Alice Josephine "Josie" Keys was a Charter Member of Juneau Igloo No. 6.

She was born on July 7, 1872 in Goldendale, Washington. Her parents were Calvin S. and Jane Freelove Peck Keys.

She married Elmer J. "Stroller" White on December 30, 1891 in Tacoma, Washington. They had two sons, John McBurney White and Albert Hamilton, and a daughter Lenora White.

She came to Alaska with her husband, who was a well-known pioneer Alaska journalist.

They arrived at Skagway when the town was a tent city of gold-hungry stampeders. Mr. White took a job with the Skagway News, a weekly paper, and the Whites lived in Skagway until the autumn of 1899.

Then they went over the new White Pass Railroad to Lake Bennett. Although they did not have the $500 required before they could cross the Canadian Border, a barge owner told the Canadian officials that Mr. White was a cook on the barge. They boarded the barge in October, late in the year for a start down to Dawson, and they floated down the Yukon to within 15 miles of Dawson before the river froze.

"We went to Dawson for the mad excitement of it, "Mrs. White says, "We didn't know what we would do, but Mr. White got a job with the Dawson Nugget right away". They stayed in Dawson until 1905, when they moved on to Whitehorse. Mr. White bought the Whitehorse Star, and the White family stayed in Whitehorse until 1916. Their son, Albert H. was born there on August 7, 1907.

In 1916 they came to Douglas and Mr. White bought the Douglas Island News. "Douglas was the big town then," she recalls. ''The Treadwell Mine was going full swing."

The Whites completed construction of a new newspaper plant in time for the mine cave-in in 1917. The new plant included a cast-off press from the Empire. The moved the press back to Juneau from Douglas in 1920 when Strollers Weekly was established.

“I didn’t work much on the paper,” Mrs. White says. “I had two children to bring up and a little grouse-shooting to do. But when Stroller was sick, I would take over”.

Mrs. White was employed as the Territorial Museum’s assistant curator in 1925 by the Rev. A.P.
Kashaveroff who established the museum in 1920.

Her husband died in 1930. “I was the one who always talked getting out of Alaska,” she says.

She retired in 1950 and went to Los Angles, California to make her home with her daughter. She died in Los Angles, California on May 26, 1956.

1920 U.S. Federal Census Juneau; Biographies of Alaska-Pioneers1850-1950, By Ed Ferrell, V2, p.
344-345. Vol. 1, p 337; Washington Marriage License; California Death Index

Henry Roden was President to Juneau Men's Igloo and Grand Igloo President in 1943.

Roden was in born on August 8, 1874 in Basel, Switzerland.

He came to Dawson and joined the stampeders to the Klondike in 1898 where he worked as a prospector, miner and wood cutter for the riverboats.

In 1902 he began studying law, by himself, and over the next four years memorized two law books and passed the Alaska Bar exam in 1906.

As he said "Alaska, the land of opportunity, here I come. I learned later it was a do it yourself deal".

He established a law office in Fairbanks and later served as Assistant U.S. Attorney in Fairbanks, Assistant U.S. Attorney in lditarod and as City Attorney of lditarod.

He was fondly known as "our Heine".

Henry was elected as a Senator to the First Alaska Territorial Legislature in 1913 and was reelected three times.

He married Margaret Kaapcke in Tacoma on January 22, 1917 and they lived in Juneau where he practiced law and was a fisherman and cannery-man. He was manager of the Republic Fisheries Company, that operated floating fish traps in Chatham Strait and owned the GS-foot gas fishing boat "Jugoslav". He was the President of Pelican Cold Storage and Company, and was co-founder of the City of Pelican.

In 1940 he was elected Attorney General for Alaska and served for four years. He was a territorial delegate to the U.S. Congress in 1944.

In 1949 he was called back from retirement to serve as Treasurer and was elected for another term. After that he served on the Board of Directors for the Pioneers Home in Sitka until statehood.

He and his wife moved to Seattle in 1958 due to her failing health. She died there in 1961.

At the age of 89 he was only semi-retired and living at the Savoy Hotel. He said he had more clients than ever but took no money from retired Alaskans who were living at the hotel.

Henry Roden died on June 5, 1966 in Seattle.

Ed Ferrell, Biographies of Alaska Yukon Pioneers 1850-1950 Vol 3, pp. 244-246.

Edna Marion Sprague Haley Radonich was a Charter Member of Juneau Igloo Women's Auxiliary No. 6, and was elected to be its first president, and also served as its president in 1921, 1922, 1925 and 1927.

