Elmer J. White was President of the Juneau Men's Igloo No. 6 in 1922 and 1923.

White was born near Cambridge, Ohio about 1860. He married Josephine Keys in December of 1881, in Tacoma, Washington. They had two sons, John McBurney White and Albert Hamilton White, and a daughter Lenora White.

Before coming to Alaska, White was a newspaper man in Washington state and Florida. He began his career in the North in 1898 as a member of the staff of the Skagway News.

Later he moved to Dawson to accept a position on the Nugget, and from the Stroller's Column of that newspaper he took the pseudonym by which he was known to his friends.

Subsequently, he moved to Whitehorse, where he purchased the Star, which for several years he published and edited the notable success. Then he came to Douglas and bought the Douglas Island News.

He maintained it either as owner or lessor until the abandonment of mining and milling operations at Douglas, when he transferred the printing plant to Juneau, changing the name of the publication to Stroller's Weekly.

In addition to newspaper activities, Mr. White gave some attention to politics. He was a Democrat. Fair in partisanship, he always commanded the respect and often the support of political opponents.

To the public benefit, he served from 1918 to 1921 as territorial publicity director. He was elected to the Alaska House of Representatives in 1918 and the regard of his colleagues was evidenced by his elevation to the Speakership. At the solicitation of party associates, he became a candidate for Congress in 1922 and conducted a creditable campaign.

Elmer J. "Stroller" White died in Juneau on September 28, 1930.

Daily Alaska Empire September 29, 1930

Judge Henry Belfield LeFevre was President of the Juneau Men's Igloo Number 6 in 1921.

He was born on April 8, 1857 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

He was the grandson of the Rev. Clement Fall Lefevre, prominent in the history of the State of Wisconsin and the son of George Lefevre and the former Emma Beal, daughter of the Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin in the 1850's.

As a child during the Franco-Prussian war, LeFevre spent five years in Europe with his mother vacationing there for her health. He learned to speak French and Spanish fluently, which later led many of his acquaintances in the Territory to believe he was French, although in reality he was English.

After the death of his father in 1871, Lefevre went from Wisconsin to Lone Rock in Eastern Oregon, where he engaged in raising stock and served in several clerical capacities. There he also began the study of law, specializing in probate work. He was in one of the first classes of the University of Notre Dame.

LeFevre practiced law for several years in Wisconsin, later in Kalama, Washington and along the Colombia River District. In Hepner, Oregon, he entered the newspaper business and became editor of the Gazette, later taking over the Citizen in Puyallup, Washington.

He was married in Puyallulp on April 5, 1891 and had one daughter, Ruth Elizabeth.

LeFevre came to Alaska alone in 1895 and worked for the Treadwell Mine.

He lived in Dyea and Skagway for about 17 years, being associated in the latter place with John W. Troy in publishing the Skagway Alaskan. His mother joined him about that time and lived with him in Alaska until her death.

Governor John Strong was a charter member of the Juneau Men's Igloo.

Strong was born in Salmon Creek, New Brunswick, Canada on October 15, 1856. He graduated from the New Brunswick Normal School in 1874. After graduation he spent the next fourteen years working as a store owner and teacher throughout the province.

On December 31, 1879 he married Elizabeth A. Aitkens of Fredericton, New Brunswick. The marriage produced three children.

Major Strong was a newspaper man by profession. He had been identified with newspapers in Spokane, Bellingham, Seattle, and Tacoma for many years.

In 1896 he married Miss Anna Hall of Seattle, and the next year, 1897, the couple went north to Skagway, the gateway to the Klondike goldfields.

His objective point was the Klondike, but Skagway was booming in those days and he was soon engaged in writing editorials for an embryo newspaper that had been started there.

“Soapy” Smith and his gang reigned supreme at that time, and the law-abiding citizens were beginning to make a noise like they intended to do something to remedy the evils then rampant. What was needed was editorial support on the part of a newspaper. With Major Strong at the helm, that need was adequately supplied.

