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This photo postcard, purported showing William Dempsey (L) and an unnamed partner, was one of two such cards that Dempsey sent from Alaska to his parents in Cleveland in late 1918 and early 1920. (Photo courtesy of the University of Alaska Fairbanks archives)

Life

A Nexus of Lives and Lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 5

Although William Dempsey didn’t know it as he fled for his life, several things were working against him

As a teen-ager convicted of larceny in 1916, William Dempsey was incarcerated at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio. (Image from the National Register of Historical Places)

Life

A Nexus of Lives and Lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 3

The lines of history are most accurately understood in retrospect.

Marie (sometimes called Margaret) Lavor was buried in the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery in 1919 after she was murdered by William Dempsey. (Image provided by findagrave.com website)

Life

A Nexus of Lives and Lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 4

AUTHOR’S NOTE: In the first three parts of this story, William Dempsey, who confessed to killing two Alaskans…

In 1918, a year before he would be gunned down on the streets of Seward, U.S. Deputy Marshal Isaac Evans posed for this photo on his Port of Seward waterfront pass. (Image courtesy of the Resurrection Bay Historical Society)

Life

A nexus of lives and lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 2

Anchorage authorities believed Dempsey was planning to sail from Seward and flee to the States

This artwork, as well as the story that accompanied it in the October 1953 issue of Master Detective magazine, sensationalized and fictionalized an actual murder in Anchorage in 1919. The terrified woman in the image is supposed to represent Marie Lavor.

Life

A nexus of lives and lies: The William Dempsey story — Part 1

William Dempsey and two other men slipped away from the rest of the prison road gang on fog-enshrouded…

Photo 210.029.162, from the Clark Collection, courtesy of Hope and Sunrise Historical and Mining Museum Emma Clark feeds the Clark “pet” moose named Spook in 1981. At the urging of state wildlife officials, Carl Clark had agreed to care for this calf at their home in Hope.

Life

Emma Clark: Becoming a Hope pioneer

For 50 years, Emma and Carl had been central to the story of Hope

Near Dr. Goble’s clinic, Marian and Grace Goble walk down an early version of McCollum Drive in Kenai, circa 1959-60. (Photo courtesy of Ben and Marian Goble)

Life

Kenai’s 1st live-in doctor — Part 2

Dr. Marian Goble’s dream of missionary medical work did not begin with Alaska

Photo courtesy of Ben and Marian Goble Ben, Marian and Grace Goble pose next to Ben’s airplane on the beach near Kenai in 1959.

Life

Kenai’s 1st live-in doctor — Part 1

Dr. Goble served the various medical needs of the central Kenai Peninsula

In his late 50s, Arthur Vernon Watson was photographed after another prison transfer. (Photo courtesy of the National Archives)

Life

Justice wasn’t elementary, Watson, Part 4

A new trial was ordered

This is Arthur Vernon Watson at age 39, when he was transferred from the federal prison in Atlanta to the penitentiary on Alcatraz Island near San Francisco. (Photo courtesy of the National Archives)

Life

Justice wasn’t elementary, Watson, Part 3

Anchorage probation officer Roy V. Norquist was monitoring Arthur’s movements and reported that he was pleased with what…

Arthur Vernon Watson was 23 years old when he was incarcerated in San Quentin state prison in California. (Photo courtesy of the National Archives)

Life

Justice wasn’t elementary, Watson, Part 1

The Frolichs’ establishment, then called the Watson Motel, had been owned by Arthur Vernon Watson and had become…

This Rip Rider photos shows a successful fisherman posing in front of the Russian River Rendezvous in the mid-1950s. (Photo courtesy of the Mona Painter Collection)

Life

The Disappearing Lodge, Part 2

In late May 1959, officials from the Russian River Rendezvous, Alaska Sportsman’s Association, Inc., made a splashy official…

Robert C. Lewis photo courtesy of the Alaska Digital Archives Ready to go fishing, a pair of guests pose in front of the Russian River Rendezvous in the early 1940s.

Life

The Disappearing Lodge, Part 1

By the spring of 1931, a new two-story log building — the lodge’s third iteration — stood on…

Alaska Digital Archives George W. Palmer (left), the namesake for the city in the Matanuska Valley and the creek near Hope, poses here with his family in 1898 in the Knik area. Palmer became a business partner of Bill Dawson in Kenai in the last years of Dawson’s life.

Life

Bill Dawson: The Price of Success, Part 5

Thus ended the sometimes tumultuous Alaska tenure of William N. Dawson.

This is the only known photo of Peter F. (“Frenchy”) Vian and William N. (“Bill”) Dawson together. They were photographed standing on the porch of their Kenai store in about 1911-12. (Photo courtesy of the Kenai Historical Society)

Life

Bill Dawson: The Price of Success, Part 4

One man who never seemed to get on Dawson’s bad side was Peter F. (“Frenchy”) Vian

Sisters Alice M. Brooks and Willietta E. Kuppler (both nee Dolan), seen here (center of photo) in a 1943 Los Angeles newspaper article, taught in Kenai from 1911 to 1914 and came to despise Bill Dawson, whom they referred to as “Old Bible Bill.” (Photo courtesy of Newspapers.com archive)

Life

Bill Dawson: The Price of Success, Part 3

“… If I were to designate the meanest character I ever met, I should name ‘Old Bible Bill,’…

This is how Kenai appeared in about 1919, when Bill Dawson was running a general store in the village. (Photo courtesy of the Kenai Historical Society)

Life

Bill Dawson: The Price of Success, Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Part One introduced William N. “Bill” Dawson as a spinner of yarns who came to the…

William N. (“Bill”) Dawson poses in either Kenai or Kasilof in 1898 with a collection of moose antlers and sheep horns — trophies from kills he had made in the Skilak Lake area. (Photo from J.T. Studley’s 1912 hunting memoir)

Life

Bill Dawson: The Price of Success, Part 1

Toeing the Line

P.F. “Frenchy” Vian poses with a cigar and some reading material, probably circa 1920, in an unspecified location. (Photo courtesy of the Viani Family Collection)

Life

Unraveling the story of Frenchy, Part 6

The many vital chapters in the story of Frenchy fell into place

Eventually, all but one of Frenchy’s siblings would live for a time in the United States. Carlo Viani, pictured here in the early 1900s, also spent some time in Alaska. (Photo courtesy of the Viani Family Collection)

Life

Unraveling the story of Frenchy, Part 5

By many accounts, P.F. “Frenchy” Vian appears to have been at least an adequate game warden for Kenai