Alaskan History
An Alaskan “Mush” to Presbytery Rev. S. Hall Young The Reverend Samuel Hall Young looms large in the history of the North. “In the summer of 1879 I was stationed at Fort Wrangell in southeastern Alaska, whence I had come the year before, a green young student fresh from college and seminary–very green and very fresh–to do what I could towards establishing the white man’s civilization among the Thlinget Indians. I had very many things to learn and many more to unlearn.” These are the opening words of Reverend Samuel Hall Young’s classic book, Alaska Days with John Muir (Fleming H. Revell Co., New York, 1915). The first missionary in Alaska, Young recounts a six-week voyage through southeastern waters he undertook in a great cedar canoe with the great naturalist John Muir, with a half-dozen Thlinget Indians as scouts and crew. Visiting villages along the route, Young noted: “I took the census of each village, getting the heads of the families to count their relatives with the aid of beans,—the large brown beans representing men, the large white ones, women, and the small Boston beans, children. In this manner the first census of southeastern Alaska was taken.” Sharing many adventures, Reverend Young and John Muir remained lifelong friends. During the ten years he lived and worked in Wrangell with his family, Rev. Young established several southeastern missions and became a man of some standing. In 1897 he was strongly considered for appointment as governor of the territory of Alaska by President McKinley. Instead he traveled over Chilkoot Pass and down the Yukon River at the height of the Klondike gold rush, and established the first Presbyterian church in Dawson City in 1898. Continuing down the Yukon River over the next three years, he organized missions at Eagle, Rampart, Nome, and Teller. In 1901 he was appointed superintendent of all Alaska
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