Soapy Smith's Soap Box: September 2025

September 17, 2025

Soapy Smith's "STAR" notebook, Page #24: 1882 and 1884, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland.

Soapy Smith STAR Notebook
Page 24 - Original copy
1884
Courtesy of Geri Murphy

(Click image to enlarge)

oapy Smith's "STAR" notebook page 24, 1882 and 1884, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland. Steamer Ancon.

This post is on page 24, the last of the "STAR" notebook pages I have been deciphering and publishing for the last two years, since July 24, 2023. The page is two separate notes dated 1882 and 1884. The 1882 portion (Lines 8-20) is a stand-alone note, whereas the 1884 portion (Lines 1-7) is a continuation of page 23.

This is the continuation of deciphering Soapy Smith's "star" notebook from the Geri Murphy collection. A complete introduction to this notebook can be seen on page 1. These notebook pages have never been published before! They continue to be of revealing interest. The picture that these pages draw is of young 22-23 year-old Jefferson pursuing "soap sales" over a very wide spread of territory and in a very tenacious, even driven, way.

The notebook(s) are in Soapy's handwriting, and sometimes pretty hard to decipher. A large part of this series of posts is to transcribe the pages, one-at-a-time, and receive help from readers on identifying words I am having trouble with, as well as correcting any of my deciphered words. My long time friend, and publisher, Art Petersen, has been a great help in deciphering and adding additional information.

I will include the original copy, an enhanced copy, and a negative copy of each page. Also included will be a copy with typed out text, as tools to aid in deciphering the notes.

Soapy Smith STAR Notebook
Page 24 - Enhanced copy
1884
Courtesy of Geri Murphy

(Click image to enlarge)

There are a total of 24 pages. Links to the past 23 pages are added at the bottom of each post for ease of research. When completed there will be a sourced partial record of Soapy's activities and whereabouts for 1882-1884.

Important to note that the pages of the notebook do not appear to be in chronological order, with Soapy making additional notes on a town and topic several pages later.

Although the communication of 22-23-year-old Jefferson Randolph Smith II is with himself, the writing also communicates with us about him 142 years later (and potentially far beyond today).

Soapy Smith STAR Notebook
Page 24 - Negative copy
1884
Courtesy of Geri Murphy

(Click image to enlarge)

Soapy Smith STAR Notebook
Page 24 - Negative copy
1884
Courtesy of Geri Murphy

(Click image to enlarge)

FEBRUARY 25, 1884

Line 1: "Left San Francisco" [see pages 22-23], after two or three arrests for operating his prize package soap racket.
Line 2: "Feb. 25th 1884." Soapy is mentioned in a San Francisco newspaper on January 11, 1884. He left on February 25, 1884, leaving 45 days largely unaccounted for. Soapy is listed in the hotel register at the Brooklyn Hotel on February 14, 1884. On February 21st., he is arrested for a stud poker swindle. He saved the newspaper clipping. He registers at the Brooklyn Hotel on February 23, 1884 (Daily Alta California), and two days later he leaves San Francisco. Why was he there for so long? Did he spend more time in jail?
Line 3: "Per steamer Ancon:"

The Ancon
Line 4: "for Los Angeles" [newspaper: Los Angeles Daily Herald]
Line 5: "Weather calm and"
Line 6: "not sick but better"
Line 7: "JRS" [Jefferson Randolph Smith]

The Ancon was an ocean-going wooden sidewheel steamship built in San Francisco in 1867. She carried both passengers and freight. In her early career she was a ferry in Panama and then sailed between Panama and San Francisco. Later she began coastal runs between San Diego and San Francisco. Her last route was Port Townsend, Washington to Alaska. Today she is more notable for her disasters than her routine voyages.
From mid-1875 to 1887 the Ancon sailed between San Francisco and San Diego, with several stops in between. She made three round trips per month. A one-way fare from San Pedro to San Francisco with a cabin was $15, and $10 for steerage. In late 1878 she was also periodically assigned to the San Francisco–Portland line with a single stop at Astoria. Starting in 1885, the Ancon was periodically assigned to shuttle between San Francisco and Eureka.

Alaska service (1884–1889)

Cruising to Alaska became popular in the 1880s, so the Pacific Coast Steamship Company began to use the ship for "excursion" cruises in the summer. The Ancon made three round trips to Alaska in 1884 under the command of Captain James Carroll.
In addition to her legal freight, the Ancon was thought by some to be engaged in smuggling. Under the laws of the District of Alaska, it was illegal to import alcohol. Nonetheless, according to one newspaper, after the ship arrived in Alaska, "for twenty-fours hours there was simply the deuce to pay with drunken fishermen and crazed people of both sexes." In 1887 U.S. Customs authorities confiscated $2,000 worth of gin, labeled as mineral water, from the Ancon. The ship and her captain were also accused of smuggling opium from suppliers in Victoria, British Columbia to Alaska, where it was transferred to whaling ships that brought it back to West Coast ports in the United States.

(Click image to enlarge)

The Pacific Coast Steamship Company, for which the Ancon sailed in 1884 with Soapy as a passenger heading to Los Angeles, California, as reported in the Los Angeles Herald. The image above shows the ports of call, which includes Santa Barbara and San Luis O'Bispo, two locations mentioned on page 21 of the Star notebook. San Luis is inland about 10 miles, but a port at Shell Beach has a direct route from there to San Luis. If Soapy travelled from the South to San Francisco, he could go from San Luis by rail or by ship.

Jeff Smith, passenger
Los Angeles Herald
February 26, 1884

(Click image to enlarge)

OCTOBER 15, 1882

Line 8: "Left Portland Oct 15th" [Oregon]
Line 9: "1882"

Soapy left Portland, Oregon for San Francisco, California on the Queen (see Star notebook page 13). Soapy would sail onboard the Queen several times in his lifetime, the last being in Alaska in 1897-98.

The Queen

The trip to San Francisco was not a pleasant one by any means.

The route out of Portland, Oregon
Courtesy of Google

Line 10: "Quite a rough"
Line 11: "voyage while crossing"
Line 12: "the bar at the mouth"
Line 13: "of the Columbia [river in Oregon][add map of Colombian River pathway]
Line 14: "The waves came up"
Line 15: "so high that they"
Line 16: "struc [struck] the upper"
Line 17: "deck. I got as"
Line 18: "sick as a mortal"
Line 19: "well could be"
Line 20: "without dying"

Soapy arrives in San Francisco on October 18, 1882. On October 29-30 he registers at the Brooklyn Hotel (see blog post Feb 23, 2021) listing his residence as New York, probably to hide the fact that he had been to San Francisco in the past, and arrested there.

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