Nellie Cashman |
| Posted 2009-09-23 by Pat R |
| Arizona State Miner, Wickenburg Saturday, January 24, 1925, p 4 c 2,3 Nellie Cashman, Intrepid Pioneer of Arizona and Alaska, Dies at Victoria In British Columbia Nellie Cashman was a pioneer woman. One who frequented out of the way places, where gold excitement furnished the lure and inspiration of her nature. She was by all odds the most wonderful mining character I ever met. I met her first in Tombstone, in the early days, and it was recounting pioneer Cochise experiences with Judge J. W. Stillwell in his office at Phoenix last week, that I got this frank, open expression from him, for he had known her much better than I. Among the four women pioneers of Alaska, I had met her one fall at Nome, when she came down the Yukon river to catch the boats for the outside. At that time she had about six pounds in gold nuggets and coarse dust that she had cleaned up that season from the Koyukuk placers. The other three women "mushers" and stampeders were Carrie Plow Beaton, Mother Woods and Lena Walton. The latter was a mulatto, and figured in the great lawsuits at Nome over No. 19 Opher Creek, that was claimed by C. D. Lane, a California miner from the Mother Lode regions of Calaveras. I have met them all at various times in my rounds of the Northland as a mining correspondent of the S. F. Mining and Scientific Press for Alaska, and I must say that of all the "stampeders" I ever met, none of them, male or female, ever impressed me so astonishingly as Nellie Cashman, who traveled often thousands of miles over the frozen steppes of Alaska, alone and without a guide save her never failing dog team. Arizonans and mining men all over the west will read with interest the following account of her death in Victoria: Miss Nellie Cashman, who died January 3 in Victoria, Alaska, was one of Arizona's most picturesque pioneers. She came to the state in 1877 from Washington, D.C., where she is said to have been a Yankee spy in the Civil War. She spent three days in Tucson last December renewing acquaintances with pioneers whom she had not seen for 32 years. At that time she was on one of the biggest mining deals of her life and her business took her to New York and other eastern points before she left in November for the North and her home on the Yukon and Tanana rivers near Koyukuk. At the age of 77, Miss Cashman set a record as champion woman musher of the world, when she came to the states last year from Alaska. She mushed her dog team and sled 750 miles in 17 days, breaking her own trail the entire distance from Koyukuk to Seward, Alaska. Miss Cashman grubstaked half a dozen of Arizona's present millionaires in the early '80s in Tombstone, Arizona, furnishing the men with supplies on the gamble that they would find a "strike." Funds secured in this manner later grub-staked her for the long trip to Alaska, where she outfitted and mushed into the interior. One of the first women into Alaska, she acted as nurse at male mining camps, and at the same time prospecting and staking her own claims. She owned and operated 10 mines at the same time she came to Tucson last year. M. J. cunningham of Bisbee is her nephew. "Youth remains where thoughts are young" was one of the expressions of the late pioneer, who was as agile and youthful appearing as a wonam 30 years her junior. "I have broken trail through desert sage brush, and northern snow drifts, have stopped in Yuma when the mosquitos were so thick they seasoned the beans, have nursed 75 men with scurvy and never lost a man, have prospected and mined, but I have never broken trail in an airplane," she said in being interviewed last year. "That will be a new experience." The aunt of M. J. Cunningham, Bisbee, Miss Cashman, reared mining man from boyhood to young manhood. She staked him in his first ventures, according to pioneers, as she did some hundred other men in early days. A member of the igloo number four Pioneer Society of Alaska, that society credits her with being the first woman prospector in that territory. She was associated with other organizations and had a reputation for her patriotism. While in Tucson the pioneer laughingly talked of the work she had planned for the future, declaring that she had not, and never would, reach the "cushioned rocker" age. When pioneers spoke of her return as if it were from the grave, she remarked that she was very much alive, expecting to remain so for years to come, but nevertheless, was looking forward to a reunion over there with her buddies. "And there'll be some stories swapped when we all get together again," she said. All that was mortal of this pioneer woman, whose name figures in the history of gold mining from the Arctic regions to southern Arizona, was laid to rest at Vancouver, B.C., about ten days ago, after a brief illness from pneumonia, contracted on a long trip to the outside from the interior of Alaska. She was the best known and most popular sourdough" (one who has lived in Alaska long enough to see ice come in and go out annually) prospectors of the Far North, where she stampeded into the Klondyke and Cassair districts, besides Fairbanks, Nome, Tanana and Wrangell, Alaska. See Also: Find a Grave |
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