Joseph “John” Burke (1855 - 1913)
John Burke was born outside of San Gregory, Nicolet County, Quebec. He struck out on his own at age 21 and travelled to Vermont, Philadelphia, Illinois, and Colorado. In 1878, he was in Leadville, then Durango, and in the Black Range, New Mexico before becoming fascinated with the north. In 1881, he went from San Francisco to Portland where he took passage on the old steamer Idaho to Juneau. He worked at Treadwell mine one winter and then crossed the Chilkoot via Dyea in March 1886. He travelled with a party of forty men including Jack Wade, Billy Howell, his partners, and old Capt. Bill Moore.1) Others in the party included Bishop Sehgers, Father Tosi and Ribaut, and Joe Ladue. They barged the Yukon River to the mouth of the Stewart and wintered there until April when they mushed on to the Fortymile River where they worked the Moose Creek bar.2) They located claims on Bonanza Bar just as the first miners were cleaning off the bedrock.3)
Burke stayed in the Forty Mile district until September when he and some others went in a small boat to the mouth of the Tanana River to spend the winter. The next spring, he and others prospected up the Tanana to near where Fairbanks is now before returning to the mouth of the Tanana. The next year, he prospected on the Tanana again, then crossed by a stream to the Kuskokwim, descended that river many hundreds of miles and then crossed the portage to the Yukon River. The party wintered at Holy Cross Mission and Burke stayed for two winters, helping to erect some buildings for the mission. In 1891, he returned to Forty Mile, went to Franklin Gulch, and spent the winter on Miller Creek in the Sixtymile River basin where he had a claim. He went into business at Circle City, Alaska and left there in the winter of 1896/97 with the stampeders for Dawson. He worked as a mining recorder in Dawson during the rush and then quit the government service to take up fur trading. Dawson became his home.4)
J. F. Burke, proprietor of the Yukon sawmill spoke heartily in favour of incorporation for Dawson so the people could, in certain respects, be in a position to govern themselves.5) Burke became quite ill months before he left the north in the late summer of 1913. He died near Vancouver and left a widow in Dawson.6)