Ezra Morgan Meeker (1830 – 1928)
Ezra Meeker was born in Ohio and his family relocated to Indiana when he was a boy. Ezra and his wife Eliza June Sumner moved to the Puget Sound region in 1852 and settled in what is now Puyallup in 1862. Meeker grew hops for brewing beer and by 1887 was wealthy. In 1891, hop aphids destroyed his crops and took most of his fortune. He tried a number of ventures including four trips to the Klondike to sell dried produce. On his first trip to Dawson in the spring of 1898, he sold all of his vegetables in two weeks. He returned to Puyallup and set out again in August with his son-in-law Roderick McDonald. They opened the Log Cabin Grocery and stayed for the winter. Meeker returned to Dawson in 1899 and 1900 and invested in unsuccessful gold mines. His son Fred died in the Klondike of pneumonia in January 1901 and Ezra left Dawson for good.1)
Ezra Meeker wrote a memoir published in 1909 and reprinted in 1916: Ventures and adventures of Ezra Meeker (1909) and The busy life of eighty-five years of Ezra Meeker (1916).