A front-page headline in the Cordova Daily Times of Feb. 25, 1915, called newly engaged Nellie Crabb and Keith McCullagh a “popular young couple” and related how McCullagh had carefully choreographed his marriage proposal as part of a special dinner hosted by Judge Adoniram Judson “A.J.” Adams and his wife, Eleanor.
Ceremoniously, Eleanor Adams had handed McCullagh a “beautiful red rose in the heart of which was hidden the (engagement) ring,” the paper said. He had then popped the question, gained Crabb’s consent, and placed the ring upon her finger. Dinner guests enthusiastically toasted the excited couple, who announced that their nuptials would take place in June.
It was an auspicious start, full of good cheer and optimism. The wedding, held in Anchorage, was reported in the Cordova newspaper. Afterwards, both Nellie and Keith continued professional careers. A few years later, they produced a healthy child. They even initiated a successful family business.
In fact, their lives together — in Cordova, Anchorage, Homer, Seldovia and then Washington state — moved on a positive trajectory for many years before their relationship soured.
It ended in a Washington divorce court in 1927.
But this failed marriage defined neither of them. Both Keith and Nellie had identities beyond their united lives, and both became widely known in territorial Alaska. Keith was a respected forest ranger on the Kenai Peninsula and, for a while, gained an international reputation as a fox farmer. Nellie spent decades as an educator, including stints as Homer’s very first public school teacher and as principal of the school in Seldovia.
In many ways, it was their lives apart that mattered most.
Origins
Somewhere along the line, Keith McCullagh and Nellie Crabb each gained a nickname. In the second half of Keith’s life, it was not uncommon for him to be referred to as “Cliff,” and by the time she was 30, Nellie was usually called “Jean.”
While the sources of these nicknames are presently unknown, many of the other aspects of their lives are clear.
The ninth of 10 children, Louis Keith McCullagh was born April 12, 1882, in rural Lapeer, Michigan, to immigrant parents. His father, Thomas McCullagh, had come from Enniskillen in Ireland, his mother, Althea (nee Carroll), from Ontario, Canada.
Three of the 10 McCullagh children died by the time they were 2 years old. Of the remainder, Keith had three older brothers and three older sisters — all born in Michigan.
By 1892, when Keith was 10, the McCullagh family was living in Mason County, Washington. By 1900, the family had moved again. The U.S. Census listed Keith as an 18-year-old real estate clerk in Oakland, California, living with his mother and two of his sisters. His father had died five years earlier.
Keith’s next stop, in 1903, was Nome, Alaska, probably to take part in the gold rush. In 1911 he moved to Ship Creek, where the tent city of Anchorage was about to take shape. When the U.S. Forest Service listed its Alaska employees in its annual report to the Department of the Interior that year, Keith McCullagh was named as an assistant forest ranger under head ranger John M. “Jack” Brown.
By 1914, when a survey team arrived at Ship Creek to begin plotting an Anchorage townsite and railroad headquarters, both McCullagh and Brown had constructed cabins of their own — among the first permanent structures built in the area.
A year later — about two months before his marriage to Nellie — Keith McCullagh performed the first Ship Creek census to determine the number of people who had built permanent homes. He found that, although most Ship Creek residents still lived in tents, more than 60 log homes had been completed or were nearing completion.
Back in 1911, McCullagh and Brown had been directed to survey the forested lands of the Kenai Peninsula. They acquired a dog team in Seward and began their survey 20 miles north of town. Covering significant ground along the eastern shore of Cook Inlet and then south to Tustumena Lake, they traveled with their dogs or by raft. Often, they subsisted on what their dogs ate most — fish.
In 1912, forest ranger Thomas M. Hunt dispatched McCullagh to the mouth of the Russian River with signs reading “Ancient Ruins” to post at what some in the general public believed was the site of old Russian mining activity. Hunt’s directive, however, correctly referred to the location as an “old (Native) village site.”
In 1913, McCullagh continued to survey the Kenai, moving inland to evaluate the woodlands of the immense Chugach National Forest. Then in late 1914, McCullagh landed in the Forest Service office in Cordova, where the local newspaper in February touted his ability to build most of his own furniture as an advantage over other eligible young men in the area.
Perhaps that edge made the difference, for it was also in Cordova that he became acquainted with Nellie Crabb, a young (and equally eligible) school teacher.
Nellie Dee Crabb was born July 31, 1889, in Crab Town, Jackson County, Iowa. Settled by members of the Crabb family in the mid-1800s, Crab Town has been considered a ghost town since about 1900. The Crabb family moved later to nearby Maquoketa, which Nellie referred to thereafter as her hometown.
Her parents were Joseph Washington and Hutokah Marian (nee Hill) Crabb, who would live their entire lives in Iowa. Nellie was one of a dozen children they produced.
In about 1907, Nellie attended Iowa Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa) in Cedar Rapids. In the fall of 1908, she began teaching school in Monmouth Township, Jackson County, Iowa. In 1911, she was hired to teach intermediate grades in Waverly, over in Bremer County.
Then in 1913, as Keith McCullagh had done a decade earlier, Nellie Crabb came north. She began her Alaska teaching career in Cordova in the fall of that year, earning about $125 per month to work with primary grades. The Daily Alaska Dispatch (Juneau) announced her hire beneath the unflattering headline “Corn Fed Girl.” By the following school year, she was Cordova’s assistant principal.
When she met McCullagh in December 1914, she was 25, and he was 32. The local paper announced their engagement on Feb. 25, and they were married on June 13.
According to the Cordova Daily Times, the wedding, presided over by U.S. Commissioner David Leopold, took place in Keith’s “cozy and comfortable cottage” along Ship Creek, within or near the Anchorage townsite. “The bride,” said the newspaper, “was attired in a becoming gown, of white crepe de chene [sic], and carried a large bouquet of bridal roses.”
Although Keith continued with his extensive travel as a forest ranger, he and Nellie became Anchorage residents. She began teaching in the Anchorage schools that fall, but she resigned at the end of the 1915-16 school year so she could travel to Iowa in September and spend several months visiting her parents.
According to the Anchorage Daily Times, she ended her “extended and delightful visit with her home folks” and returned to Alaska in late January 1917. To collect his bride when her ship came in, Keith traveled to Seward by dog team and then “convoyed” her home in the same manner.
It is unclear whether Nellie ever taught in Anchorage again. What is clear, however, is that change was on the near horizon for the McCullaghs. Keith was preparing to leave the U.S. Forest Service, and in 1918, Keith and Nellie would produce their only child: June Maxine McCullagh was born Dec. 2, 1918, in Anchorage.
By 1920, they were living on the Kenai Peninsula.
Photo courtesy of the Peggy Arness Collection Keith McCullagh aboard a ship in 1915.
