Yukon who is who

LeRoy Mayfield Tozier (1862 – 1924)

Leroy Tozier was a native of Portland, Oregon. He came to the Klondike in the fall of 1897 and established a mining brokerage, Tozier & Davis, with Lincoln Davis. Their office was in a corner of the old Pioneer saloon building. Davis sold his holdings in June 1898 and returned to his home in Tacoma, Washington. Tozier then formed a partnership with a former Seattle associate, N.D. Walling. In 1899, they controlled large blocks of mining property in the Klondike and in the Fortymile Mining District. Their partnership ended in June 1899, and Tozier went on his own with an office located in the Joslin building on Second Avenue. He had mining property interests on Bonanza, Bear, Hunker, Dominion, Sulphur, and Quartz creeks, and sat on the mining committee for the Dawson Board of Trade.¹⁾

In 1902/03, Tozier worked for Alexander Pantages in Dawson before passing the Alaska bar.²⁾ LeRoy Tozier left the Klondike to become a community builder and a passionate lawyer in Fairbanks. A presentation about Tozier in Fairbanks talked about Tozier’s affinity for the seedier side of life.³⁾

In 1916, Tozier was the defence attorney in two notorious cases. He defended Harry Badger against three charges of assault against a ten-year-old girl, and he defended Fairbanks councillor Dan Callahan against a charge of statutory rape.⁴⁾ Tozier’s grave marker names him as a well-known Alaska attorney and the founder and first president of the Men’s Igloo No.4, Pioneers of Alaska. ⁵⁾