Mary Esther Tidd, nee Ryder (1897 – 1959)
	
Mary Ryder was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania to parents John and Elizabeth Ryder. Mary completed her nurse’s training and left for California with the idea of travelling to Japan to help after an earthquake. Instead, she was hired as a nurse at St. Stephen’s Mission (Hudson Stuck Memorial Hospital) in Fort Yukon, Alaska. In 1924, when her sternwheeler stopped briefly in Dawson, she met Claude Tidd and they were married in August 1925 in Fort Yukon. Mary Tidd wrote many letters to her family in the United States. After Claude’s death in 1949, Mary returned to Pennsylvania where she died.((Yukon Archives, Claude and Mary Tidd fonds, Biographical Sketch.))