Soapy performed the prize package soap racket in Hope, Alaska 1896

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In May 1896 Soapy was traveling in Alaska seeking a new empire to conquer. On June 9, 2010 I posted a letter Soapy wrote to his wife while in Cooks Inlett at Resurrection Creek where the gold camps of Hope and Sunrise stood. I knew Soapy had visited there but have never heard of any accounts from others there, until now.

Below is a very nice article published in Alaska by Clark Fair that reveals a brand new (to me) clue about Soapy's early days in Alaska including a diary account from a gentleman who witness the last known and recorded performance of Soapy operating the prize package soap racket. Here is the article in its entirety.

The Redoubt Reporter
Dec 8, 2010

Almanac: ‘Soapy’ squeaks through Hope
By Clark Fair

It was a tantalizing prospect. Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith, the infamous 19th-century scourge of Denver and Skagway, may have visited the streets of tiny Hope, and even attempted his famous soap scam there.

Hope and Sunrise Historical Society members had one solid piece of evidence to support the idea, an 1896 diary entry from a young gold-seeker who professed a firsthand sighting of the famous con artist in action in Hope. They lacked only an equally solid second piece of evidence to support and lend credence to the first.

This fall, they got their wish.

In August, Dr. Jane Haigh, assistant history professor at Kenai Peninsula College and author of “King Con: The Story of Soapy Smith,” came to speak about Smith at a historical society meeting in the Hope Social Hall. Haigh knew before she arrived that the historical society members believed Smith had come to Hope, but she was skeptical of the claim because she hadn’t yet seen the group’s documentation.

A few months earlier, Haigh had met with a few of the historical society members, heard their claim about Smith’s visit to Hope, and agreed to bring her information to them and combine it with their own. After Haigh spoke in general about Smith at the August meeting, those in attendance got down to the real business at hand.

Diane Olthuis, historical society president, produced a copy of the diary entry.

The diary had been written by Joel A. Harrington, who had been born in Montana in 1873 and had, in 1896, traveled onboard the Marion to Hope when the gold rush there was just getting under way. The diary that Harrington kept might never have come to the attention of the Hope and Sunrise Historical Society if it hadn’t come first to the attention of the Anchorage Daily News in the summer of 1953.

Serialized by the newspaper under the title “Saga of Cook Inlet Gold,” excerpts of the diary ran over the course of several weeks. Sometime later, a newspaper friend of historical society member Billy Miller borrowed the paper’s copies of the diary and mimeographed them for Miller.

Miller and his wife, Ann, read over the diary entries and homed in on the mention of Soapy Smith in their town. Ever since, said Ann Miller, “I’ve always been trying to convince everybody of that.”

On May 19, 1896, while in Hope, Harrington wrote, “Later we took a stroll through the town, saw the stump where ‘Soapy Smith’ had his stand, wrapping $5.00 and $10.00 bills in the soap wrapper and selling them, but no one got a bill, except his ‘cappers’ who were working with him. His pickings were poor here, ‘tis said.”

A “capper” is a “shill,” a person who poses as a customer in order to decoy “marks” — victims, in other words — into participating.

These accomplices were helping Smith run the very con that had earned him his famous nickname. It was a scam that Smith, arguably the most renowned confidence man of the Old West, had already run repeatedly and successfully in Texas and in Denver and Creede, Colo., and would continue to run again when he moved his operations to Skagway the following year.

The “prize soap racket,” as it was dubbed by newspapers of the time, involved Smith offering a special monetary enticement as he sold soap on a street corner. As a crowd gathered, he would extract from his wallet several bills, often ranging from a dollar to $100, and wrap them around some of the bars of soap. Then he would wrap plain paper over the bills and appear to mix all the bars together, and then sell the soap for one dollar per bar.

At some point, one of his shills would buy a bar, tear off the wrapping and proclaim loudly that he had won some money — and the rush would be on. Soon, Smith would announce that no one had yet won the bar wrapped in the $100 bill and would auction off the remaining soap. Of course, he had palmed the big-money bar, and his shills got most of the rest.

If selling soap had been Smith’s only claim to infamy, he might have gone down in history as a very minor villain. But Smith was more than that. He bought the influence of politicians, officers of the law and even judges. He organized crime rings, controlled businesses through strong-arm tactics, ran large gambling operations and robbed unsuspecting miners of their hard-earned gold.

At the August historical society meeting, the appearance of the very specific diary excerpt excited Dr. Haigh, who then produced two corroborating pieces of evidence for the Hope faithful.

First came a very short report from a Juneau newspaper: A gambler named John Rudolph (a Smith pseudonym) had been arrested in the spring of 1896 for “flimflaming the guys” with a scheme involving the sale of cakes of soap supposedly wrapped in $10 and $20 bills.

“No one else in the West is known to have practiced this particular con game,” said Haigh.

This information placed Smith in Alaska a year earlier than had been previously reported, but the next piece of evidence, especially in combination with the newspaper story and diary entry, seemed to solidify the Smith-in-Hope claim.

