William S. Judge (1850 – 1899)
William Judge was born in Baltimore, Maryland.1) He became a Jesuit priest in 1890 and volunteered to go to Alaska. He served two years at Hoy Cross Mission on the Yukon River before going to a smaller mission at Nulato, Alaska.2) In 1894 he was ordered to travel to Forty Mile in response to the miners’ request. Low water in the Yukon River prevented him from getting above Fort Yukon and he returned down river to Holy Cross, 400 miles from St. Michael near the mouth. He tried again in September 1895, expecting to stay at Forty Mile for ten months. His cabin in the camp was divided with one side as a chapel. He ministered to the miners that winter and found them scattered on different creeks working hard in their mines. The camp had about 150 people with about 500 in the neighbourhood. In January he travelled the creeks with a sled and one dog and experienced very cold weather. Judge left Forty Mile at the end of May 1896 for St. Michael where he got the next year’s supplies. He spent the next winter at Circle, Alaska and returned to Forty Mile in October 1896. Father Barnum went to Forty Mile for two weeks while he was away. Judge had shipped his supplies, an organ, and a church bell, to Circle and went to Forty Mile to get the rest of his things but an early winter forced him to stay at Forty Mile. When gold was discovered in the Klondike, he was able to secure three acres in the Dawson townsite for a church and hospital. He arranged for the Sisters of St. Anne to arrive in the spring of 1897 to take care of the hospital. He packed his things in mid-March and moved to Dawson.3)
The Jesuits wanted to reassign Father Judge in Alaska because they realized the Yukon was Oblate territory. However, Father Judge's hospital was heavily in debt for $70,000, although he hoped to recover his losses by July 1899 and leave Dawson with the accounts settled. He received permission to remain in Dawson for that purpose. A minstrel show was organized at the end of 1898 and it raised $17,000 when the bars and dancehalls closed for the evening. In October a government inspection of the hospital resulted in a stipend for $7,000 to cover expenses involved in a typhoid epidemic. When Judge wanted to build a new church, he received sponsorship from Alexander McDonald and Nellie Cashman. At the end of December Father Judge contracted pneumonia and he died in January 1899. The Sisters of Saint Ann travelled to the creeks to beg for money for the hospital.4) Father Judge’s kindness earned him the name “The Saint of Dawson.” His funeral was the largest in Dawson and he was buried near the church he built.5) That church, built in 1898, was taken by steamer to Mayo in 1922 and reconstructed there in 1923.((Leslie Cole, “Mayo church restored.” The Whitehorse Star (Whitehorse), 22 August 1983.) [The church moved to Mayo may have been built on one of the creeks near Dawson.]