An emissary of “Soapy” called on the Major and made a proposition. He said that if the Major would “lay off” he
was authorized to say that a hundred dollar bill would be found on the Major’s editorial desk each and every morning. But nothing doing. The editorial attack on the Smith gang only increased in vigor. The result is well known to all old-timers.

In 1899, Major and Mrs. Strong headed for the Klondike. The Major tried prospecting for a while but had no luck. He was soon in newspaper work again, on the Dawson News.

In 1899, he went to Nome, where in the early spring of 1900, he established the Nome Nugget which he ran
successfully for many years.

Leaving Nome, the Major established a newspaper in Iditarod; then went to Katalla and started a newspaper there, and later came outside and established a paper in a mining camp in Arizona.

The call of the North soon found him back in Alaska, where he founded the Alaska Daily Empire in November 1912. He sold this newspaper when he was appointed governor under the Wilson administration.

President Woodrow Wilson nominated Strong to become Governor of Alaska Territory on April 17, 1913. The nomination was in keeping with a 1912 Democratic plank calling for territorial governors to be area residents. The new governor was sworn into office on May 21, 1913.

Soon after becoming governor, Strong was faced with a financial crisis. The territory's salmon canneries, claiming the recently enacted tax on canned salmon was illegal, refused to pay. The tax was a major source of income for the territory and the lack of funds thus created severely limited Strong's ability to implement development projects. This issue continued until after the governor left office.

Significant legislation signed into law by Governor Strong included the granting of United States citizenship to members of the indigenous population that gave up tribal life, implementation of workers' compensation, and the United States' first old age pension, authorization of a territorial university, and creation of a Board of Education.

Additionally, in 1917, the voters in the territory approved a prohibition referendum. Other changes affecting the territory were the authorization for construction of the Alaska Railroad in October 1914, loosening of federal controls on road building and coal mining, and creation of Mount McKinley National Park in 1917.

President Wilson declined to reappoint Strong to a second term as governor and his final day in office came in April 1918. According to U.S. Senator, and Alaskan history expert, Ernest Gruening this was because the President has been given information indicating the Canadian-born Strong had never been naturalized as a United States Citizen.

J.F.A. Strong died in Seattle, Washington, July 27, 1929.

Biographies of Alaska-Yukon Pioneers 1850-1950, Volume 2 p 309-310, by Ed Ferrell (May 1, 2009
Biographies of Alaska-Yukon Pioneers 1850-1950, Volume 3 p 282-283, by Ed Ferrell (May 1, 2009

John Franklin Alexander Strong (October 15, 1856 – July 27, 1929) was a British North America-born journalist who was the second governor of Alaska Territory from 1913 to 1918.

John Franklin Alexander Strong was born in Salmon Creek,^{[citation needed]} a small farming community in Queens County, New Brunswick, British North America on October 15, 1856, the son of Adam Robert and Janet (Nicholl) Strong. He graduated from the New Brunswick Normal School in 1874. After graduation he spent the next fourteen years working as a store owner and teacher throughout the province. On December 31, 1879, he married Elizabeth A. Aitkens of Fredericton, New Brunswick. The marriage produced three children: Jane, Elizabeth, and Robert. He committed bigamy^[1] in 1896 when he wed Anna Hall of Tacoma, Washington.^[2]

Built during the summer of 1947, the Ernest Gruening Cabin is located at Mile 26 Glacier Highway, northwest of downtown Juneau. Gruening leased the 4.9 acre tract of land on which the cabin stands from the U.S. Forest Service in 1946, under provisions of the Small Tract Act of 1935, and later received title to it.

The cabin is oriented with a view to the west and overlooks Favorite Channel of Lynn Canal in southeast Alaska. The northeastern edge of the property is bordered by Salt Lake, where a low waterfall empties into Eagle Harbor. The southern boundary adjoins Amalga Harbor Road.

In 1947, Ernest Gruening, Territorial Governor of Alaska from 1939 to 1953, had a one-and-one-half story cabin built at a site twenty-six miles north of downtown Juneau. Malcolm MacKay was the architect, Fred Jacobsen and Hunt Gruening built it. The cabin is the only building in Alaska, other than the Governor's Mansion, directly associated with Gruening.