Sprague moved to Juneau in 1895 to teach school and to join her aunt and uncle, Matt and Alice Loughlin. She was born to Will and Ma1y Sprague, in Lyle, Minnesota, in 1875.

She was raised on a farm near Perham, Minnesota. Edna and Ed Haley were married on July 7, 1896 in Juneau.

Edna accompanied Ed to his Pine Creek claims during the 1899 mining season and returned to Juneau late in the season, pregnant with Dorothy. Travel was by steamer and by foot over the Chilkoot Trail.

She became a housewife after her two children, Dorothy and Donald, were born. In later years she worked as a matron at the federal jail on Courthouse Hill.

Edna's second husband was Thomas G. Radonich. Tom was born in Dalmatia, Croatia on September 19, 1869. He came to the U.S. as a young man and first came to Juneau about 1891. He was an early Klondike stampeder and owned and operated a restaurant at Dawson City at the height of the gold rush.

In Dawson, he was known as "Carnation Tom" because, despite the difficulties of transportation over the Trail of '98, he had regular shipments of fresh carnations brought in and always wore one in his lapel, a custom he followed for most of his adult life.

Tom returned to Juneau in the early 1900's and operated several businesses on Gastineau Channel including a restaurant, a meat market and gaming houses in Juneau and Douglas. Probably the best known of these businesses was the Alaska Grill which for many years was the largest restaurant in Alaska. It was located on Front Street in the C.W. Young building.

Edna, the former Minnesota farm girl, maintained a large box garden on the rooftop of the C.W. Young building which was adjacent to her home above the Alaska Grill. In later life she tilled an extensive terraced garden on the hillside above her final home on Basin Road.

She died on May 17, 1951, and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in the Pioneers of Alaska Section.

Thomas Henly Ashby was a charter member of the Juneau Men's Igloo.

Ashby was born in Missouri in 1865. In 1884 he and his brother Oscar left their pig farm in Missouri at the urging of Richard T. Harris. They arrived in Juneau on May 11th and worked at various enterprises including the Treadwell Mine.

One of Thomas’ first prospecting trips was with Joe Juneau to Glacier Bay. In 1886 he and his brother went north, built a pole boat and mined the Stewart River area. They returned to Juneau in October of that year.

In 1887 Thomas went back into the Forty Mile area to prospect. Back in Juneau in 1891 the Ashby brothers and William Leek built a two story building on Front Street, at the site of the current Imperial Bar, which started as a
saloon, first known as Ashby and Leek and later the Missouri. It later became the Louvre Theater and Saloon.

Thomas was one of the early stampeders to Dawson in 1897 where he mined on Eldorado, Below Bonanza and other creeks.

He met and married Mary Andreafsky at Holy Cross. In 1899 Mary joined her husband in Dawson and climbed the Chilkoot Pass carrying their three month old baby Charles on her back while a friend carried two year old Inez.

They later moved to Nome where Thomas and his brother became partners in the famous Topkuk Ditch Company. Mary died in 1913 and Thomas continued to prospect and staked claims in many locations north and south of Juneau.

He died in Tacoma in 1951 of complications from surgery.

Gastineau Channel Memories 1880-1959 p260-261

William Engle Britt was a charter member of the Juneau Pioneers of Alaska.

Britt was born in Norway on September 12, 1868, graduating from the University of Christiana in chemistry and as a B.A.

Britt came to the United States in 1893, locating in Chicago, where he passed an examination before the Board of Pharmacy of the State of Illinois and followed his occupation as druggist until 1898.

When the Klondike rush set in he started for the new gold fields on a bicycle, making the distance from Chicago to San Francisco on his wheel. There he took a steamer and came to Skagway. He started to Dawson on a scow and struck the Big Salmon stampede. Then he was one of the Atlin rushers; started a ferry boat across Taku Arm from Golden Gate and was a freighter at Summit Lake.

In 1899 he returned to Skagway where he established the druggist business know as Britt’s Pharmacy. Shortly afterward he was elected a member of the Skagway School Board. He later served as city councilman, school treasurer and municipal magistrate.

In 1913 Britt moved to Juneau, where he established the druggist business known as Britt’s Pharmacy, retaining the Skagway store which he still owns. Mr. Britt was elected a member of the Juneau City Council in 1914 and has several important committee assignments.

Governor John Strong appointed him a member of the first Alaska Board of Pharmacy, following the creation of the Board
by the Alaska Legislature, and Mr. Britt was selected by the other member of the Board as Board President.

He was killed in a car accident on April 24, 1932, at the top of Gold Street in Juneau. He was starting a car with a dead battery by pushing and jumping on the running board. The car went out of control and struck a utility pole.

