Linn Wallace Relfe (1876 – 1899)
Linn Relfe was born in St. Louis, Missouri. The family was living in Seattle in 1890 where Relfe’s father practiced law and became the police commissioner. At age sixteen Linn worked with his father in an abstract and title guarantee company, and then he was a stenographer in his father’s law firm. In 1895, he was assistant secretary at the Chamber of Commerce.1)
Linn left Seattle for the Klondike in August 1897 and worked in Dawson as a gold weigher, a bookkeeper, a cashier, and a bartender. He went back to see his family in October 1898 and started another trip home on 16 December 1899. He was walking with a small pack as the roadhouses were about fourteen miles apart and he had no need to carry supplies or camping gear. He caught up to Frederick Clayson, who was pushing his bicycle, and they travelled together for most of a week and they arrived at Fussell’s Road House on Christmas Eve. Lawrence Olsen, a lineman on the Yukon Telegraph met them there where they all spent the night. Olsen invited Clayson and Relfe to Ryan’s Christmas dinner at Hoochikoo. It should have been an easy four-to five-hour trip.2)
The three men were instead ambushed and killed by George O’Brien and Thomas Graves and their bodies were dragged into a hole dug in the river. O’Brien was hung in Dawson in 1901 for committing the crimes. Graves, or his body, was never found.3)