William and Nathan Abbott

Brothers William and Nathan Abbott were born in England and were gardeners before they came to the Yukon. ¹⁾ They were mining on Haggart Creek in the Mayo mining district in the early 1900s and were among the few did not abandon their claims after the influx of prospectors in 1898. In 1907, the Abbotts found high values of gold along the left limit of their creek claim. Some miners were still operating on Dublin Gulch, a tributary of Haggard, and their activity plus the news of the Abbott’s luck sparked another stampede. By 1909, there were more than fifty men working on the two creeks. ²⁾ In 1910, the Abbott brothers were part owners of a Haggart Creek mining company with William Portlock, another Englishman. William Abbott’s wife cooked for the crew, and they had about five claims that they worked together. They had an efficient operation with a boiler, engine, and a self-dumping bucket. They drifted on the left limit and had an open cut in the creek bed during the summer. William Portlock died in 1924. ³⁾

The First World War, rising costs, expensive transportation, and a fixed price for gold added up to a diminished interest in gold mining so by 1925 the only reported miners on Dublin Gulch were the Abbotts and Bobbie Fisher. ⁴⁾ After the Abbotts returned to England, the miners who took over their ground enjoyed their large rhubarb patches. Ed Barker and “Kit” Watters prospected the ground in 1934 when the price of gold was set at $35. Barker found discarded papers in one of the Abbott’s cabins. It showed the returns on clean-ups over the brother’s many years of mining. With this encouragement, Barker and Watters took over the ground and Barker later installed a more mechanized operation. ⁵⁾