William T. Ewing (1854 – 1923)

William Ewing was a black man born into slavery. In 1880, he moved to Des Moines and worked as a servant for Ebenezer Ingersoll, and they travelled along the east coast as far south as Florida. In 1887, Ewing moved to Tacoma, Washington where he secured a homestead in 1890. He worked small jobs and then joined the Tacoma Police Department where he drove the paddy wagon. He left for Alaska in 1896 and was in Circle by the fall. When news of the Klondike gold strike arrived, Ewing joined others in the goldfields and then moved on to Nome, in 1900, and the Fairbanks area, in 1903. He had enough money to invest and partner with Daniel McCarty on the Fairbanks Creek Discovery Claim. They hired two men and at the end of ninety days Ewing’s share was $40,000. He used his money to buy real estate and more mining claims.¹⁾

In 1908, the Dawson Daily News noted that Ewing was known from California to Nome and now the Klondike as a man of pluck and the richest black miner in the north.²⁾ Ewing left his considerable estate to the Booker T. Washington Institute at Tuskegee, Alabama for the education of the black population.³⁾