Frank Clancy: "Skaguay a terror for horses."

"SKAGUAY A TERROR FOR HORSES"
Seattle Daily News
Aug 22, 1897

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KAGUAY A TERROR FOR HORSES

      It was Frank W. Clancy's first trip to Skagway [spelled Skaguay], Alaska, and now he was back in his home town of Seattle, Washington, where he reports on the conditions there. What he leaves out of his report is information meant only for the ears of his brothers. The Clancy's are well-known and politically powerful saloon and gambling proprietors in Seattle, and they plan to open a saloon in Skaguay and the neighboring camp of Dyea.

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SKAGUAY A TERROR FOR HORSES

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Frank Clancy Comes Home and Tells About Alaska.

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      Frank Clancy, the well-known Seattle sporting man, who has been in Skaguay for several weeks returned this morning on the steamer Rosalie. As soon as it was noised about that he had returned he was the most sought–after man in town. A large crowd captured him on the corner of first Avenue and Cherry Street, and to them he detailed some of his experiences and told of the sites he had witnessed.

      “You can have some idea of things at Skaguay,” he said, “when you think of the fact that the miners are paying from 35 to 50 cents a pound for packing over the Summit. Good packers are getting $8 a day. That is what John G. Scurry is paying his men today. The trail is simply awful. Very few of the thousands at Skaguay will get over this winter. George Rice of this city started out with a pack train the day before I left Skaguay, and had not returned when I left. Think of that, will you? The country is a holy terror on horses. Scores of them have been killed and lots of them ruined. One of Harry Struve’s horses stepped in a crack in the rocks and literally twisted his leg off. Skaguay is a lively town, and people in business there will make a good thing this winter. A good many of the boys up there will come home after they see how impossible it is for them to cross the Summit this winter.”[1]

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      On August 10, 1897, before leaving Skagway, Frank he purchased lot 1 on block 6, on Runnals and Shoup Streets, the future southwest corner of what would become Seventh and State Avenues.[2] It is here that Frank and John E. Clancy would open Clancy and Company Music Hall and Club Rooms [gambling] in January 1898.

Clancy and Company
Music Hall and Club Rooms

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      Frank and John Clancy align with "Soapy" Smith, and in the spring of 1898 they go in 1/2 ownership of Jeff Smith's Parlor (Soapy's saloon), where John Clancy works as a bartender.

      With the aid of Soapy, who has a detailed background in manipulating elections, Frank Clancy wins a seat on the Skaguay City Council.[3]

      In the last hours of Soapy's empire, as well as his life, John Clancy appears to double-cross Soapy as he is the only gang member completely exonerated from punishment by the vigilante's although the Clancy's were definite crime partners. Stranger still is that John is made executor of Soapy's estate.

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TRIVIA: In 1902 outlaw Harry Tracy talked about robbing the Clancy saloon in Seattle. Tracy said that he was going to hold up a policeman for his gun, and then go down to Seattle by Pike Street to hold up Clancy’s Saloon, because “I hear they have got some dough down there.”

FOOTNOTES:
[1]. Seattle Daily News, August 22, 1897.
[2]. Skagway Historical Records, lot locations, Vol 19.
[3]. Skaguay News, June 17, 1898.









Frank Clancy: April 16, 2011, December 27, 2010, June 24, 2010, April 14, 2010, August 20, 2009, July 4, 2009, June 7, 2009, October 5, 2008.

Clancy and Company: pages 481, 523, 595.
Frank Clancy: pages 455, 461, 471, 516, 521, 552-53.
John Clancy: pages 455, 461, 471, 481-82, 543-46, 552-55, 558, 585, 595.

"The first night they slept near the lake and remained in hiding all the next day. Saturday night, almost famished with hunger, they hit the trail again and came down to the slaughterhouse with the hope of escaping by boat or of getting back to friendly cabins. It seemed too risky to attempt to pass the lines of armed patrolmen, however, and shortly after 2 o’clock they started back up the trail. Tripp, who is an old man, was tired out and refused to go back. His companions expostulated with him for an hour, but he stuck to his declaration that he “would rather be hung on a full stomach than die of starvation in the ____ ____ mountains.” So he was at length permitted to return."

— Daily Alaskan
Alias Soapy Smith, p. 564.

JANUARY 3

1777: George Washington defeats British forces led by Cornwallis at The Battle of Princeton during the American Revolutionary War.

1791: The first known law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty in U.S. history is Albany County Constable Darius Quimby. A posse in Stephentown, New York attempt to arrest Whiting Sweeting on a warrant for theft. Sweeting resists, and stabs Quimby who later dies of his wounds. Sweeting is convicted for the murder in July of 1791 and is executed the following month.

1823: Stephen F. Austin receives a grant from the Mexican government and begins colonization of the region of the Brazos River in Texas.

1844: The side-wheel steamship Shepherdess sinks fast in the Mississippi River 3-miles outside of St. Louis. Forty passengers perish.

1847: The town of Yerba Buena is renamed San Francisco.

1868: The Colorado Central and the Pacific Railroad hosts a groundbreaking ceremony at Golden City, Colorado Territory. 1871: Henry W. Bradley patents oleomargarine (margarine).

1879: The War Department orders Captain Wessells to return Dull Knife and his Cheyenne Indians to Fort Reno in Indian Territory. Dull Knife and his men refuse to leave and are kept in the barracks at Fort Robinson, Nebraska with no food or wood.

1884: Soapy Smith is arrested for the second time while in San Francisco for operating the prize package soap racket. The first arrest was on January 1.

1888: The drinking straw is patented by Marvin C. Stone.

1894: The outlaw Doolin Gang members, Charlie Pierce and Red Buck Waightman hold up the community store and post office in Clarkson, Oklahoma taking supplies, tobacco, cash, and registered mail.

1959: Alaska, “the last frontier” becomes the 49th state.