Lottie Oatley (1876 - 1961)
	
Twin sisters Polly and Lottie Oatley were born in California.((Mary Ellen Snodgrass, //Frontier Women and Their Art: A Chronological Encyclopedia.//  Rowman & Littlefields, 2018: 238.)) In 1894, the sisters signed a World’s Exposition register, individually and separately, as residents of Salt Lake City, Utah.((Utah at the World’s Columbian Exposition. Salt Lake Lithographing Company, 1894: xxiv.)) They performed as the Oatley Sisters, managed by their mother Mrs. Frank Munroe. In 1896, they toured from the Victor Hotel in Victor, Colorado, through St. Paul, Minnesota, and on to Dawson in the Yukon.((Mary Ellen Snodgrass, //Frontier Women and Their Art: A Chronological Encyclopedia.//  Rowman & Littlefields, 2018: 238.))

The Oatleys arrived in Dawson in late June 1898 aboard the //A.J. Goddard,// the first boat of the season.((W.D. MacBride, "Saga of Famed Packets and other Steamboats of might Yukon River." //Caribou & Northwest Digest,// Fall 1948.)) The Oatley Sisters entertained for the first time in Dawson on the evening of 27 June 1898. They had good voices and were excellent dancers, and they sang the latest songs, so they were very popular.((Chad Evans, //Frontier Theatre: A History of Nineteenth-century Theatrical Entertainment in the Canadian Far West and Alaska.// Chad Arthur Evans, 1983: 234.))

They performed on a canvas covered platform, or in the Regina Saloon on wet evenings. At Sam Bonnifield’s Bank Saloon they performed with their dog Tiny, danced the Buck and Wing, and sang songs like “She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage” with a portable organ accompaniment. The miners were invited to dance for a dollar a dance at the end of the performance.((Mary Ellen Snodgrass, //Frontier Women and Their Art: A Chronological Encyclopedia.//  Rowman & Littlefields, 2018: 238.)) In two weeks they had enough gold to open the Oatley Sisters’ Concert and Dance Hall, under their mother’s management. The small theatre was in an oddity in Dawson with its genial management and courteous attendants.((Chad Evans, //Frontier Theatre: A History of Nineteenth-century Theatrical Entertainment in the Canadian Far West and Alaska.// Chad Arthur Evans, 1983: 234.)) 

In early August 1898, the Oatleys opened the Horseshoe Saloon featuring an animatoscope, a forerunner of the movie projector. In 1899, Lottie Oatley married James Daugherty, owner of Dawson’s Pavilion Theatre. She divorced him in 1906 and joined the Australians, a theatre troupe travelling around Alaska. She eventually married Durwood Casley and retired to San Francisco.((Mary Ellen Snodgrass, //Frontier Women and Their Art: A Chronological Encyclopedia.//  Rowman & Littlefields, 2018: 238.))