Annie Hall Strong

Annie Hall Strong

Alaska State Library Photo Collection, Governor and Mrs. Strong, circa 1913-1918, ASL-Strong-JFA-2, ASL-P01-3123.

Article Written By Ellie Kaplan

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The life of Annie Hall Strong, a white woman who spent decades in Seattle before pursuing wealth in Alaska with her husband, highlights the connection between those two places during the Klondike Gold Rush. The Strongs joined tens of thousands of other gold seekers who stocked up on supplies and traveled to Yukon Territory through Washington, supporting the growth of Seattle as a major city in the Pacific West in the process.¹

Anna Hall was born on September 7, 1870 in Nevada City, California to J.W. and Sarah Hall.² When she was young, her family moved to Seattle, and after she graduated from Seattle High School in 1888, she studied music in Germany and France and worked as a music teacher.³ In 1896, she married John Franklin Alexander Strong, a Canadian printer fourteen years her senior.⁴ The couple was only settled in Seattle a short time before the promise of wealth and adventure called them to Skagway, Alaska, a new town at the base of White Pass Trail that led to the newly-discovered Klondike goldfields.⁵

A few months after Strong arrived in Skagway in late summer of 1897, she wrote an article titled “Advice to Women,” speaking to the ten percent of all stampeders who were women.⁶ Although it was originally published in Skagway News on December 31, 1897, newspapers across the United States picked up the story. Strong advised “delicate women” not to attempt the journey north, writing, “It takes strong, healthy, courageous women to stand the terrible hardships that must necessarily be endured.”⁷ With this advice, Strong entered the national debate that was occurring at the end of the nineteenth century about whether the strength of native-born white American men and women, in both body and character, was on the decline. The influx of immigrants from new places, and the population of recently freed African Americans after the Civil War, incited fears among native-born white Americans that they would soon be outnumbered. Many white Americans believed the physical exertion required of men in undertakings like the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the Klondike Gold Rush would fortify the American spirit; Strong’s article suggested that well-prepared white women had a role to play in this supposed national strengthening as well.⁸

During the first decade of the twentieth century, the Strongs traveled across Alaska as John set up newspapers throughout the territory. In 1913, John Strong was appointed the second territorial governor of Alaska and Annie served as the first lady of the Alaska Territory until 1918, when John’s term ended and the couple moved back to Seattle.⁹ When John died in 1929, Annie made the Frye Hotel in Seattle her home base, while she continued to travel widely and give talks on her travels.¹⁰ At 76 years old, Annie died in Seattle on April 23, 1947.¹¹

Annie Hall Strong’s life showed how Seattle became the gateway city to Alaska during the gold rush. It was in Seattle that those who read and followed her “Advice to Women” article stocked up on tools, food, clothing, and plenty of sugar. Her words added to the promotional material that spurred the growth of Seattle and the Yukon. Provisioning during the gold rush helped transform Seattle into the largest city in the Pacific Northwest, known for its entrepreneurship and marketing prowess; at the same time, it contributed to the continued displacement of Pacific Northwest Native Americans from their homelands.¹²

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Further reading:

-For more information on women in the Klondike Gold Rush see: https://www.nps.gov/klgo/learn/historyculture/women.htm

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¹ - “What was the Klondike Gold Rush?” Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, National Park Service, updated September 27, 2019, accessed September 1, 2020, https://www.nps.gov/klgo/learn/goldrush.htm.

² - “Annie Hall Strong scrapbook, 1934-1953,” University of Washington, ArchiveGrid, accessed September 1, 2020, https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/collection/data/277052371; “Miss Annie H M Hall in the U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925,” Selected Passports, Roll 32, Volume 057: Germany, database on-line, Ancestry.com, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; Stephen Kronberg, “Annie Hall Strong,” Find A Grave, February 7, 2012, accessed September 1, 2020, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/84655792/annie-strong.

³ - “Annie Hall Strong scrapbook, 1934-1953,” ArchiveGrid; “Miss Annie H M Hall in the U.S. Passport Application, 1795-1925,” Ancestry.com; “Annie Strong in the 1900 United States Federal Census,” Seattle Ward 8, King, Washington, pp 21, enumeration district 0113, FHL microfilm 1241745, database on-line, Ancestry.com, United States of America, Bureau of the Census, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

⁴ - “Annie Strong in the 1900 United States Federal Census,” Ancestry.com; “John Strong in the 1871 Census of Canada,” Johnston, Queens, New Brunswick, roll C-10380, p. 29, database on-line, Ancestry.com and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

⁵ - “What was the Klondike Gold Rush?” National Park Service.

⁶ - “Extraordinary Women,” As Precious as Gold exhibition, Smithsonian National Postal Museum, accessed September 1, 2020, https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/as-precious-as-gold-stories-from-the-gold-rush/extraordinary-women; “Annie Hall Strong,” Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, National Park Service, updated July 31, 2020, accessed September 1, 2020, https://www.nps.gov/people/annie-hall-strong.htm.

⁷- “Annie Hall Strong,” National Park Service.

⁸ - For more on this racial debate see: Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, CT: University of Yale Press, 2000); “Good Health to Uplift the Race” in Sabrina Strings, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia (New York: New York University Press, 2019), 169-186; Rickie Solinger, “Reproduction, Birth Control, and Motherhood in the United States,” Oxford Handbook of American Women’s and Gender History, ed. Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor and Lisa G. Materson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 241-64.

⁹ - “Strong, John Franklin Alexander, 1913-1918” in Biographical Directory of American Territorial Governors by Thomas A. McMullin (Westport, CT: Meckler, 1984), 14-15, https://archive.org/details/biographicaldire0000mcmu/page/14/mode/2up.

¹⁰ - “Annie Hall Strong scrapbook, 1934-1953,” ArchiveGrid; Kronberg, “Annie Hall Strong,” Find A Grave; “Annie Strong in the New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957,” 1933, arrival New York, New York, USA, microfilm serial T715, 1897-1957, line 13, pp. 55, database on-line, Ancestry.com, microfilm publication M237, NAI 6256867, Records of the U.S. Customs Service, Record Group 36, National Archives at Washington, D.C.; “Annie Hall Strong in the U.S., Border Crossings from Canada to U.S., 1895-1960,” Manifests of Passengers Arriving at St. Albans, VT, District through Canadian Pacific and Atlantic Ports, 1895-1954, Records of Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004, Record Group Number 85, Series Number M1464, Roll Number 585, database on-line, Ancestry.com, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

¹¹ - Kronberg, “Annie Hall Strong,” Find A Grave; “Annie H Strong in the Washington, Death Index, 1940-2017,” database on-line, Ancestry.com, Washington State Department of Health, Washington State Archives, Olympia, Washington.

¹² - Lisa Mighetto and Marcia Babcock Montgomery, Hard Drive to the Klondike: Promoting Seattle During the Gold Rush, A Historical Resource Study for the Seattle Unit of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park (Seattle, WA: National Park Service, 1998), https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED437334.pdf, p.3. For more on the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, see Joshua L. Reid, The Sea Is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015) and Coll Thrush, Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2007).

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Acknowledgements:

This project was made possible in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation.

This project was conducted in Partnership with the University of California Davis History Department through the Californian Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, CA# P20AC00946