convince her ailing husband to spare her son’s life, since he was just beginning to gain a reputation as a lover of canaries and an expert on their diseases.

Elizabeth Bolling Wilson, impressed with the woman’s son’s pioneer work with birds, convinced her husband to commute his death sentence. The same week as Stroud was scheduled for execution, the President’s order arrived that commuted the death sentence to solitary confinement for the rest of his life.

The gold-miner-turned-bartender-turned murderer carried on experimenting with canary diseases and ornithology while living in two adjoining cells. He also wrote a manuscript called “Looking Outward” about prison reform that was never published.

Stroud later transferred to Alcatraz where he became Inmate No. 594 at the new maximum-security federal institution and gained access to facilities, books and laboratory equipment. Most of America knows him by his nickname, “The Birdman of Alcatraz,” which came from his life on the rock. He died there in 1963, after 55 years as a prisoner. His monumental work, “Stroud’s Book of Bird Diseases,” published in 1942, still is regarded as an authoritative source.

By Laurel Bill

AuntPhilsTrunk@gmail.com

Alaska history

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Inmate No. 594 has ties to Alaska’s history

The federal maximum-security prison known as Alcatraz sits on an island off San Francisco, Calif. This cell is similar to the one in which the Birdman spent a portion of his life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before he became well known around the country, one of America’s most famous prison inmates had ties to Alaska’s history. He dug gold nuggets out of a mine in Juneau during 1908.

But justice proved swift and sure after he killed a man on Jan. 18, 1909, on a dark street in the territory’s capital. A coroner’s jury convened the evening of the murder, and after hearing testimony from the various parties, returned its verdict that Charles F. Damer met his death at the hands of the rival suitor for the affections of a woman named Kitty O’Brien. The jury included O’Brien as an accomplice.

The man who killed Damer, Robert Stroud, was working as a part-time bartender in Juneau at the time. He and O’Brien both were charged with murder and arraigned on Jan. 21. Authorities later dropped the charges against O’Brien, and Stroud pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to serve seven years at the federal penitentiary on McNeil Island near Tacoma, Wash.

While the convicted killer served his sentence in Washington, his mother and sister continued to work in Alaska, spending most of their earnings on attempts to have him pardoned or paroled.

Authorities transferred Stroud to the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan., in 1912, where he kept to himself at the maximum-security facility for hard-case prisoners. Convict Morris Rudensky described him:

“Physically he was a disgrace – tall, thin and as attractive as a barracuda or a herring bone without the herring. He seldom spoke to anyone, including the cons, and vice versa. He was a ferocious misanthrope.”

Just before his scheduled release on March 26, 1916, he walked into the Leavenworth mess hall and stabbed to death prison guard Andrew F. Turner in front of 1,200 convicts and prison officials. No one knows why. Later he said to Rudensky:

“The guard (Turner) took sick of heart trouble. I guess you could call it heart puncture. I never have given them any reason for my doing it, so they won’t have much to work on; only that I killed him, and that won’t do much good. I admit that much.”

Convicted of Turner’s murder, Stroud was sentenced to die in April 1920. However, his mother successfully gained an audience with President Woodrow Wilson’s wife. She begged Mrs. Wilson to convince her ailing husband to spare her son’s life, since he was just beginning to gain a reputation as a lover of canaries and an expert on their diseases.

Elizabeth Bolling Wilson, impressed with the woman’s son’s pioneer work with birds, convinced her husband to commute his death sentence. The same week as Stroud was scheduled for execution, the President’s order arrived that commuted the death sentence to solitary confinement for the rest of his life.

The gold-miner-turned-bartender-turned murderer carried on experimenting with canary diseases and ornithology while living in two adjoining cells. He also wrote a manuscript called “Looking Outward” about prison reform that was never published.

Stroud later transferred to Alcatraz where he became Inmate No. 594 at the new maximum-security federal institution and gained access to facilities, books and laboratory equipment. Most of America knows him by his nickname, “The Birdman of Alcatraz,” which came from his life on the rock. He died there in 1963, after 55 years as a prisoner. His monumental work, “Stroud’s Book of Bird Diseases,” published in 1942, still is regarded as an authoritative source.

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Historian Laurel Bill writes for Alaska Magazine!

Great news – Historian Laurel Bill now will have awesome Alaska history stories appearing in future issues of Alaska Magazine. Her first articles about Alaska Natives appear in the November and December 2013 issues. Several more articles will appear in the esteemed magazine throughout 2014.

By Laurel Bill

AuntPhilsTrunk@gmail.com

Alaska history

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Alaskan historian author Laurel Bill now writing for Alaska Magazine!

Great news – I now will have awesome Alaska history stories appearing in the 2014 issues of Alaska Magazine.

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Mother Nature Rocks Alaska’s Past, Shapes Its Future

An earthquake in Southeast Alaska in 1958 caused a tidal wave of mammoth proportions in Lituya Bay, pictured here in 1948.

