An Ancestral Gold Rush

By Edith McClintock

Addiction came on fast and strong this week. It started with the arrival on Saturday of my great uncle John S. McClintock’s 1939 book, Pioneer Days in the Black Hills. I’d known vaguely of his history: he’d joined the gold rush of 1876 in the South Dakota Black Hills, settled in Deadwood, and run a stagecoach line for twenty-five years.

But I didn’t know my uncle wrote a book until last month, or that my mom had an original copy. She mailed it to me and I dug in immediately, indulging in his first-hand tales of Wild Bill Hickok (“a man killer”) and Calamity Jane (drunk, kind, and wildly untruthful), stage-coach holdups, Indian scalpings (yes, bad, I know), gold mining, land grabs, confidence games, and corrupt and immoral city leaders. Pretty much what you’d expect of Deadwood in the late 1800s.

The book was fun, but it also stirred my appetite, which is where the trouble began. On Sunday morning, I logged onto Ancestry.com for a 14-day free trial, and have barely come up for air in days. I’d tried Ancestry.com about five years ago and found it a hard slog. But since then, my relatives have been quite industrious (as befits our Puritan heritage), starting with my Uncle Wayne who was kind enough to trace the McClintock line back to another John McClintock who arrived in Pennsylvania in the early 1700s, on back to Northern Ireland in the 1600s, then Scotland in the 1500s, where that line stops. For now.

The McClintocks, however, became irrelevant when I hit my own gold vein of sorts, this one spewing King Roberts of Scotland. I was so swamped with earls and kings and princesses, my arrogance turned heady. Until it turned complicated. Contested, in fact. My Virginia Alexanders were usurpers, fraudsters possibly, despite being American pre-revolutionary "aristocracy". George Washington was not enough for them. They wanted a king of Scotland. Or five. An emperor. Charlemagne himself. Embarrassed, I deleted the line.

Charlemagne, aka Charles the Great,
King of the Franks, Imperator Augustus,
and Holy Roman Emperor

But I didn’t like Charlemagne being ripped from my blood. My DNA screamed in protest. Plus, I’d notified my sister of our exalted status and she was already dialing Duchess Catherine to schedule drinks at Buckingham Palace. There had to be a way back to the crème de la 1% of history. In my denial, I went so far as to read the source material, to see if those naysayers (aka Wikipedia) could possibly be wrong. Instead it grew worse - my connection to the exalted Virginia Alexanders disappeared completely.

Could it be that my ancestor George Alexander was important for nothing more than accusing poor Mary Randall of witchcraft in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1691? Was that what my illustrious heritage had come to? Not even a Salem witch trial? Mary didn’t even get staked, just spent some time in jail, although I did get excited at the thought of a cursed bloodline. I decided if I couldn’t have a European emperor, it would have to be Jamestown or the Mayflower. American royalty. I had standards now, and I’d find those ancestors.

And so I set upon my quest to trace every direct line of my family (excluding my probably peasant relatives that hadn’t yet been documented by distant cousins and would involve actual research work). Line after line, branch upon branch, I crawled back with a click of my mouse, finding founding fathers of Virginia, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and even North Carolina (and yes, a few slave owners, sorry).

But it wasn’t until the bottom of my tree, the family of my maternal great-grandmother – the Parks of Farmington, Missouri – that I hit a new vein. It spread across Virginia: Puritans, Jamestown settlers, a colonial governor, a founder of the Virginia Company. A veritable panoply of Revolutionary Patriots (as I will henceforth refer to my family). But even better, a connection to the House of Plantagenet and all those King Henry’s of England though the Waller family who arrived with William the Conqueror and fought at the Battle of Hastings. Not fool’s gold this time. I’m quite sure. Charlemagne all the way.

So there you have it. My golden heritage. The hardest part will be deciding what coat of arms to nail above my bed. And if it’s all wrong, blame my fifth cousins thrice removed for their poor research and ancestral avarice, because they did all of the work. And although I’m not done, I have to stop. I have to stop. I will stop. Before I find out none of it’s true.

For my Uncle Wayne, who passed away recently. He had the fever.

