David Shand (d. 1929)

David Shand was born in Scotland and attended Edinburgh College for two years before he went to sea. He joined the merchant marine and sailed to India, Australia, South America, and other places. After a few years, he moved to America where he and his brother John ran an importing business, bringing in silks, laces, fine china, crockery, draperies, and carpets. When John travelled to Scotland in 1889, he returned with David’s cousin and fiancé, Peggy Shand.¹⁾

David and Peggy were married in Chicago in July 1889. They lived in California for a few years. David became ill from a fever contracted in South America, and he left the business to live on a ranch. When he heard about the Klondike strike, he and Peggy sold the ranch and their belongings and set sail for the north on the Seattle III in 1897. David had contracted to be the engineer in building a mill at the mouth of the White River where the Carey Mill Co. built scows and sold lumber in Dawson. David and Peggy decided to stay in the area and with three of the crew built a simple roadhouse and split the profits in the spring. David took the roadhouse as part of his share, and they worked on their claim on Thistle Creek about fifteen miles away.²⁾

The Shands bought the Johnson Roadhouse on Stewart Island in 1900 and operated it for over thirty years. In 1900, when there were about thirty people living on the island. The flower garden on Stewart Island was Davy Shand's hobby. The fenced one-acre garden had walks outlined in border plants: lobelia, candytuft, pansies, and stocks. He raised delphinium taller than himself, snapdragons, scabiosa, zinnias, orange marigolds, and chrysanthemums, gladioli, and dahlias as big as dinner plates. He saved the seeds from his best flowers and planted them in the next year. In the later years, the captains would tell the passengers about the garden, and they would come ashore to see the blossoms. Davy also built a greenhouse onto the main part of the house and you could see in through a glassed door from the bedroom. He started a fire early in February and kept it going till the warm weather. The stove was sunk partially in the ground, and the walls were banked with dirt. Pipes radiated about the room, keeping the temperature warm, a system that took him seven years to perfect. A table in the centre of the room held rich river dirt and sand. The first thing he planted in the greenhouse was cucumbers and the plants hung from the rafters with ten to twelve-inch cucumbers. When the small plants were ready, he would take them out and put them, with a mixture of manure, in a hotbed in the garden. Later the flowers, cabbages, tomatoes, cauliflowers, and green peppers were set out in the ground. Mary worked on the vegetables: carrots, onions, beans, beets, and cabbage.³⁾

The Shand Roadhouse at the mouth of the Stewart River was destroyed by fire at the beginning of January 1920 or the end of December 1919.⁴⁾