Gold Rush of 1896
VOTE.GOV
Heather Cox Richardson’s August 16 Letter from an American gives a brief yet very powerful review of the Alaska Gold Rush which began with discovery of gold in the Yukon in 1896, and had major political consequences back home in the U.S. The commentary is very much worth your time.
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(To my knowledge only one member of my families of origin followed the allure of any of the Gold Rush’s.
He was born in 1864 at about the time his entire family moved from Quebec to then-St. Anthony (later Minneapolis). He married in ND in 1889. They had three children. His wife died in 1898 in British Columbia where he was prospecting.
Family lore is that “grandfather, Joseph Collette, was a gold prospector. While prospecting in British Columbia my grandmother died of Typhoid fever. Joseph brought the three children. Dad [Ernest J, six, Olivine, four, and Edmund (Pete), two, back to their maternal grandparents, Simon and Philomena Huard. There they were raised and stayed in the Grand Forks [ND] area.” (page 129-130 of Bernard-Collette family history, 2010)
Joseph died in a rooming house in 1923 in what is today St. Anthony Main in Minneapolis and buried in St. Mary’s cemetery in south Minneapolis.
He died at 59, only a few blocks from where he first lived as an infant in 1864… It is not known if he ever saw his kids again. I met two of them, Ernest and Olivine, in their older years.)
COMMENTS (more at end)
from John: As always, both interesting commentary from your side as you tie family history in to some historical national reporting. Good job.
from Jeff: Thanks for the link, i get it daily but hadn’t read it.
from SAK:
Thanks Mr Bernard, Ms Cox Richardson is a fount of knowledge – historical & political!
I am sure you have come across that French expression: “PLUS ÇA CHANGE” in the original they used to add “PLUS C’EST LA MÊME CHOSE” but now it’s understood. The more it changes the more it’s the same!
Well what happened in that corrupt & gilded age, the age of the robber barons is different & yet the same nowadays. Different in that the robbers are now actually in power & not other corrupt business men – it’s usually men. So the robber barons can actually harness the power of the executive & legislative – & sadly even the judiciary! – to their own ends & those of their family, friends & cronies.
Another difference, although gold is still in favour, is that instead of a gold rush, it’s a tech rush these days & them there data centers are full of golden AI. Still it might end just as badly of not worse . . .
I can imagine than in a short while the corrupt & powerful will fall & the AI diggers will compete all the way to the bottom, unfortunately I think they might drag much of the economy with them.
I can still remember Humphrey Bogart’s facial expressions in the film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – John Houston’s insistence on authenticity also drove Bogart mad!
I quote:
‘”Treasure” is about a trio of men (Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt, and Walter Huston, the director’s father) who trek into a forbidding, hot wilderness to look for gold. As soon as gold is struck, each of the three men begins to eyeball each other suspiciously, instantly paranoid of being double-crossed. There will be multiple opportunities for each of the men to dispose of another and take a larger share of gold. It’s a tale of the corrupting power of greed, and the monstrousness lurking within all of us.’
Laws are supposed to help control these monsters within, & government is supposed to apply & strengthen these laws – not deregulate & unleash the monsters.
response from Dick: Above the picture, is a sentence that begins “I can imagine…” I have often had in mind a strange coalition comprised of the greediest rich and the most beleaguered peasants. The rich convince the poor who they should despise, and that they should respect the rich who are better than they.
In my mind, I envision a scenario when the rich achieve their perfect world, where the poor spend all their pennies, and give all their allegiance to the rich. Of course, the end of this road is pretty dismal. The ones who have least end up having nothing, which is not to the advantage of the filthy rich, who no longer have anything to plunder from the peasants, and all they have left are their colleagues, similarly dismal souls who, like the guys in the picture, suddenly have it all, but actually have nothing.
Just a thought….
more from Jeff:
If any of your family is still looking for gold albeit a fool’s gold, perhaps they should look into the Oval Room as “decorated” by donnée.
Thank you for sharing this family story, and after reading Heather Cox’s article it is understandable why men and women left the US to escape poor living conditions in search for gold in the Yukon. Sadly, many died of hardship or disease, and few gold “stampeders” became rich. Heather’s article really drives home the power of business(men) at that time over workers, and the horrible effects of a Tariff dependent economy before the 16th amendment created income taxes in 1913. Now we have both Trump tariffs and income taxation with growing income discrepancy between the haves and have nots.
I really enjoyed reading your good prompt.. that priming of the pump that you do so well Dick and of course the excellent commentary by others that follows 🙂 Thank you!
I have been chasing a family story for many years now as I work on my family tree. (I’m currently ‘cleaning up’ mistakes I made when I first dove into family history). I’ve been working this past 8 months on my French Canadian tree specifically, wanting it to be accurate before I start writing the stories. …The clock is ticking so I continue my project day by day.
The family story is about (I think)… a great grandfather who often went away from family prospecting for gold until sometime between 1887-88, he never returned. He left a widow with 6 children in Polk Co.,Wisconsin. No record of his death but family stories speculate much of what SAK mentioned happened in the film, The Treasure of SM. Could be his partners were suspicious that Moise had double-crossed them so they shot him and threw him in the hole never to be see again.
This could have happened or maybe the family had seen the film and added a twist to the tale?
My questions: would Moise have gone prospecting someplace closer to WI at that time? Alaska rush didn’t happen till 1896..same with So. Dakota. California was earlier. Was prospecting ever done late fall, winter or early spring before/after farming season? Moise’s widow remarried in the church 1889 after she sent 4 children to an orphanage for a year- No one has found proof of his death at age 38…
Oh well, I may never solve the mystery of my great grandfather and I will never understand people’s lust for gold and where it takes them!