For more, visit my author website and/or personal blog, A Wandering Tale. Even better, order a copy of Monkey Love & Murder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the Book Depository (free shipping nearly anywhere in the world).

The Spell of the Yukon, and Other Adventures

By Beth Green

In poetry, as well as novels, I look for verse that takes me to another place; for a lyrical transportation to another time.

It’s no wonder then, that one of the poets whose writing has echoed in my thoughts the most is Canadian Robert W. Service.

Robert W. Service

A contemporary of American novelist Jack London (White Fang, The Call of the Wild―also great adventure tales), Service wrote the poems that made him famous about the Gold Rush of the late 1800s. Originally Scottish, Service was an adventurer from a young age. He traveled and worked at various jobs in North America, eventually landing work as a banker in the wild north. His poetry―he actually preferred to call it “verse”―is often compared to (or dismissed as) similar to Rudyard Kipling’s in tone, audience and meter.

But the thing that captures me most about Service’s many poems about the Yukon is his sense of adventure. Consider the opening to “A Rolling Stone,” published in 1912.

There's sunshine in the heart of me,

My blood sings in the breeze; 

The mountains are a part of me,

I'm fellow to the trees.

My golden youth I'm squandering, 

Sun-libertine am I; 

A-wandering, a-wandering

Until the day I die.

Service’s poems also brought the world a cast of characters―sometimes desperate―who acted out the dance of life in sub-zero conditions. One of his first famous poems, “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” (1907) tells the story of the death of a gold miner:

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that he'd "sooner live in hell".

Southeast Alaska. Photo by Beth Green

Having lived in Alaska, I feel that his poetry also illustrates the beauty of North America―particularly Alaska, British Columbia and the Yukon―better than any other writer I’ve read. My favorite example of this is his epic “The Spell of the Yukon,” published in 1907.

The Spell of the Yukon

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;

   I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy―I fought it;

   I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it―

   Came out with a fortune last fall,― 

Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,

   And somehow the gold isn’t all.

A glacier. Photo by Beth Green

No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)

   It’s the cussedest land that I know,

From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it

   To the deep, deathlike valleys below.

Some say God was tired when He made it;

   Some say it’s a fine land to shun;

Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it

   For no land on earth―and I’m one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason);

   You feel like an exile at first;

You hate it like hell for a season,

   And then you are worse than the worst.

It grips you like some kinds of sinning;

   It twists you from foe to a friend;

It seems it’s been since the beginning;

   It seems it will be to the end.

I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow

   That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim;

I’ve watched the big, husky sun wallow

   In crimson and gold, and grow dim,

Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,

   And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;

And I’ve thought that I surely was dreaming,

   With the peace o’ the world piled on top.

The summer―no sweeter was ever;

   The sunshiny woods all athrill;

The grayling aleap in the river,

   The bighorn asleep on the hill.

The strong life that never knows harness;

   The wilds where the caribou call;

The freshness, the freedom, the farness―

   O God! how I’m stuck on it all.

The winter! the brightness that blinds you,

   The white land locked tight as a drum,

The cold fear that follows and finds you,

   The silence that bludgeons you dumb.

The snows that are older than history,

   The woods where the weird shadows slant;

The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,

   I’ve bade ’em good-by―but I can’t.

Mountains above Juneau, AK.

There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,

   And the rivers all run God knows where;

There are lives that are erring and aimless,

   And deaths that just hang by a hair;

There are hardships that nobody reckons;

   There are valleys unpeopled and still;

There’s a land―oh, it beckons and beckons,

   And I want to go back―and I will.

They’re making my money diminish;

   I’m sick of the taste of champagne.

Thank God! when I’m skinned to a finish

   I’ll pike to the Yukon again.

I’ll fight―and you bet it’s no sham-fight;

   It’s hell!―but I’ve been there before;

And it’s better than this by a damsite―

   So me for the Yukon once more.

There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;

   It’s luring me on as of old;

Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting

   So much as just finding the gold.

It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder,

   It’s the forests where silence has lease;

It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,

   It’s the stillness that fills me with peace. 

Southeast Alaska