Yukon who is who

Robert J. “Bob” English (d. 1909)

Robert English was born in Dallas, Texas.¹⁾ He entered the Yukon in 1886.²⁾

English was living in Forty Mile when he and Barney Hill visited the Birch Creek mining district and decided to move there. They staked the townsite of Circle City, Alaska in June 1894, naming it because they thought they were on the Arctic Circle. The community is actually forty miles south of the line. McQuesten & Co. had established a temporary trading post the previous summer about twelve miles above Circle, and they moved the post to the townsite in the fall of 1894.³⁾ Robert English signed the founding charter of the Yukon Order of Pioneers at Forty Mile in December 1894.⁴⁾

Bob English was a well-known saloon man and his Dawson establishment had a billiard table, so it was a somewhat higher grade than the others.⁵⁾

¹⁾

Dawson City Museum, Yukon Order of Pioneers collection, members record on microfilm.

²⁾

Andrew Baird, “Early Yukon Order of Pioneer Records” in Yukon Archives, V. Faulkner MSS 135 83/50 f.5.

³⁾

Sam C. Dunham, The Alaska Gold Fields. Alaska Northwest Publishing Company, Anchorage: 1983: 49.

⁴⁾

Yukon Archives, D. E. Griffith, “Forty-Milers on Parade.” Coutts coll. 78/69 MSS 087 f.5.

⁵⁾

William Douglas Johns, “The Early Yukon, Alaska and the Klondike Discovery as they were before the Great Klondike Stampede swept away the old conditions forever.” Yukon Archives, William Douglas Johns Journal, pages 136-137, 181. Coutts 78/69, Box F-89, Folder #20.