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Frank H. Richards

FRANK H. RICHARDS was appointed United States Marshal of the Second Judicial Division of Alaska June 4, 1901. and he held the position until the fall of 1904. He was born in McHenry County, Illinois, March 21, 1858. He lived on a farm until he was twenty-four years old. He immigrated to the Puget Sound country in 1883, and was with Eugene Canfield when he made the first survey of the railroad between British Columbia and Seattle. Later he studied law at the Columbia Law School and was admitted to the bar, but never engaged in the practice of the profession. He was appointed Harbor Commissioner of the State of Washington July 1, 1890, and resigned the office in January, 1893. He was elected state senator from Whatcom County, and served in the biennial session of '91 and '93. He was chairman of the Fisheries Committee and the first legislator in the interest of the fish industry in Washington. Legislation which has built up the great fish-canning business on the Sound was introduced by him.

The panic in 1893 swept away his accumulations and a few years later he went to Alaska. After prospecting in Southeastern Alaska he went to the Forty-Mile country in 1899. and arrived in Nome in 1900. October 8, 1903, he married Miss Bessie Wilke, of Chicago. When he was a school boy her father was his teacher.  

Source: Nome and Seward Peninsula by R. S. Harrison. Seattle: The Metropolitan Press, 1905.

 

 



 


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