Soapy Smith’s great-grandson, Jeff Smith, the author of a recent history of his famous ancestor, “Alias Soapy Smith,” also runs an extensive website of information, photographs and artifacts related to his namesake. Among the numerous personal letters in the online collection is one (scanned in its original form and also displayed in a typed transcription) from May 10, 1896 — only nine days before Harrington wrote his diary entry in Hope.

The brief letter to Smith’s wife back in St. Louis, according to Jeff Smith, was written aboard the steamer General Canby near Coal Bay, on the northern shore of Kachemak Bay, inside the Homer Spit. It reads (with errors intact): “Dear Mollie. Am well, will be to my destination tomorrow if nothing goes wrong. Have had a hell of a trip. You can write to Resurection Creek, Cooks Inlett, Alaska. Have no time to write now as we hail a steamer bound for San Francisco to mail this. Have heard no word from you since I left Denver. Yours Jeff — Love to all.”

“These three items together,” said Haigh, “add up to the conclusion that Smith was indeed in Hope in the spring of 1896, a period that had been a gap in my own timeline of his travels.”

Hope and Sunrise Historical Society members share Haigh’s satisfaction — and a certain level of vindication — at the findings.

“We were thrilled to find out we were correct,” said Olthuis.

Soapy Smith sojourned in Hope only a few days before realizing that the level of action there didn’t meet his expectations, and so he moved on. By 1897, he began establishing another criminal empire in Skagway, one of the entry points for the crush of gold-seekers funneling into the backcountry to join the Klondike Gold Rush.

In Skagway his criminal exploits caught up with him, and by the summer of 1898 he was dead. After three members of his gang bilked a miner out of his sack of gold during a game of three-card monte, the miner sought help, and in stepped a vigilante group called the “Committee of 101.”

On July 8, during what was later called “The Shootout on Juneau Wharf,” Smith began an argument with armed and angry city engineer Frank Reid; gunfire ensued and both men were mortally wounded.

As with many of the famous and infamous alike, however, Soapy Smith continues to make news long after his passing. As Smith once profited from the denizens of Skagway, they arrange tours around Smith lore and continue to profit from his presence there so long ago.

Clark Fair's article is excellent. However, the part in which Jane Haigh takes credit for my research upsets me. She couldn't exactly take credit for the letter in my personal collection but she did take credit for the Juneau arrest of Soapy under the name of "John Rudolph" which was first exposed in my book. Below is my thank you response to Clark for his fine article.

Hello, Clark, Hope, and Sunrise.

I am the author of Alias Soapy Smith: The Life and Death of a Scoundrel that is mentioned in your article. I have known for years that Soapy had been in Hope and Sunrise, and contacted the Historical Society there with my information, including the letter he wrote to his wife in 1896. It was in my book that Jane Haigh learned of the Juneau arrest as I own the original article in which Soapy (my great-grandfather) wrote a note to his wife about losing his money and signed the clipping. I hate to sound like a party-pooper but it bothers me when Jane Haigh takes credit for my research that I spent 25-years of my life on. One only need read her book to see how little she knew of Soapy before publication of my book in 2009. Now, suddenly, she's the expert.

I admit never having heard about the diary in your article which is very exciting news. My book clearly shows evidence that Soapy was indeed in Hope and/or Sunrise, but the diary shows that he performed the "prize package soap racket" while there and that makes it even more exciting as this is recorded evidence of the last known time Soapy performed the swindle, whereas previously the last record was in Juneau when he was arrested under the name of "John Rudolph".

Thank you very much for including my name and my book. All those interested in learning more about Soapy Smith are encouraged to visit my website and blog devoted to his exciting adventures.

Clark was quick and kind enough to send me the nice response below.

Dear Jeff

I'd heard that you kept your eyes and ears open to any news or articles relating to your great-grandfather, and that you were known to respond to almost everything you discovered. Still, I was surprised to hear from you so quickly.

Thank you for the comments on my article. It's nice to know that I got the facts straight and that I was able to help bring to your attention another piece of information. I try to be very careful in attributing my information to the proper sources, which is why I was careful to state that the letter Soapy wrote on board the General Canby came from your website (which is astonishingly thorough, I must say).

Based on your comments about Jane Haigh, however, I am concerned that you and she may have had some sort of disagreement in the past, and that my story may have exacerbated that disagreement. If that is the case, I apologize. She is, after all, the one who directed me to your website in the first place.

Good luck with your continuing research. I understand that copies of Joel A. Harrington's diaries can be found on Anchorage Daily News microfilm in Anchorage, probably in the city library. But I noticed also, online, that there are copies of the diaries--and maybe even the originals--in Idaho, where Harrington eventually settled. I think that Idaho State University may have what you need. I'm suggesting these possibilities because I know (from examining your website) that you like to show ORIGINAL copies of artifacts whenever possible. On the other hand, perhaps that one excerpt is all you require.

Anyway, thanks again.
Clark Fair

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