Yukon who is who

William “Billy” Thompson

William Thompson was originally from Wisconsin. William Swinehart and his son Guy left Wisconsin for Juneau, Alaska in 1896 to join William’s brother George who was editor and publisher of the Juneau Mining Record. In the summer of 1897, William and George headed for the Klondike and at some point were joined by William Thompson and William’s Swinehart’s brother-in-law Ham Kline. They arrived in the Yukon in April 1898 and William Swinehart, Thompson and Kline were still together three years later at Fort Selkirk.¹⁾

Swinehart brought farming equipment over the Chilkoot Pass. His party had four horses, ploughs, harrows, seed potatoes, cultivators, and provisions for a year and a half. They arrived at Fort Selkirk about 15 June 1898 and started clearing bush west of the community. They built a barn and a house and dug an irrigation ditch from a nearby creek.²⁾

In the 1901 census, William Swinehart was listed as the head of the household at the Swinehart farm behind Fort Selkirk. Ham Kline was listed as a partner in the farm. William Thompson and Frank Chapman were listed as an employees. Swinehart’s son and two eldest daughters were also living at the farm. Chapman and partner Peter Oleson went on to develop the Pelly Farm. William “Billy” Thompson’s younger sister and her husband J.C. Wilkinson moved to the Yukon in 1917 and later owned the Pelly Farm.³⁾