THE TRAGIC SAGA OF CHRISTINE ANDERSON

Elizabeth Chezem and husband Benjamin Olais Anderson were in Hastings, Nebraska in 1880. They were married December 7, 1876 in Marion County, Iowa. Benjamin, 32, born on April 2, 1847.is a farmer in township 8 North, 9 West. He said he arrived in the U.S. in 1869. They have two-year-old Louisa, born in Iowa, so they must have moved about when Elizabeth's parents moved to Hastings. Christina is six months old, born in Nebraska.

In June 1885 Ben and E.A. Anderson are in Grand Island (about twenty miles from Hastings). They have 7-year-old Louisa, born in Iowa, 5-year-old Christina born in Nebraska, 2-year-old Anna born in Nebraska, and month-old Mable born in Nebraska. Ben is a carpenter.

Louisa and Mable both went to the Yukon, with similarly colorful lives.


ST. PAUL'S ENGLISH EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH

This church was completed and dedicated on March 14, 1886. The building committee of that church formed in August, 1886, comprised George H. Thimble, WA Hamburger, CE Lye, George Hunter, Benjamin O. Anderson and J.N. Lender. The corner stone was placed October 3, 1885. This neat church home, at Second and Cedar streets, is still serving as the house of worship for this congregation.

BEN AND THREE DAUGHTERS IN WASHINGTON

The Seattle 1889 directory has a Benjamin Anderson, carpenter, rms 1315 3rd.. and a Miss Louise Anderson, boarding rear w s 4 3 n of Pine.

In 1890 a Benjamin Anderson is a helper for P.J. Sullivan, and boards at 410 Weller.. Louisa Anderson is a domestic at 1615 4th.

These Seattle directories might be another Ben - because they continue at the same time as the Tacoma listings below.

The 1893-1894 Tacoma city directory has a Benjamin O. Anderson, carpenter, living in a residence at the rear of 1409 J.

In 1895 and 1896 Ben is living at 2312 South M.

The 1895 directory has two Louise Andersons - both domestics, one at the Annie Wright Seminary, another at 2019 South K. Annie Wright Seminary is a boarding school for girls - eleven teachers on staff, and a full-page ad, so it's not a small school. It was at the northwest corner of North Tacoma Avenue and Division Avenue.

In 1896 Louise boards at 2312 South M - so she's moved in with Ben.
Christine Anderson is a bookkeeper, also boarding with Ben at 2312 South M.
In 1897-98 Ben is still there, and in 1900 as a carpenter with the city bridge department.
Still on South M in 1901
Christina and Louisa are not listed with Ben in the 1896 directory
In 1899 Seattle a Christina Anderson is a chambermaid at the Scandinavian House, boards same…..

In 1900 Tacoma, Washington there's a Ben Anderson, widowed, a carpenter, married 12 years, with a 15-year-old daughter Mable. Ages and birthplaces of parents all match.

In 1910 Ben is a carpenter, rooming on South 13th Street in Tacoma, in a hotel with John Rundles, proprietor -

The Yukon Sun of April 19, 1902 reported on the Arctic Brotherhood. Among the attendees were Captain and Mrs. Roedeger Capt. and daughter (newspaperman and family) and a Miss Anderson.
Wonder if the is "Babe" using her non-professional name or Louise visiting. The Arctic Brotherhood was a big group - its hall could hold a thousand people for meetings.
According to Pierre Berton, Babe was in Skagway - the port closest to the gold fields - even though that was close to 500 miles.

The L.A. Times had a "Yukon Gossip" article in 1899 including:



Meridian Connecticut August 1900



Babe was there in April of 1899 - story was in an IOWA newspaper - because so many Davenport people had gone to the Klondike.

There's no mention of a female Alexander in the Yukon 1901 census or the 1903 Polk's Gazeteer., but

ANDERSON CHRISTINE 1898 0919 F 006 (occupation code) KELCEY PT.3

WALLACE, BABE M. , post office listing of leaving in 1903 for Tacoma, WA
WALLACE, BABI Jun 3, 1898 at Chilkoot checkpoint entering - from Spokane, WA

NWMP records at Lake Bennett: people who entered the Yukon via boats
Name Date Boat
WALLACE, BATE JUNE 11 1899 PER S.S. BAILEY - OUTWARDS
WALLACE, MISS AUG 25 1899 S.S. BAILEY - INWARDS



Daisy was a noted dance-hall-girl, usually wearing a belt of seventeen $20 gold pieces given to her by a miner.. The City of Vancouver collection consists of photographs of vaudeville performers Alfred T. Layne and Daisy D'Avara at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, as well as other performers.

