Eli Gage (1867 – 1906)

Eli Gage was born in Chicago to parents Sarah B. (Etheridge) and Lyman Judson Gage. Lyman Gage was a banker and was Secretary of the United States Treasury under presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Lyman Gage was also a stockholder in the North American Trading & Transportation Co. (NAT&T). Eli Gage and Sophia Rogers Weare were married in 1893. They met when Eli was working on the railroad in Des Moines. The Weare family owned the NAT&T and Sophia’s father was the president of the company.¹⁾

Eli Gage was an alcoholic, and he was sent to the Yukon to straighten himself up.²⁾ He was the manager of the NAT&T in Dawson in 1897.³⁾ Gage was refused a drink in Bob English’s saloon and, in a drunken rage, tried to kill a bartender named Cameron with a billiard cue. Cameron shot at him with a revolver, but it misfired. This scared Gage and he stopped his attack. The miners wanted to send him down the river but because of his connections and his promise to be quiet the matter was dropped. Healy was at Circle, Alaska and Gage did not have the courage to buy claims from the early Bonanza prospectors and Eli Weare, managing the NAT&T post at Forty Mile, did not have the experience.⁴⁾ Mrs. Eli Gage [Sophia Rogers Gage, nee Weare] was on the ocean steamer Portland when it reached the south on 17 July 1897. There were sixty-eight passengers on board, forty of them miners. The boat carried over a million dollars in gold.⁵⁾

Mrs. Gage’s [father?], Portus Weare, was a Chicago entrepreneur and an owner of the North America Transportation and Trading Co. (NAT&T).⁶⁾ Mrs. Gage returned north in early August 1897 to join her husband. She was accompanied by her brother W.W. Weare, second vice-president of the NAT&T Co., and several friends and members of her family were in the party. They went in by way of Juneau and the Chilkoot Pass and she planned to join her husband in Dawson. A specially constructed yacht was built for the party in Toronto, planned and fitted for the voyage to Dawson. It was shipped in sections to Dyea, carried over the Chilkoot Pass and put together on the shores of Lake Linderman. It had many comforts and even luxuries but was not as comfortable as her elegantly appointed home in Chicago that Mrs. Gage abandoned to share a season in Dawson with her husband. She also had to leave her 15-month-old baby. W.W. Weare was going to Dawson to take over the management of the banking system to be managed by the NAT&T in every Alaskan mining camp.⁷⁾

Eli Gage returned to Chicago in the summer of 1897.⁸⁾ He denied the rumours that he had been ill-treated and horse-whipped by the miners in the Yukon.⁹⁾ He did tell other stories and maintained that the north needed soldiers to keep the miners in check. His stories were backed up by Healy and the Weares, so Secretary Gage believed him. Troops were sent to establish Fort Gibbons on the Yukon River at the mouth of the Tanana River near the NAT&T post there. It was money in the pockets of the NAT&T as they sold supplies to the army at a high price. The troops were withdrawn in July 1922 after Major General William W. White at the Presidio, San Francisco completed an investigation and a report.¹⁰⁾

In 1900, the Gage family was living in Evanston and Eli reported his occupation as a furnace manufacturer. In 1906 he was employed by James B. Clow & Sons Plumbing Supply Company. In the summer of 1906 Eli spent several months in Seattle and in late July none of his friends had seen him for a week. His wife and child arrived to look for him, and when he could not be found, hired a Pinkerton detective to locate him. He was found, dead by suicide, at a third-rate hotel registered under a fictitious name with a number of empty liquor bottles around him.¹¹⁾ Friends told reporters that Gage had heard that his wife was in town looking for him and decided to end his life rather than face her.¹²⁾