Jeremiah Lynch (b. 1949)
Jeremiah Lynch was born in Fall River, Massachusetts. He was successful in the stock market in San Francisco, became a member of the Stock Exchange in 1876, and was elected president in 1888. He was briefly president of the Hale and Norcross firm and had personal experience running their mine in Virginia City. He became a Democratic state senator in 1882 and ran for the United State Senate but lost. He was almost fifty years old when he started out for the Klondike in the summer of 1898.1)
Lynch raised his fare north by selling some San Francisco real estate and realized about $50,000. Shortly after his arrival in Dawson, he bought 5,000 sacks of flour and turned it over within twenty-four hours and doubled his money to make $20,000. He also purchased and sold 8000 gallons of whiskey. He is successfully bought and sold mines, and mined himself on Cheechako Hill, but his main operations are in the Dawson market.2)
Lynch left Dawson in the fall of 1900 and spent the winter in the States and in Europe. He returned to Dawson in the spring of 1901 but left for good after the “clean-up” that autumn. He started to write his book just after he left but did not finish it until the end of 1903.3)
In February 1903, Lynch held a special Klondike dinner at the Bohemian Club and invited a number of his friends, many of whom had sought fame and adventure in the Klondike: Charles Lamb, William Liggitt, E. J. Berry, Louis Sloss, Edgar Mizner, E. A. Baudette, Mayor H. H. Norwood, George T. Coffey, George Wilkins, George Ross, George de Leon, James M. Wilson, R. A. Fulda, H. M. Smith, Thomas McGowan, Frank H. Ames, Richard Butler and William Butler.4)