Swiftwater Bill Gates teamed up with Klondike entrepreneur Jack Smith to establish the Monte Carlo Dance Hall and Saloon, most famous of the Dawson pleasure palaces. Swiftwater then set out for San Francisco to bring back furniture, booze and dance-hall girls.




Esther Duffy house in Dawson. Billy Chappell bought the piano for her. Esther went broke, and sold the piano to Babe Wallace for one thousand dollars. She hired Wilson Mizner (he claimed) to play it in a nightery called The Forks (Murray Morgan, One Man's Gold Rush, p. 160)

In 1897 Wilson Mizner, with brothers Addison, William and Edgar, travelled north to the Klondike Gold Rush, which they spent bilking miners rather than looking for gold. Wilson operated badger games, managed fighters, robbed a restaurant to get chocolate for his girlfriend "Nellie the Pig" Lamore (saying "Your chocolates or your life!"), and grub-staked prospector Sid Grauman, later of Grauman's Chinese Theatre. He also met Wyatt Earp, who became a lifelong friend. In Skagway, Alaska Wilson met Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith who Wilson considered his mentor.[2]

Mizner fancied himself as a singer and as a piano-player during his year in Dawson. The most famous pianist in town was the Rag Time Kid at the Dominion Saloon, said to be the model for Service's subsequent Jag Time Kid in the famous poem about Dan McGrew. The Kid's mother was a Chicago music teacher, and it was his boast that he could play anything that was requested. Mizner, who came from a good family, was sceptical of the Kid's musical knowledge and rashly bet that he could play something the Kid could not copy. The Kid accepted, whereupon Mizner sat down and played "The Holy City." "Move over," said the Kid contemptuously, and before Mizner had finished the final notes he was rendering the grand old song in ragtime.

The piano playing has a large part in the "Shooting of Dan McGrew"

The Shooting of Dan McGrew
By Robert W. Service

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou. ………
His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,
Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands - my God! but that man could play.
……. Then on a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;
But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear;
That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a devil's lie;
That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away and die.
'Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair, and it thrilled you through and through -
"I guess I'll make it a spread misere", said Dangerous Dan McGrew.
The music almost died away ... then it burst like a pent-up flood;
And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay," and my eyes were blind with blood.
The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,
And the lust awoke to kill, to kill ... then the music stopped with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;

Wilson Mizner's scams included working as a gold weigher in a dance hall. (this could have been in Skagway or Nome, but likely Dawson) .While balancing the scales, Wilson would spill gold dust onto a carpet. At the end of the week Wilson burned the carpet then extracted the gold from the ashes. In a 1905 interview, Wilson claimed that this trick resulted in a weekly yield of a couple of thousand dollars.

Wilson returned to California, leaving Addison behind holding the bag. There, he obtained backing from Jack Warner and Gloria Swanson and bought into and managed the Brown Derby restaurant, and wrote screenplays for some of the early talkies.

He's credited with "Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet them on your way down".

"Tex" Rickard (later to found Madison Square Garden), Sid Graumann (yes, of the Chinese Theatre) were also in the Yukon. Tex tended bar in Dawson, shoulder to shoulder with Wilson Mizner, and chopped wood through one terrible winter in the frozen wilderness with Rex Beach, the best-selling novelist.





The 1901 census of Yukon Territory has a Beatrice Wallace, age 25, in Dawson. She is single.

One listing of all participants has a Balie Wallace in Dawson City, without an occupation (most other names have the occupation). It has W.H. Barrington as a bartender.

The Dawson City post office had some mail for Babe M. Wallace in 1903 forwarded to Tacoma, Washington.

