Yukon who is who

Bridget Aylward, nee Mannion (1865 - 1959)

Bridget Manion was born in Rosmuc, County Galway in Ireland. She immigrated to the United States and obtained employment as a cook to wealthy Chicago financier Portus B. Weare. Mannion heard about the north when Weare and John J. Healy discussed a business venture on the Yukon River over dinner in 1892. She accompanied Healey and his wife north as their servant. They arrived at St. Michael in the summer of 1892 and were frozen in for the winter at Nulato on the Yukon River. Healy established Fort Cudahy across the Fortymile River from Forty Mile in 1893, and in 1894 Mannion married Edward Aylward, an Irish miner on the Fortymile drainage.¹⁾

Aylward who had several claims on Napoleon Gulch, 85 miles up the Fortymile River. Edward and Briget worked the claims together and miners were welcomed at Napoleon Gulch.²⁾ They were located on the first two claims at the mouth of Napoleon Creek, and little other gold was found from there to the forks. Aylward got $11,000 out of his claims and those who mined the rest of the creek got $1000.³⁾ In May 1896, Mrs. Aylward left the north and travelled to San Francisco, Tacoma, and Seattle and planned to go to Boston and Ireland before returning north. She had a $100-dollar necklace made of nuggets and a valuable bracelet that won her the name “Queen of Alaska.”⁴⁾ Edward Aylward died in 1914. Bridget Aylward lived in their comfortable Seattle home until she died forty-five years after her husband.⁵⁾