Antone Africh was born in Broud, Austria on January 29, 1877 to John Africh and Mary Gacgovich-Africh. He was 5'6.5" tall, with a dark complexion and brown hair. 

He was married to Mary Africh.  They had three children, all in Juneau, Mary Africh-Dauworth (sp), Ruth Africh-Nelson, and Stephena Africh.

Africh worked as a miner at the Treadwell Mine, and later for the Alaska Juneau Gold Mining Company.

He was a member of the Moose and Croation Lodges.

An ad in a local newspaper refers to the Africh & Africh (sic) store and residence which he may have operated with his brother, John.

He died on November 8, 1937 at St Ann's Hospital in Juneau, at 60 years of age where he was treated by Dr. W.M. Whitehead for pulmonary tuberculosis. Charles W. Carter was his undertaker.

Find-A-Grave

Survey and Inventory of Douglas Historic Cemeteries

When Dick Harris and Joe Juneau returned to Sitka with news of their find and the rush was on. Prospectors flocked to the area and began staking claims. A French Canadian by the name of French Pete Errusard learned of a gold bearing outcrop on Douglas Island across the Gastineau Channel from the new town of Juneau.

He staked adjacent claims in 1881 that were eventually sold along with others to John Treadwell, who was representing California investors. The mining town of Treadwell was soon established along with the town of Douglas City. Juneau and Douglas grew along with the mines as more people came to the area not only to mine but to start businesses.

Agnes Museth was a Charter Member of Juneau Igloo Auxilary No. 6.

Agnes E. Museth was born in May 29 1892 in Michigan. Her parents were Henry and Martha Nilsdatter Bolstad - Museth. Their names were Americanized from Hendrik and Marta Mjaaset when they immigrated from Voss, Norway in 1881. She came to Alaska with her family in June 1894.

Agnes graduated from Douglas High School in 1911. She attended a one-year business college in Tacoma before she began her working career as a stenographer for Alaska Juneau Gold Mine.

Her father became ill in 1923 and so she moved with her father and mother and sisters Nora and Trini to Escondido, California.

She remained in California after her father died in 1926. Agnes died on December 18, 1977 in San Diego, California.

1900 U.S. Federal Census Douglas; Gastineau Channel Memories, Vol 1. p. 353-355; California Death Index

The MacKinnon Apartments is a historic apartment building at 236 Third Street. The building is a three-story wood-frame structure, finished in stucco with corner quoining and a dentillated cornice.

The MacKinnon Apartments provided modern housing in Alaska's capital and largest city, and is representative of the size and scale of the buildings constructed during the boom that occurred in Juneau during the 1920s.

When it opened in 1925, it was 80 feet (24 m) long and housed six single-bedroom and 12 studio apartments. In 1959, 20 feet (6.1 m) allowed five more studio units to be added. The building is representative of Juneau's boom years in the period between World Wars I and II, 1921 to 1939, which been defined as Juneau's Peak Gold Mining Era.

During that period, the town was the center for the territorial government, for the Alaska-Juneau Gold Mining Company's huge hard rock operations, for salmon and halibut commercial fishermen, and for supplying southeast Alaska.

Following placer gold discoveries in Silver Bow Basin in 1880, prospectors and businessmen established the town of Juneau. Within a decade, companies organized to mine the hard rock gold deposits in the area. Between 1880 and 1944, the three major mining companies in the Juneau area produced $158 million in gold. The Alaska Juneau Gold Mining Company was the largest low grade ore gold producer in the world from 1910 to 1944.

Juneau quickly grew to be the largest community in southeast Alaska. In 1920, with a population of 3,058, it was the largest city in Alaska. The federal government designated Juneau the capital for the District of Alaska in 1900, although the move from Sitka was not made until 1906, and in 1912 designated it the capital for the Territory of Alaska.

After a cold storage plant opened in 1913, Juneau became the home port for a number of fishermen. The timber industry flourished with the building of a sawmill around 1910. Juneau became the regional trading center for communities in southeast Alaska. Steamships arrived and departed regularly.

In the summer months, steamships brought visitors to town. World War I created shortages of skilled labor to work in the mines and materials needed for mine operations. Production slowed. After the war, with new capital and improvements in technology, the Alaska-Juneau Gold Mining Company was profitable and expanding operations. As a result, the town prospered. Juneau business people invested in new, more substantial buildings. One of the new buildings was the three story MacKinnon Apartments.

