Marguerite Carmack, nee Saftig (1874 - 1942)
	
Marguerite Saftig was born in San Francisco to Marie and Jacob George Saftig. Jacob Saftig lost a modest fortune promoting a gold mine in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Marguerite married Peter M. Laimee at age fourteen. The marriage lasted less than two years before Marguerite filed for divorce.((James Albert Johnson, //Carmack of the Klondike.// Epicenter Press and Horsdal & Schubart, 1990: 112, 123.))\\
	
One story about Marguerite is that she worked as an entertainer in the silver camps of Idaho and then she and her sister Cecile went to the gold fields of South Africa. She and Joseph Le Grande travelled to the gold fields of Australia. She came to the Klondike alone in 1898 and opened a cigar store on the first floor of the Green Tree Saloon.((James Albert Johnson, //Carmack of the Klondike.// Epicenter Press and Horsdal & Schubart, 1990: 112, 123.)) Another story is that she travelled to Idaho, South Africa, and the Klondike, with Joseph LeGrand [sic] who was her pimp, and that her Dawson cigar store was a front for her work as a prostitute. Author Deb Vanasse calls her a charming pathological liar who was not bothered by the contradictions in her various life stories.((Deb Vanasse, //Wealth Woman: Kate Carmack and the Klondike Race for Gold.// Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2016: 188-89.))\\
	
After the Green Tree Saloon burned, Marguerite opened another store at Second and Lane [on the laneway behind Second Avenue]. The Mounties who regularly patrolled the area called her Biddy McCarthy. The two stores netted Marguerite $60,000 in two years and she bought rental property in the heart of Dawson. In June 1900, she met George Carmack at a dinner party, and he asked her to marry him. This despite Kate, his common-law wife, and their daughter Graphie living with Carmack’s sister in California at the time. George let his sister Rose tell Kate of his plans and that she should join Jim and Charlie in Seattle. He also instructed Rose to keep Graphie in California. George and Marguerite were married in October 1900 in Olympia, Washington.((James Albert Johnson, //Carmack of the Klondike.// Epicenter Press and Horsdal & Schubart, 1990: 112, 123.))\\ 

Carmack developed pneumonia in 1922 and after he died at the Roycroft Hospital in Vancouver Marguerite shipped his body to Seattle. Graphie learned of her father’s death in the newspapers, and neither Graphie nor Rose were notified of the funeral. Marguerite was appointed administrator of the estate, Rose and Graphie contested the appointment, and a court-appointed administrator took over. In 1923, the court decided that all of Marguerite’s assets were the community property of Marguerite and George, and that the estate was worth $150,000. Joseph Saftig was again out of work, and he agreed to accept $5,000 in return for getting Graphie to accept a settlement of $5,000. Graphie refused, moved out of their apartment, and divorced Joseph in the next year.  An out-of-court settlement in 1926 awarded Graphie $45,000 in cash, half of which went to her lawyers. Marguerite paid all other fees and had to mortgage her Seattle real estate. Her equity in the estate was reduced to about $100,000.((James Albert Johnson, //Carmack of the Klondike.// Epicenter Press and Horsdal & Schubart, 1990: 151-54.))\\
	
Marguerite lived in California, managing Carmack’s gold mines and visited Seattle every year to manage her properties there.  In 1933, she published an eighteen-page booklet called “My Experiences in the Yukon” by George W. Carmack. It was based on Carmack’s manuscript with all mention of Kate and Graphie removed. Marguerite gradually sold off the Seattle property to support the California mines. In 1941, she closed the mine and moved into Auburn where she died the next year. Her ashes are buried next to George’s grave in Seattle.((James Albert Johnson, //Carmack of the Klondike.// Epicenter Press and Horsdal & Schubart, 1990: 155-56.))