On April 2, 1836, the whole coast of Southeast Alaska shook when an earthquake triggered a series of waves that threatened to wipe out the entire town of Sitka. It happened near the Feast of the Annunciation. Bishop Veniaminoff, in charge of the Russian Church at the time, ordained, that in order to give thanks for the town’s salvation, a procession should march through all of Sitka’s streets – not only on that year, but each year thereafter on this church holiday. The custom was discontinued sometime after 1900.

Southeast was hit again when Yakutat Bay suffered a shaker on Sept. 3, 1899, and again on Sept. 10. Since there were no villages in the vicinity, the 30-foot wave that hit land did little damage and only a few Natives and prospectors were eyewitnesses. Another quake shook up Lituya Bay, 80 miles away, in 1936 that triggered an enormous wave that spread debris over the ocean for 50 miles. But that was just a curtain raiser to the main event.

In 1958, all hell broke lose at Yakutat and Lituya Bay on a fine June evening. An eyewitness explained what he saw around Lituya Bay:

“The mountains were shaking something awful, with slides of rocks and snow. But what I noticed mostly was the glacier, the north one they call Lituya Glacier.

“I know you can’t ordinarily see that glacier from where I was anchored, and people shake their heads when I tell them I saw it that night. I can’t help it if they don’t believe me. I know the glacier is hidden by the point when you are in the cove, but I know what I saw that night, too.

“The glacier had risen in the air and moved forward so it was in sight. It must have risen several hundred feet. I don’t mean it was just hanging in the air. It seemed to be solid, but it was jumping and shaking like crazy. Big chunks of ice were falling off the face of it and down into the water … suddenly the glacier dropped back out of sight and there was a big wall of water going over the point.”

A geologist who studied the area doesn’t shake his head in disbelief at the story.

“It’s perfectly plausible. The glacier lies right on the fault line and almost anything could have happened,” he said.

Earthquake evidence attests to Mother Nature’s awesome power throughout Alaska’s past and seems to mock man’s puny efforts to tame her. So far, however, she hasn’t succeeded in shaking us off the land … yet!

From Aunt Phil’s Trunk, Volume 1

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A town called Knik

Knik, about 40 miles north of present-day Anchorage, became a supply center for miners and trappers in the late 1890s.

Thousands of gold seekers flooded into the North Country during the late 1800s and settled around new towns such as Nome, Juneau and Dawson. Several also streamed into Cook Inlet. They hacked out primitive trails connecting scattered camps and eventually unified the region between Cook Inlet on the south and the Talkeetna Mountains on the north, and the Matanuska River on the east and the Susitna River in the west.

Although few of the prospectors who entered Cook Inlet became rich, toward the end of the 1800s a small Tanaina Athabascan settlement called Knik had enough commercial activity that George W. Palmer opened a store there in 1880. The Alaska Commercial Co., which had taken over the assets of the Russian American Co., opened a trading post in 1882.

Knik served as a supply center for the Willow Creek Mining District, organized in 1898, and the small settlement’s population grew to several hundred as hard rock followed placer mining. But the $30,000 miners gleaned from their diggings between 1897 and 1914 wasn’t enough to nourish their hopes and dreams.

However the discovery of gold in the Interior in 1902 by a miner named Felix Pedro helped keep their hopes afloat. That discovery, near what would become Fairbanks, led to more intense mining everywhere.

Discoveries of gold north of Knik in the Talkeetna Mountains, as well as placer gold northwest on the Iditarod River, made the community across the Turnagain Arm from modern-day Birchwood the major trading center for the gold and coal mines in the region. Shopkeepers expanded into supplying the various sawmills in the Matanuska Valley, the Susitna River Basin and Willow Creek Mining District. At its peak, Knik boasted a population close to 500.

By 1914 the town had its own weekly newspaper, the Knik News, and two trading posts, three roadhouses and hotels, a restaurant, a general hardware store, a saloon, a transfer and fuel company, a school and a construction business. And residents and passersby alike could find candies, tobacco, magazines, stationery and postcards at The Place of Sweets. Two dentists and two doctors looked after the physical needs of the population, and itinerant priests of the Russian Orthodox Church looked after their spiritual needs.

Knik prospered for several years, but the Alaska Railroad Act of 1914, which led to the birth of Anchorage, resulted in the demise of the once-thriving community. Engineers laid out a route for the tracks that bypassed Knik and established a railroad camp at a place called Wasilla.

While Anchorage blossomed with an influx of settlers, Knik wilted. The post office, which opened in 1904, closed for good in 1917. Residents abandoned their homes or moved them to new locations, and businesses moved either to Wasilla or Anchorage.

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Alaska history comes alive

Alaska history comes alive with author/historian Laurel Bill and her four-book series titled Aunt Phil’s Trunk.

By Laurel Bill

AuntPhilsTrunk@gmail.com

Alaska history

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New You Tube Video Channel

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Newspapers spread the word of Yukon gold!

