Yukon who is who

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Joseph Fisher Horsfall (1864 - 1943)
	
Joseph Horsfall was born at Diss, Norfolk England to parents Jane (nee Fisher) and Thomas Horsfall. Joseph and Julia McQuesten, daughter of Jack McQuesten, were married at Fort Yukon, Alaska in the late 1890s.((“Linda Tomlin’s Family Tree.” Geneanet, 2018 website: https://gwgeneanet.org/tlinda6?lang=en&p=joseph+fisher&n=horsfall)) 
The Horsfalls trapped on the Chandalar River in Alaska for three years and then moved to trap on the Pelly River. They had been on the Pelly in 1905 when big game hunter Charles Sheldon met them. Sheldon was on the police patrol boat //Vidette// when the captain picked up Joseph, Julia and four children, thirty miles up the Pelly River from Fort Selkirk at the mouth. They were tracking upriver with a long poling boat carrying a year’s worth of supplies, headed for Kalzas Creek on the MacMillan River where they intended to spend the winter and trap in the Kalzas Lake area. Sheldon was impressed by Mrs. Horsfall but his recounting of her experiences as a youth are not credible. His 1911 book, //The Wilderness of the Upper Yukon,// includes several photos of the family.((Charles Sheldon, //The Wilderness of the Upper Yukon.// B&JC Classics, 2014 reprint of 1911 edition: 176.))

In July 1906, the Mounted Police patrol boat //Vidette// overtook partners Horsfall and Eastman on the Pelly River. The men had a year’s worth of supplies and were going to Crooked Creek, about thirty miles up the Macmillan River, where they had a cabin and were into their second year of prospecting. The //Vidette// picked them up and dropped them at the mouth of the Macmillan River.((Royal North-West Mounted Police Annual Report. Sessional Paper No. 28. 1906: 63-5.)) 

Joseph and Julia’s child Rose [Rosalie Brown] was born at Fort Selkirk in 1906. Horsfall took over running the Fort Selkirk post office from the RNWMP in 1907.((Royal North-West Mounted Police Annual Report. Sessional Paper No. 28. 1908: 26.)) In 1908, their son Joseph Charles died as a four-day old baby.((“Linda Tomlin’s Family Tree.” Geneanet, 2018 website: https://gw.geneanet.org/tlinda6?lang=en&p=joseph+fisher&n=horsfall)) In 1910, Joe took over the liquor license of the Dominion Hotel. In the early 1900s, the Horsfalls ran a hotel, bar, café, and store at Fort Selkirk.((“Horsfall’s Farm,” on Fort Selkirk Trade & Travel page, Yukon Government. Fort Selkirk Virtual Museum of Canada 2018 website: http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/sgc-cms/expositions-exhibitions/fort_selkirk/english/tt/tttrade.html.)) One of their children was four or five old when he died at Fort Selkirk. He was playing with matches and was fatally burned.((Fort Selkirk Oral History, Yukon Government Heritage Branch. GI Cameron interview, 1984: 75.))

Joseph applied for a homestead on the Yukon River five miles below Fort Selkirk in 1915.((Yukon Archives, Government Records YRG 1: Fort Selkirk and area.1, 41, 28459, 1912-1922, Gov 1651.)) In 1919, he had about 5 acres of oat hay which yielded about 2 tons to the acre and about 2 acres in wheat and barley not threshed but used for chicken feed. The balance of the crop consisted of an acre or two of potatoes, turnips, carrots, cabbage, and green stuff.((Yukon Archives, GOV 1660 file 31171)) He added twenty-five acres to the lease, and then cancelled the lease in 1923.((Yukon Archives, Government Records YRG 1: Fort Selkirk and area.1, 45, 29906, 1915-1923, Gov 1655.)) 
	
In 1921, Joe Horsfall was fishing and he also helped Ira Van Bibber pull his nets. Horsfall had a team of horses, and he would haul the fish in and ship them to Dawson and Mayo. Dan remembers fishing with two sleighs. One sleigh had a stove, and the other was for the fish. Ira had poles frozen into the ice around the holes and they would put a wind break around the hole and put in a stove. The fish would freeze right away out on the ice. The ling cod would come back to life after they thawed out. They used to sack the fish before Joe Horsfall came out.((Yukon Archives, Dan Van Bibber Oral History Project. January 2000, Tape #1, page 6-7.)) 
	
In 1929, Julia Horsfall was living at Minto Landing and working as a midwife.((Joyce Yardley, //Yukon Riverboat Days.// Surry B.C.: Hancock House, 1996: 22.))Anna Horsfall cooked for the Maisie May haying gang one summer. She was a crack shot and all of the Horsfall girls were proficient in northern living, including driving their own dog teams.((H.S. Bostock, //Pack Horse Tracks – recollections of a geologists life in British Columbia and the Yukon 1924 – 1954.// Yukon Geoscience Forum, 1990: 146.)) Joseph and Julia (nee McQuesten) had eight girls and one boy. The majority, if not all of the girls, went to school in Dawson.((“Linda Tomlin’s Family Tree.” Geneanet, 2018 website: https://gw.geneanet.org/tlinda6?n=horsfall&oc=&p=ada+margaret))
	
A water course in the Pelly/Macmillan rivers area was named Hosfall Creek in 1936 and corrected to Horsfall Creek in 1954.((Yukon Government Cultural Services Branch, Place Names Database.))