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Victoria’s other Nellie

Entrepreneur Nellie Cashman searched for gold and saved lives during the gold rush

The story of gold-rush entrepreneur Nellie Cashman, who is best known as “the Miners’ Angel,” is full of courage, fortitude, faith and determination.

Cashman loved Victoria and returned here to die. She was buried in 1925 in Ross Bay Cemetery.

Cashman displayed an unquenchable concern for the sick and those in need. Her life declaration was: “We pass this way but once and we must help those who need our assistance.”

She was born in Midleton, Cork, Ireland, in August 1845, when great famine, starvation and despair ravaged Ireland. With her father dead, Cashman, her mother and her sister fled to America as refugees and settled in Boston. Cashman received a good basic education and her penmanship was excellent.

After the American Civil War, the family travelled to San Francisco, and shortly after, Cashman began her career as a cook, hotel-keeper and supply-store owner.

Cashman shocked her family by announcing her intent to travel to Wild West mining towns to set up her businesses, starting in Pioche, Nevada, a rich silver-mining town. Over the next 50 years, she opened similar ventures in all the northwestern states and B.C.

In 1874, aware of the gold rush to the Cassiar Mountains in northwest British Columbia, Cashman headed for Wrangell, Alaska, with about 200 miners. En route, they stopped in Victoria, and Cashman, as a devout Catholic, introduced herself to the Sisters of St. Ann, who were building St. Joseph’s Hospital in Victoria. She became a lifelong supporter and patron of the order.

After supplies were secured for the journey, Cashman and her mining companions sailed for Wrangell and proceeded up the Stikine River to Dease Lake. A rare reference to her activities in the Cassiar district is available in the book A Century of Canadian Pioneer Life by Judge Joseph Clearihue, the first chancellor of the University of Victoria. It is available at the university archives.

“The only white woman in Laketon [Dease Lake] was Nellie Cashman, a … petite Irish blond from Limerick, who hauled her sleigh of grub up the Stikine River in February, to make Dease Lake in 27 days. She built a hotel and ran it for two seasons. Nellie owned claims all up and down the coast, from southern California to Cassiar.”

Cashman had returned to Victoria when an urgent message arrived that miners were trapped near Dease Lake by severe winter snowstorms, and scurvy had broken out. There was no time to waste. Nellie organized a private rescue party, hiring six strong men to bring medicine and supplies to Cassiar.

The rescue attempt took 77 days; Nellie survived the ordeal to be hailed as “the Angel of the Cassiar Mountains.” Later, she passed the hat amongst the miners; a sum of $547 was raised to help the Sisters of St. Ann build their hospital in Victoria. This sum would be equivalent to more than $20,000 in today’s money. Cashman travelled back to the United States, continuing to support St. Joseph’s Hospital whenever possible.

In 1898, she returned to Victoria, en route to the greatest Canadian gold rush, in the Klondike area of the Yukon. More than 50 years old, she climbed the Chilkoot Pass 20 times to bring the ton of supplies each “stampeder” was required to have. She spent seven years in Dawson City, active in mining and as usual was very involved in charitable work and helping the Sisters of St. Ann with donations to St. Mary’s Hospital in Dawson City.

Cashman moved on to Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1905 and later to Nolan’s Creek, beyond the Arctic Circle, where she mined for gold and served her neighbours for the next 20 years. In 1924, she developed respiratory distress and was brought down the Koyukuk River by members of the Episcopalian Church. She asked to be taken to the Sisters of St. Ann in Victoria.

She walked up the steps of the Victoria hospital and was greeted by Sister Mary Mark, then the superior, and by Dr. W.T. Barrett, past-president of the Victoria Medical Society and the surgeon who had performed lifesaving abdominal surgery on Cashman in St. Mary’s Hospital in Dawson City in 1902.

On Jan. 4, 1925, Nellie Cashman died.

The Old Cemeteries Society has established a special Nellie Cashman Fund to raise money for a centennial stone to be placed on her grave in Ross Bay cemetery. Nellie Cashman deserves our recognition.

 

Patrick Perry Lydon is a member of the Old Cemeteries Society. Donna Chaytor is treasurer of the Vancouver Island Placer Miners Association.