John Wallace “Captain Jack” Crawford (1847 - 1917)
John Wallace Crawford was born in Ireland. His father sailed to America in 1854 and his mother joined him in 1858. Crawford migrated a few years later and enlisted in the Union Army to become a private with the 48th Pennsylvania Volunteers. He was wounded twice and learned to read and write in the hospital. Crawford had a short career as an unsuccessful Pennsylvania businessman. Around 1870, he went west and by 1876 had a reputation as a rider, scout, and poet. He was asked to join William Cody's Buffalo Bill touring company and in 1877 was the star in a series of melodramas. That fall, Crawford was injured in a performance in Virginia City and was left behind when the company moved on. With Sam Smith, he wrote a play about himself called Fonda: or the Trapper's Daughter and it ran in California. Crawford went to New Mexico and Arizona serving as a scout and was later a custodian of the abandoned Fort Craig. He wrote hundreds of poems which were often self-published, and a second autobiographical play called The Mighty Truth. Crawford went north in 1898, leaving his wife and children in New Mexico. He spent three years in the Yukon, selling hay and ice cream and staging local celebrations when the Chicago syndicate who employed him failed in their obligations. During this time, he wrote Colonel Bob about innocents being bilked in the Klondike.1)
In 1898, Jack Crawford was the vice president and general manager of a dredging company, the Klondike, Yukon, Copper River Mining Company. It supposedly owned 70 miles of river-bottom on the Yukon and its tributaries, including 18 miles on the Hootalinqua (Teslin River). Crawford was busy during the summer travelling the Yukon River and looking to the company’s affairs. He had a bottle containing $3.60 in gold that he had gathered from a company sluice in just four hours. The dredge machinery was in Dawson and a big scow to contain it was at Hootalinqua, where Crawford built a 35’ x 15’ store stocked with provisions.2)
In January 1900, Jack Crawford and his mule went through the Klondike River ice about two and a half miles below Cliff House. This bend in the river was well known to have thin ice. Crawford and his mule were discovered and pulled from the water by Sherwood Adams, the young son of John Quincy Adams, acting American consul. On the trail to town, they overtook a wagon loaded with hay and Jack got in and covered himself up to keep warm. Adam’s assistant took care of the mule and all arrived safely in Dawson.3)
Crawford left the Yukon in June 1900 to join the Keith Circuit and to raise money supposedly to return to Dawson with more mining equipment. This may have been a convenient lie to his Dawson friends as he made no efforts in that direction, but instead started raising money for a copper mining company in New Mexico.The Dawson Daily News newspaper, June 15, 1900 edition, reviewed his career in Alaska/Yukon.4)