Sed Wilson

Sed Wilson was a prospector who attempted to cross the Chilkoot Pass in the winter and ran into trouble during a blizzard, losing his food and supplies. He stayed with the Tagish, and married Aagé who had returned from the coast after her husband, Tlingit headman L’unáat, was killed during the Packer War. Aagé was Shaaw Tláa’s (Kate Carmack) sister. In 1889, Sed and Aagé followed an increasing number of prospectors headed to the Fortymile River. They were prospecting near the south fork of the Fortymile River when Kate and George arrived in the late summer.  Sed and George were not friends, and they chose different paths when the fall steamer failed to bring in the winter’s supplies. Sed and Aagé decided to winter at Franklin Gulch, while George and Kate took the steamer //New Racket// down to Gordon Bettle’s post near the mouth of the Tanana River. Sed and Aagé harvested caribou from the herd that went through that fall and in the spring, Sed started mining again, recovering from six to seventeen dollars in gold every day. Not a fortune but enough to keep him interested. Aagé’s third daughter, Mary (Minnie), was born in 1891 and Aagé died within nine months of her daughter’s birth. Sed decided to leave the north in September 1892, and he left Mary with the missionaries at Forty Mile, William and Selina Bompas. Wilson was in Dawson in 1900 when Carmack asked him to send something to support his daughter who was living with Kate and Carmack’s sister Rose in California. ((Deb Vanasse, //Wealth Woman: Kate Carmack and the Klondike Race for Gold.// Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2016: 76, 85-87, 90-91, 187.))