Western Klondike Outfitters carried many supplies needed by stampeeders in their quest for gold.

Glowing reports, like the following excerpt from the Aug. 8, 1897, edition of the New York World newspaper, helped fuel the stampede for gold along the Yukon River.

“Mr. J. O. Hestwod, one of the most successful argonauts of ’97, has just returned from Klondike and furnishes by telegraph to the Sunday World a true picture of Alaska as it really is. He said:

‘Modern or ancient history records nothing so rich in extent as the recent discoveries of gold on the tributaries of the Yukon River.

‘The few millions of dollars recently turned into the banks and smelters of Seattle and San Francisco from the Klondike district is but a slight indication of what is to follow in the near future. When we consider the fact that there is scarcely a shovelful of soil in Alaska and the Northwest Territory that does not yield grains of gold in appreciable quantities, who can compute the value of the golden treasure that this great country will yield in the next few years?

‘The Yukon River, which forms a great artery flowing through this frozen, rock-ribbed region for 2,600 miles, seems to be a providential highway, opened up for the pioneer gold hunters and their followers, who are numbered by thousands yearly. There is room in that country for 100,000 miners for 100 years. I do not make this statement from what someone else has told me, or from what I have read. I speak from actual experience in that land of gold.’”

Other publications, including The Chicago Record, printed lists of supplies needed by those seeking to travel to the gold fields of the North. The papers stressed, that based on reports of hundreds who had traveled to the placer mines of the Klondike region previously, each man would need at least one year’s supply of food, clothing and working materials.

The Record’s analysis showed that men who’d lived in Alaska among the gold-bearing creeks for anywhere from one to 10 years, figured that an adequate supply of food per day per man varied from 4-1/2 to 5-1/2 pounds. That brought the actual food supply for one person for one year to 1,600 pounds.

“Highly carbonaceous food should predominate; stimulants of alcoholic character should be avoided,” the Record reported. “One pound of tea is equal to seven pounds of coffee for drinking purposes; three-quarters of an ounce of saccharin (this concentrated sweet can be obtained from druggists) is equal to twenty-five pounds of sugar, so that three ounces of saccharin is equal to 100 pounds of sugar. Citric acid is a remedy for scurvy.”

The newspaper went on to list essentials for a gold-seeker’s outfit, including 150 pounds of bacon, 250 pounds of flour, 40 pounds of rice, matches, a gold pan, one teapot and a whipsaw.

The estimated cost per outfit of food, clothing, hardware and medicine, of which one bottle “good whiskey” was a part, came to about $140.

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“Muktuk” Marson – A Human Dynamo and Alaskan Hero

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Maj. Marvin “Muktuk” Marston and his dog, Panda.

Many of those who came to Alaska during the World War II liked what they saw and decided to set down roots in the Last Frontier. Among them was a true Alaskan hero who created one of Anchorage’s premier recreational facilities, organized the Territorial Guard and built the first subdivision in the town once known as Ship Creek.

During the 1930s, Marvin “Muktuk” Marston found himself mining copper and gold from the bush country of Northern Ontario and Quebec. But when World War II broke out, he raced to Washington, D.C., to propose a radical idea.

Marston, who’d also spent time in Nome, proposed a plan to safeguard the nation’s remaining aircraft in underground storage facilities. The Pentagon turned down his creative proposal but did see the value of his knowledge of northern terrain and weather conditions.

In March 1941, it offered him a major’s commission and sent him to Anchorage to be a morale officer for the new Elmendorf Air Force base. One of his first missions was to create a winter recreational area. Marston rounded up a crew of dedicated outdoorsmen, scouted the area surrounding the Anchorage bowl and settled on an open slope valley high in the Chugach Mountains behind town for a ski development. He and the U.S. Army erected the first rope tows at what’s now known as Alpenglow Arctic Valley ski area.

Then while flying to military posts on a morale-boosting tour with comedian Joe. E. Brown, Marston noticed that Western Alaska lacked defenses against an enemy invasion. But his idea to build a Native guerrilla army to guard the coast didn’t muster much support until the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor in 1942. Gov. Ernest Gruening, who’d already established citizen militias, recognized Marston as a kindred spirit and enlisted his help to organize the Alaska Territorial Guard.

Marston, who beat a village chief in a whale blubber-eating contest, earned an Eskimo name, “Muktuk,” while traveling to villages recruiting for the new guard. He also earned the respect of Alaska’s first people. In a few months, he organized 111 units and personally supplied many of them with rifles and ammunition by driving to their remote locations by dog team.

After the war ended, Marston remained in Alaska and spent the rest of his life helping to build a better civilian life in Anchorage. In 1952, he and Ken Kadow built the community’s first subdivision, Turnagain by Sea, with a water system and paved streets to serve 150 homes. He also served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1955 and strongly advocated for Native rights.

Upon the death of this Alaskan hero in 1980, at the age of 90, Gov. William A. Egan called him “a human dynamo who dared to disturb the status quo.”

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