Lauchlin "Lockie" MacKinnon, an immigrant from Nova Scotia, constructed the apartment building. He came to Alaska in 1886, MacKinnon drifted around mining camps in Alaska and the Yukon, working as a miner and businessman. For a few years in the 1890s he mined at Porcupine north of Haines. In 1893, he crossed the Chilkoot Trail to seek gold in the Fortymile.

Back in Juneau, in 1895 and 1896 he and George Miller, his partner at Porcupine, built and operated the Circle City Hotel on Third Street. The hotel had eighty rooms, a bar and dining room.

He married Martha Maline Lokke, who came to work at the hotel, in April 1896. The family continued to move around the north, spending several years at Atlin, B.C. and in the Fairbanks area, before settling in Juneau around 1911. Back in Juneau, MacKinnon managed the Zynda Hotel, later known as the Juneau Hotel, on Main Street.

In the 1920s, MacKinnon sensed that apartments were replacing boarding houses and hotels, and built the MacKinnon Apartments. He and his wife lived in an apartment in the building until their deaths in the late 1940s.

The MacKinnon Investment Company prospectus appeared August 17, 1925, seeking investors in a three-story frame apartment house to be located at the corner of Third and Franklin Streets.

An article in Stroller's Weekly, a local newspaper, dated October 10, 1925, noted that the new MacKinnon Apartments offered numerous modern conveniences. In particular, the article said the builder wired each apartment for electricity.

After his second term as territorial governor ended in 1933, George Parks lived in the MacKinnon Apartments for three years. The building has been continuously used as an apartment house since construction.

Sons J. Simpson MacKinnon and Donald L. MacKinnon operated the apartment house after their parents' deaths. In 1959, perhaps anticipating the increased need for housing in the new state's capital, they added five studio units to the back of the building. Other than this addition, the building has not been significantly changed since its construction.

The apartment building is located two blocks outside of the Juneau Downtown Historic District, which were listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. The McKinnon Apartments were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.

National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form

McKinnon Apartments Photos

Jetta Hamilton Gray was President of the Juneau Women's Igloo in 1952.

Jetta Hamilton was born on June 4, 1886 at Gatehouse of Fleet, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland. In the spring of 1900, she came with her parents from Scotland to Montana.

She was married to Felix Gray on November 29, 1905 at Miles City Montana. "Many young men camearound", she said, "but he was the best". Two sons, William Gordon and Hugh Douglas were born to them in Montana, where they ran a cattle ranch.

In 1911, Mr. Gray came up to Juneau, liked it, and sent for his wife and children, who arrived the following March 17, "The second greatest day of my life," Mrs. Gray said, mending a previous statement that was the greatest day in order to give preference to November 29, 1905.

Mr. Gray worked for the old Alaska Treadwell Mine until it went out of business and then was a bookkeeper for the Alaska-Juneau Mine. He was City Clerk of Douglas from 1923 until 1936, in addition to his regular job, and a U.S. Commissioner from 1936 until 1949, when he retired.

When her children finished school Mrs. Gray became a buyer in the ladies' department of B.M. Behrends Co. She remained with the store from 1930 until 1939, making frequent trips out of the territory. In 1939 she did volunteer work for the Red Cross.

"We watched the town grow up," Mr. Gray says, recalling the opening of the bridge; the completion of the Federal Building; and many other events which were worthy of celebration. He also spoke of the Douglas fires, which luckily spared their home.

Jetta Hamilton Gray died in Juneau, Alaska on November 29, 1959. She was survived by her husband, two sons, William Gordon Gray and Hugh Douglas Gray; two sisters, Mrs. Mary Holbrook and Mrs. Madge Woolsey, both of Montana.

Biographies of Alaska-Yukon Pioneers 1850-1950, Volume 4, Ed Ferrell

Alfred Eugene Lundstrom was President of Juneau Men's Igloo in 1934.

Lundstrom was born on April 27, 1877 in Tornia, Finland.

He immigrated to Minnesota from in 1892, where he married May Maki in 1898. Their daughter Daisy Hazel was born on February 1, 1901 in Virginia, Minnesota followed by a son, Gust in 1900 and daughter Della Marie in July 19, 1905.

Their daughter Dora Mathilda (Women's Igloo President 1953) was born on June 19, 1907 in Biwabik, Minnesota.

The family moved from Minnesota to Juneau around 1908. Son Alfred Jr. was born on October 10, 1908, in Douglas. Their daughter Irene (Women's Igloo President in 1950) was born in Douglas on January 10, 1910.

During the summer months, the family worked at Excursion Inlet in the canneries or cold storage. Al worked as a carpenter for the Alaska Juneau Gold Mine and built several homes in downtown Juneau.