During his years in Alaska, Gruening fought for statehood, for a strong military presence in Alaska, and for more equal treatment of all Alaskans. In the spring of 1953 when President Eisenhower appointed a new territorial governor, Dorothy and Ernest Gruening moved from the Governor's Mansion to the cabin.

The cabin served as Gruening's principal residence from 1953 until November 1958 when Alaskans elected him one of their first U.S. Senators and he moved to Washington, D.C.

In his 1974 eulogy of Ernest Gruening, Carey McWilliams observed, "The persona never engulfed the self with Ernest Gruening. The public citizen and the private person were one and the same . . . and few Americans of his generation had a richer or more varied experience in public affairs. He was a man of impeccable honor and integrity, indomitable spirit and extraordinary moral courage . . . and, more than any one person, was responsible for the successful drive to acquire statehood . . . for Alaska." (The Nation. Julv 20, 1974, pp. 36-37).

Ernest Gruening was born in 1887 in New York City. He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1912, but never practiced medicine. Instead, he pursued a career in journalism, and was managing editor of The New York Tribune newspaper and The Nation.

In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Gruening to be the first director of the Division of Territories and Island Possessions in the Department of the Interior.
Gruening served in this position until his appointment as governor of the Territory of Alaska in 1939.

Gruening first visited Alaska in May 1936, to deliver the commencement address at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. On his tour through southeast, southcentral, and interior Alaska, Gruening noted the lack of adequate health facilities, inadequate harbors and housing, separate school systems for white and native children, and the high shipping costs between Seattle and Alaska. His interest in helping the territory get the many necessary and basic services it lacked led to his appointment as territorial governor.

As governor, Gruening pushed statehood for Alaska. He addressed the concerns expressed by members of Congress and the Department of the Interior; spearheading a personal income tax bill to show that Alaskans were willing to pay for state government, encouraging the Territorial Legislature to create a statehood commission, and promoting economic development.

Recognizing the strategic importance of Alaska in the war against Japan— and the development and revenue military activity would bring to the territory, Gruening
campaigned exhaustively for construction of air bases in Alaska. He termed Alaska the "first line of defense" for America and organized the Alaska Territorial Guard. After World War II, Gruening fought for continued military involvement in Alaska.

He also worked to end discrimination against Alaska Natives, and to get funding to combat tuberculosis that was epidemic in Alaska.

In 1953, the new Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced Gruening as territorial governor. Gruening moved from the Governor's Mansion and to his cabin. There he continued to advocate Alaska statehood and tirelessly wrote articles for national magazines and newspapers. His 606-page book. The State of Alaska, was published in 1954. The State of Alaska chronicles Alaska's history and advocates statehood for Alaska. One reviewer wrote that the book "presented a powerful argument for statehood, [and] was undoubtedly written with that purpose in view. The case it makes is all the more compelling because it is predicated not upon an
emotional plea by one whose emotions are so surely involved, but rather upon a relentless review of facts which expose with dramatic clarity the disheartening effect of Governmental neglect, confusion, and bureaucracy on the one hand and exploitation by powerful economic interests on the other" (Saturday Review. February 12, 1955, p. 17).

Alaska achieved statehood on January 3, 1959. It took the combined efforts of many Alaskans, but Gruening was one of the chief architects and a
seemingly tireless crusader.

While he was territorial governor and after, Gruening entertained many notable guests at the cabin, among them presidential aspirant Adlai Stevenson, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, novelist Edna Ferber, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and Senator John F. Kennedy.

Although away from the cabin quite a bit promoting statehood, the Gruenings lived there from 1953 until 1958, when Alaskans elected Gruening as one of the first
United States Senators from the new State of Alaska. After they moved to Washington, D.C., the couple visited the cabin whenever they were in the state. A

fter his death in 1974, Gruening's ashes were scattered on the mountain behind the cabin, now named Mount Gruening. The family owned the cabin until 1989 when the State of Alaska purchased the property for an historic park.

National Register of Historic Places Nomination form

Gruening Cabin Photos