Beschreibung:

Autograph letter Signed (“Ella”), Nome, Alaska, Oct. 15 [1903] 6pp. to J.L. Smith, Bismarck, Washington. With original mailing envelope. An Irish immigrant, Frank Swanton had come to Alaska from Minnesota at the start of the Yukon Gold Rush, organizing a company to two river steamers at Tacoma. He settled at Nome and brought his wife and two daughters. She had apparently just arrived when she wrote this unhappy letter. Hearing reports of “immense riches” and a “surplus population” at Koyukuk, he and his company sailed hundreds of miles up the Koyukuk River before his steamer got stuck on a bar. He prospected all winter, found no gold, then, hearing of a big strike at Nome, finally settled there, becoming the city's first Municipal Clerk, while still dreaming of gold. Only then did he bring his wife, with their two daughters, to join him. The Swantons were still at Nome three years later, where he had secured a job as US Postmaster.“…If ever I take more than one more sea voyage, count me crazy, and see that they put me in a padded cell…this is my final trip to the north. Frank is going up to the Kobuck county where another stike of gold has been made, and I suppose I will have charge at the V.O….I have a chinaman doing the work, I have not been able to get around much, sea sickness usually lasts me for months any way, and this dose is going to hang on… my head spins round so that I don’t feel safe to try to walk much