Alfred died in Juneau on March 10, 1963.

George Harkrader was a charter member of the Juneau Men's Igloo Number 6.

Harkrader was born in Warren County, Ohio, May 29, 1847.

He came to Juneau in April 1881 from Sitka, when he went to Fort Wrangell and from there to Cassiar country.

Harkrader staked a lode claim on Mount Roberts in December 1880, a quartz claim in the Silver Bow Basin and a hillside placer claim. These were located where the Alaska-Juneau Mine or Little Treadwell was located. (DeArmond 1967; Alaska Monthly 1907).

He was a partner of Henry Coons and Dan Campbell for six years, and they took out of their placer in that time over $75,000. He was one of the original owners in the Nevada Creek district, and had quartz property on Admiralty Island, and spent a considerable amount of money in the development of a coal property on Chatham Straits near Killisnoo.

The 1894 plat map of the Juneau Townsite shows George Harkrader owning Lots 5, 6 and 7 on the west slope of Telephone Hill. City tax rolls indicate that Harkrader and his estate owned the property until 1920.

The 1914 Sanborn map shows a home, possibly Harkrader's, on the north half of Lots 5, 6 and 7 next to the West Second Street right-of-way (Hurley 1983). The house was removed in the mid-1930s. Eventually, the Ralph Martin House at 128 Dixon Street was built on n Lots 5, 6 and 7.

Prior to his death in 1915, Harkrader ran unsuccessfully for the city council as a Socialist.

Alaska Monthly Magazine, Oct-Nov 1907
Biographies of Alaska-Yukon Pioneers 1850-1950, Volume 1, p 130, by Ed Ferrell (May 1, 2009)

Telephone Hill Historic Site and Structures Survey, 1984

William John Harris, Sr. was one of the charter members of the Juneau Men's Igloo.

Harris was a nephew of Richard "Dick" Harris, who, with his partner, Joe Juneau, were the original settlers of what is now the city of Juneau.  Dick named two of his sons after him, the youngest of which survived into adulthood, William John Harris, Junior.

After remaining here for several years, Richard Harris went to Montana in 1882 on a visit to his brother and on his return he was accompanied by his nephew, William.

The latter worked at Treadwell Mine for a number of years, visited and worked in many of the interior camps and in Nome.

Leaving Alaska early in the present century, he went to the outside, and for several years was chief of police of Leadville, Colorado. But the lure of the North was too strong to resist and he returned to Juneau about the year 1908 and again went to work at Treadwell Mine.

It was in the year 1911 or 1912 that Emery Valentine, mayor of Juneau, appointed William Harris chief of police of the city.

After serving Juneau for two years as chief of police, Harris resumed his employment at Treadwell Mine, remaining there until the Alaska-Juneau Mine began operations, where worked until overtaken by his final sickness., He spent three months in St. Ann’s Hospital, where he passed away the last week of February, 1928.

Alaska Weekly, February 24, 1928
Biographies of Alaska-Yukon Pioneers 1850-1950, Volume 1, p 130-131, by Ferrell, Ed (May 1, 2009)

John "Jack" Alburtus Hellenthal was a charter member of the Juneau Men's Igloo.

Hellenthal was born in Holland, Michigan on September 17, 1874. He studied law at Hope College, Holland Michigan and University of Michigan and practiced law in Wyoming and Utah prior to moving to Juneau in 1900.

He married Bertha Linsley on Feb 12, 1900. John Hellenthal headed the local bar association and was member of the Democratic National Committee from 1935 to 1940.

He was associated with the Alaska Juneau Mine and the Treadwell mine 1910 - . He was the author of Alaska Melodrama, a descriptive of the Territory.

John Hellenthal died at Swedish Hospital in Seattle, Washington on May 25, 1945.

Who’s Who in Alaska Politics: A Biographical Dictionary of Alaska Political Personalities 1884 – 1974, Evangeline Atwood and Robert N. DeArmond, p. 42.

Jacob Nordahl was a charter member of the Juneau Men's Igloo.

Nordahl was born in Alesund, Norway in 1873 and came to the United States in 1892. He came to Alaska in April 1894 where he settled in Juneau, except for a short time at the Westward.

He followed the mining game and in the early days was a machinist in the Treadwell and Mexican Mines and later at the Alaska Juneau Mine. He lived in Douglas and Juneau.

He died in Juneau on August 31, 1925.

Pioneers of Alaska Men’s Igloo 6 Biographical Sketch, Daily Alaska Empire, August 31, 1925