Margaret Johanna Mitchell (1848 – 1920)
	
Margaret Mitchell arrived in the Klondike in 1898.((Carolyn Anne Moore, “Representation and Renumeration: white women working in the Klondike Goldrush (1897-99) and the decade following (1900-10).” A thesis submitted for a Master of Arts degree at the University of Toronto, Graduate Department of Education, 1994: 99.)) She staked her first placer claim in 1899 and, over the next twelve years, staked twenty-one claims. Most of them were sold to Laura Bell Smith, her daughter who lived in Dawson for a short time. Some of Laura’s claims were sold to Edwin Ward Smith who may have been Laura’s brother-in-law. Mitchell and [Leonard?] Ginzberg were partners on a claim on 49 Gulch on Bonanza Creek. Ginzberg protested when Mitchell sold the claim saying he had spent $200 working on the property. He asked that the sale be set aside and a new grant be issued in both their names. Most of Mitchell’s claims were staked on Hunker Creek. She sold them to her daughter who then sold them to the owner of an adjacent claim who then applied for an extension of boundary.((John Gould, Mrs. Margaret Johanna Mitchell.” //Klondike Sun// (Dawson), 11 November 1993.)) Margaret and other women claim owners hired male labourers to carry out the representation work that kept her claims active.((Jane Gaffin, “Margaret Mitchell: Quartz Queen of the Klondike.” Yukon Prospectors’ Association 2019 website: http://www.yukonprospectors.ca/margaret_mitchell.pdf))  
	
Margaret staked her first quartz claim on lower Bonanza in 1901. It partially covered placer claim #97 Below Bonanza. She was searching for the Mother Lode and a group of mineral claims at the head of Gold Bottom Creek was known as the Mitchell Group.((John Gould, Mrs. Margaret Johanna Mitchell.” //Klondike Sun// (Dawson), 11 November 1993.)) She speculated in hard rock claims and backed prospectors in a gamble that they would find something of worth.((Jane Gaffin, “Margaret Mitchell: Quartz Queen of the Klondike.” Yukon Prospectors’ Association 2019 website: http://www.yukonprospectors.ca/margaret_mitchell.pdf)) Margaret became known in the Klondike as Stampede Mitchell and the Quartz Queen, the latter in reference to the well-known Bonanza Kings.
Margaret was diligent researcher and knew the country. Many good mining claims lapsed when Klondike miners rushed off to Nome without registering their representation work, and Mitchel was able to pick them up. The Mitchell Group of claims, thirty-one claims extending over the divide between Gold Bottom Creek and the right fork of Hunker Creek, is still well-known by modern geologists. Her cabin was located a half mile north of the King Solomon Dome summit. She leased this property to A. E. Garvey of Vancouver, British Columbia who intended to develop a mine in the summer of 1913.((Jane Gaffin, “Margaret Mitchell: Quartz Queen of the Klondike.” Yukon Prospectors’ Association 2019 website: http://www.yukonprospectors.ca/margaret_mitchell.pdf)) 
	
Mitchell was well-known for her five-year stalking of Marie Joussaye Fotheringham who Mitchell thought had knowing sold mining property she didn’t own. In December 1907, Mitchell chased Fortheringham around Dawson brandishing a lantern. Fotheringham took Mitchell to court and after an entertaining exchange and a lecture from the judge on proper behaviour in polite society, Mitchell was placed under a peace bond and fined $200.((Jane Gaffin, “Margaret Mitchell: Quartz Queen of the Klondike.” Yukon Prospectors’ Association 2019 website: http://www.yukonprospectors.ca/margaret_mitchell.pdf))
	
A few years before her death Mitchell was developing new claims on Hubrick Gulch that she had applied to group into a working concession.((Application to group Hill’s claims on Hubrick Gulch, 1913 - 1917. Yukon Archives, Records of the Yukon Government, YRG 1, Series 7, Central Registry Files 1898-1951: GOV 2053, file 29174.)) She left Dawson in the fall of 1919 with the expectation of returning in the spring, but died at the age of 72 in Ottumwa, Kansas.((//The Whitehorse Star// (Whitehorse), 6 February 1920.)) Her 1913 will left a considerable fortune in personal and mining property to her daughter Lara Bell Smith and a grandson Gaybord Sampson Smith.((Carolyn Anne Moore, “Representation and Renumeration: white women working in the Klondike Goldrush (1897-99) and the decade following (1900-10).” A thesis submitted for a Master of Arts degree at the University of Toronto, Graduate Department of Education, 1994: 99.))
	
Margaret Mitchell was inducted into the Yukon Prospectors’ Association Hall of Fame in 1988.((Jane Gaffin, “Margaret Mitchell: Quartz Queen of the Klondike.” Yukon Prospectors’ Association 2019 website: http://www.yukonprospectors.ca/margaret_mitchell.pdf))