Benjamin Craig (b. ~1876)

Ben Craig was born on a farm near Ottawa, a close neighbour and distant relative of federal surveyor William Ogilvie. In 1898, Ogilvie was appointed Yukon commissioner and he left Ottawa in August 1898 to establish government offices in Dawson and do work previously done by the Mounted Police. Ogilvie took a number of employees with him, including Ben Craig, a meticulous record-keeper, who was hired as a postal clerk. His pay was $7 a day, the same as when he retired twenty-six years later. According to Craig’s diary, the group reached Dawson on 12 September 1898. The first post office was in a log cabin and it burned a month after Craig arrived. Another post office was built at Gondolfo Point where streets merged to join the road into Dawson. When that building burned, a third post office was built and remains as a National Historic Site. By May 1899, the Dawson post office had accumulated 1,226 unclaimed letters.¹⁾

Craig never became the official postmaster, but he instructed each new employee as they arrived.²⁾ Benny Craig kept a record of residents leaving the Yukon and where they went and where they died. The record books are at the Dawson City Museum and at Yukon Archives.³⁾