Daily Alaska Dispatch, Oct 18, 1914, Daily Alaska Empire, April 25, 1932
Biographies of Alaska-Yukon Pioneers 1850-1950, Volume 2 p32-33, by Ed Ferrell (May 1, 2009
Biographies of Alaska-Yukon Pioneers 1850-1950, Volume 3 p 37, by Ed Ferrell (May 1, 2009
Who's Who in Alaskan Politics: Biographical Dictionary of Alaskan Political Personalities, 1884 – 1974.
Evangeline Atwood, Robert N. DeArmond p 10

Walter Eli Clark is a charter member of the Juneau Men's Igloo.

Clark of Connecticut (Republican), Seventh Governor of Alaska (1909-1913) was born Ashford, Connecticut, January 7, 1869.

He graduated from Connecticut State Normal School at New Britain in 1887. During the following year Mr. Clark was principal of the grammar school at Manchester, Conn. He then entered Williston Seminary, East Hampton, Mass., and later was a student at Wesleyan University, Conn.

From which institution he was graduated with the degree of PH.D., in 1895. Following graduation he entered upon a career as a journalist and has followed this profession continuously with the exception of a period which he spent in Alaska.

Following are some of the positions he has held: Report Hartford, Conn. Post, 1895; telegraph editor Washington
Times, 1895-96; Washington correspondent New Your Commercial Advertiser, 1897; assistant to Washington correspondent New York Sun, 18997-1909; Washington correspondent Seattle Post-46 Intelligencer, 1900-1909; Washington correspondent New York Commercial and Toronto Globe, 1904-1909. Since 1914 Mr. Clark has been editor and proprietor of the Charleston, West Virginia Daily Mail.

Clark joined the stampeders to Nome in 1900 and spent the season there engage in mining. He made, in all, three visits to Alaska prior to his appointment as governor. Southeastern Alaska was visited during the summer of 1903. In 1906, he made a four months journey through Alaska by way of Whitehorse, Dawson, and the Yukon River. He made the journey from Tanana up the Tanna River to Fairbanks and again returned to the Yukon River which he traversed to its mouth, thence to Nome.

Clark was appointed as Governor of Alaska by President Taft in May 1909, and took the oath of office at Juneau on October first of that year. He served until 1913, when he returned to the States and became editor and proprietor of the Charleston Daily Mail.

He died in Charleston Feb 4, 1950.

Biographies of Alaska-Yukon Pioneers 1850-1950, Volume 3, p 62-63, by Ferrell, Ed (May 1, 2009)

Charles H. Cosgrove was a charter member of the Juneau Men's Igloo.

Cosgrove was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, 52 years ago. He attended public schools in that city and after being graduated entered Holy Cross College at Worcester, Massachusetts. He completed his collegiate course there in 1893 and the same year entered the law school of Boston University, from which he was graduated in 1897. He practiced in Massachusetts for a short time and then migrated to the west, called by the pioneer spirit.

After a short residence in Seattle he joined the stampede to Nome in 1899, where he remained for one season, after which he came to Southeastern Alaska, settling in Ketchikan in 1901..

In 1904, Mr. Cosgrove and Miss Margaret Whalen of Seattle were married. They had three sons and one daughter.

Charles Cosgrove served several years as the City Attorney, City Clerk and Magistrate of the City of Ketchikan.

He was a Catholic, a Democrat, and Elk and a member of the Arctic Club of Seattle.

He died in Ketchikan on May 15, 1923.

Ketchikan Alaska Chronicle; Ketchikan, Alaska; May 15-17, 1923
The Alaska Daily Empire; Juneau, Alaska; May 16-17, 1923

William Schnabel was a charter member of the Juneau Men's Igloo.

Schnabel was born on July 2, 1860 in Germany. His parents had immigrated to America and settled in California in 1847. They made a trip to Germany in 1860 and William was born while in the fatherland. He spent his boyhood and young manhood in Jordan Valley, Oregon where he was a cowboy.

William stampeded to Dawson, Alaska in the “early days” and to Fairbanks in 1904 where he was appointed deputy marshal. After leaving Fairbanks, William was again appointed deputy marshal of the First division at Wrangell, and served in that capacity until the term of the marshal, under whom he served, expired in 1909.

He reportedly rode for a short time with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, where he met Velma P. (unknown maiden name), and his second wife. (He was first married to Hattie L. Ridenbaugh in 1893).

Following his stint in Alaska, William returned to Idaho, settling at his home in the Rockville area. He died in Caldwell, Idaho on September 28, 1932.

The Caldwell News-Tribune, 29 September, 193