Belinda Mulrooney
Belinda Mulrooney (born May 16, 1872 in Ireland , † September 3, 1967 in Seattle ) was an American entrepreneur. She was the richest woman in the Klondike during the Klondike gold rush .
Life
Belinda Mulrooney was born in Ireland. Her father was John Mulrooney (1851-1929), her mother Mary Conner Mulrooney (1850-1940). When she was 13, she either came to Pennsylvania with her parents , where her father worked in coal mines, or was sent to live with relatives. At first Belinda worked as a nanny. At the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 she opened a small restaurant with her savings and built a house in San Francisco with the profit . As soon as it was completed, it burned down and Belinda took a job as a stewardess for the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, which traveled the west coast of North America and Alaska. She earned something by selling everyday necessities to the passengers.
She then traveled to Juneau , Alaska, where she took over a shop. In 1896, news of gold discoveries in the Klondike River reached Juneau: The Klondike gold rush began and Belinda Mulrooney was among the many lucky seekers. In boats they drove half a mile down the Yukon and on June 15, 1897 they reached the Dawson City camp on the Klondike. Belinda is said to have thrown her last coin in the water and said: "We're starting from scratch".
The start-up capital for her new beginning was silk lingerie, cotton dresses and hot water bottles, which she had bought with her savings in Juneau, transported over the Chilkoot Pass and sold in Dawson for six times the price. She invested the profit in real estate.
First she opened a food stall, then she built the Grand Forks Hotel outside Dawson by the Goldfields in 1897, which she sold for $ 24,000 in 1899. In 1911 it was canceled. In Dawson she had the Fairview Hotel built, which opened on July 27, 1898. It was three stories high, with a mahogany bar, a dance orchestra, and an elegant dining room with crystal chandeliers.
Mulrooney invested in gold mines, owned claims of his own, and hired men to build log cabins that sold well. She sold food and wood from her own sawmill, all on credit, in exchange for shares in the claims. It employed dozens of workers, traded in used boats and rafts, and was the first to invest in a mine train and steam jets to thaw the earth.
She once teamed up with the “King of Klondike”, prospector Alex McDonald, to recover the cargo from a sunken ship. McDonald was there first, clearing away everything valuable and leaving only rubber boots and whiskey for her. The following spring, when McDonald needed boots for his men, Mulrooney made him pay $ 100 for a pair. At the age of 27, Belinda Mulrooney was Dawson's most powerful woman and one of the city's most successful entrepreneurs.
On October 1, 1900, Mulrooney married Charles Eugene Carbonneau, who posed as a French count, was in fact a champagne seller and hairdresser from Quebec. Before that, she traveled to the places of her childhood in Pennsylvania and Ireland, where she was considered to be the embodiment of every emigrant's dream. She bought her parents a new house, paid school fees for the children of her relatives, went on a long tour of Ireland, had her grandparents' house repaired and sent the grandparents on a luxurious trip to Dublin and London.
As long as there was enough money, the couple lived alternately in Dawson and Paris, and Mulrooney invested in her husband's dubious business ideas. The marriage fell into crisis when Carbonneau bought two ocean liners. In 1903 or 1904 the couple separated. The husband is said to have run off to France with her jewelry and furs, and what was left was seized because it was legally the husband's. The divorce took place in December 1906.
Mulrooney never married again, but she started all over again. Together with her younger sister Margret, she founded Dome City Bank in Fairbanks and made another fortune. In 1909 she retired on an apple farm in Yakima near Washington. She bought 22 acres of land on South 48th Avenue in 1909 and built a large stone house, Carbonneau Castle, on it. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places .
Belinda Mulrooney lived there until the mid-1920s and supported her family. She then moved to Seattle, where she occasionally gave interviews about her time at the Klondike. In the economic crisis after the First World War, she had to sell her land and worked as a seamstress. When she was still seventy, she worked in a shipyard. Belinda Mulrooney died in Seattle in 1967 at the age of 95, forgotten by the world.
Movie
Belinda Mulrooney stars in the 2014 American miniseries Klondike . She is portrayed by Abbie Cornish .
literature
- Melanie J. Mayer: Staking Her Claim: The Life of Belinda Mulrooney, Klondike and Alaska Entrepreneur. 1999, ISBN 0-8040-1022-6 . (English)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Belinda A Mulrooney Carbonneau in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved April 11, 2015.
- ↑ The story behind Yakima Carbonnau Castle
- ^ National register of historic places inventory - Nomination form
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mulrooney, Belinda |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Carbonnau-Mulrooney, Belinda |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American businesswoman |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 16, 1872 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ireland |
| DATE OF DEATH | 3rd September 1967 |
| Place of death | Seattle |