Yukon who is who

George Geddes (d. 1958)

George Geddes was born in Scotland and came to the Yukon during the gold rush.¹⁾ He travelled with men he met in Vancouver, Willard Phelps and two others. They were nervous about meeting Soapy Smith in Skagway, so they left their ship in Wrangell and went up the Stikine River to Levettown and Teslin Lake. They used their horses to haul freight for other stampeders and in the fall of 1898 built a barge big enough to haul their ten tons of supplies. At Teslin, they heard about a gold strike on the Big Salmon River, so they poled up the Nasutlin River for about forty miles.²⁾

Geddes panned for gold along the way and then worked for miners on Livingston Creek. About 1905, he moved to Teslin where he and Tom Smith operated the Nisutlin Trading Post for several years. He met and married Annie Sidney, an young Inland Tlingit woman of the Dakl’awedi (Eagle) and Whale clan. They moved to Geddes Point near Carcross and then returned to Teslin where they bought surveyed land at Twelve Mile. George started a mink ranch and fed them fish which the family netted. He also sold firewood and grew a huge garden and sold vegetables so the local store. The family gave up the ranch when George grew older.³⁾