Elsie Violet Britton, nee Costello (1879 – 1960)

Elsie Violet Costello was born in 1879 in Mexico City to father Oscar Wellington Archibald and mother Olivia Costello. Her father was a prominent surgeon. Both parents were very religious and Elsie was taught by French nuns. She learned to speak English, French, and Spanish. She was pregnant as a teen and her parents raised her son. The boy left for India and Elsie went north in 1900. She worked in a hotel in Ketchikan, moved to Skagway, then Discovery near Atlin, and arrived in Dawson in the early 1900s. In Dawson, she operated bath houses and a cigar store and was also known as the "Gypsy Creole." She married Joe Britton in 1928 when Joe was working as a cook for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Joe worked at mines at Canadian and Kirkman creeks where he and Elsie spent many years. Elsie cooked, tended the large flower and vegetable garden, and became better known as "Ma Britton." She was known as a great storyteller.((MacBride Museum's Sourdough Stories: Meet 'Ma' Britton." //Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 21 July 2010.)) She always claimed to be a piano player, not a dancehall girl in Dawson.((Bill Harris interview with Sally Robinson at Carmacks, 16 June 2003.)) 

Joe's arthritis caused them to give up the Kirkman property and they opened a roadhouse at Carmacks.((MacBride Museum's Sourdough Stories: Meet 'Ma' Britton." //Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 21 July 2010.)) The Carmacks Roadhouse was built around 1902 on the left limit of the Nordenskiold River. The Brittons bought the business from Happy LePage who never operated the roadhouse but purchased it from Bob Grant in the mid-1940s. Grant had purchased the building from the Brown estate. He took the second story off and died in the same year. Joe Lidden bought the roadhouse from the Brittons in 1948.((Yukon Historic Sites YHSI database; Ida May Goulter, “History of Carmacks.” September 1977, Yukon Historic Sites, Carmacks Roadhouse file.)) The Brittons operated it for only a few years and then moved to a small cabin. Joe Britton died forty-eight days after Elsie and they are both buried in the Carmacks cemetery.((MacBride Museum's Sourdough Stories: Meet 'Ma' Britton." //Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 21 July 2010.))