Dance-Hall Girls by Robert W Service

Where are the dames I used to know
In Dawson in the days of yore?
Alas, it's fifty years ago,
And most, I guess, have "gone before."
The swinging scythe is swift to mow
Alike the gallant and the fair;
And even I, with gouty toe,
Am glad to fill a rocking chair.
Ah me, I fear each gaysome girl
Who in champagne I used to toast,
or cozen in the waltz's whirl,
Is now alas, a wistful ghost.
Oh where is Touch The Button Nell?
Or Minnie Dale or Rosa Lee,
Or Lorna Doone or Daisy Bell?
And where is Montreal Maree?
Fair ladies of my lusty youth,
I fear that you are dead and gone:
Where's Gertie of the Diamond Tooth,
And where the Mare of Oregon?
What's come of Violet de Vere,
Claw-fingered Kate and Gumboot Sue?
They've crossed the Great Divide, I fear;
Remembered now by just a few.
A few who like myself can see
Through half a century of haze
A heap of goodness in their glee
And kindness in their wanton ways.
Alas, my sourdough days are dead,
Yet let me toss a tankard down . . .
Here's hoping that you wed and bred,
And lives of circumspection led,
Gay dance-hall girls o Dawson Town!

Robert Service was living in Dawson when Christina Barrington (Babe Wallace) died - after having "wed and bred"

Babe's wedding photo This photo is a little more elegant than the studio ! Dawson City water works during the winter of 1900. Dawson water wagons [five men with dogsleds. Ford's Club Bath & Gymnasium and Larss & Duclos office in background].

Joseph E.N. Duclos (1863-1917) was born in Quebec but moved to Maine where he learned his photography skills. He and his wife Emily arrived in Dawson in 1898 via St. Michael and the Yukon River. Duclos worked as a miner on Lovett Gulch before joining Per Edward Larss in the photography firm of Larss and Duclos on April 1, 1899. Duclos specialized in studio portraits while Larss roamed the streets and the gold fields. They sold views of the Chilkoot Pass, Dawson and gold fields scenes taken in 1898 advertising "Thousands of negatives in stock". Larss and Duclos also sold film and supplies for amateurs. The firm was dissolved in 1904 when Larss left the Yukon but Duclos continued as a photographer in Dawson until 1912, when he sold his studio to E.O. Ellingsen. Duclos reported to Larss in 1905 that he was getting a fair share of the work although there was competition in the portrait business from Edward Adams and Mrs. Edith Goetzman. Joseph Duclos died of pneumonia after undergoing surgery in Alaska in 1917.

Reference Number: Pierce mc-vol4-135-DA2
Groom's Name: William Hill Barrington
Bride's Name: Christine Anderson
Marriage Date: 11 Jun 1904



On the beach at San de Fuca (Puget Sound) in 1910. Christine second from left.

The 1910 census of Island County, Washington - San de Fuca, has a 30-year-old Christine born in Nebraska to a Norwegian father and a mother born in Iowa. She's married to W.Hill Barrington, a 32-year-old purser on a steamboat, born in Washington. They have no children. They were married at the Lincoln Apartments in Seattle June 11, 1904, according to the Dawson "Yukon World". She died unexpectedly June 15, 1911, 31 years 7 months 9 days, (that would calculate to a birth of December 6, 1879.) parents B.O. Anderson and Elizabeth Chezunn.




and is buried in Lakeview Cemetery, Seattle. Peggy Darst Townsdin, a great-niece of "Hill", wrote that their baby died, and Christine died during a routine appendectomy.

June 16, 1911

June 1, 1911 Hill Barrington was purser on the Vidette, and he reported that it had landed a Canadian survey party at Rampart House on the Porcupine River.

"Word was received to the effect that Mrs. Barington, formerly Babe wallace of Dawson, died last month in a Seattle Hospital."
Name: Hill W. Barrington
Date Of Death: 15 Jun 1911 Age: 31 Gender: Female
Father Name: B. O. Anderson Mother Name: Elizabeth Chezunn
Death Place: Seattle, King, Washington

(wonder if the findagrave entry of Edwin Barrington in Lakeview Cemetery is that baby).
It's almost certain that ours is the Benjamin Anderson, widowed, age 62, building carpenter, living in a Tacoma boarding house in 1910, and in 1920, age 72, living alone in San de Fuca Precinct, Island County, Washington. He told the census taker in 1920 that he owned the house without mortgage.