Felice Pedronini

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Felice Pedronini (aka Felix Pedro)

Felice Pedronini (born April 16, 1858 in Fanano , Duchy of Modena and Reggio ; † July 22, 1910 in Fairbanks , Alaska , USA ), better known to the Americans by his Hispanic name Felix Pedro , was an Italian immigrant whose discovery of gold in of the Interior Alaska region marked the beginning of the 1902 Fairbanks Gold Rush .

Life and origin

Pedro was born on April 16, 1858 into a family of subsistence farmers in the small village of Trignano, a fraction of the municipality of Fanano. This village is located in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines and belongs to the province of Modena . He was the youngest of six brothers. Pedroni fled home in 1881 after the death of his father and emigrated to the USA. When he got to New York City , he quickly took the name Felix Pedro. From New York City he traveled via Ohio to Washington state , then to the Canadian province of British Columbia and from there to the Yukon (territory) . Everywhere he could, he worked so hard until he had earned enough money to travel on. Once in Alaska, Pedro searched for gold in the Fortymile River , the Piledriver Slough River (near present-day Salcha ), and various other waterways, including Lost Creek , where Pedro and his partner Tom Gilmore claimed in 1898 to be a sizable one To have found a lot of gold but had to give it up due to food shortages. Although they marked the spot and searched for it for the next three years, they failed to find it again.

gold

Geological map of the Fairbanks District

On August 26, 1901, the trader and gold prospector Elbridge Truman Barnette (1863-1933) drove with the river steamer Lavelle Young, led by Captain Charles W. Adams, up the 13 km long Chena River , a tributary of the Tanana River , up which it was connected to an arm of the river confused, which should allow them to bypass the non-navigable rapids upstream of Bates Rapids and bring them to their intended destination in Tanacross, Alaska. According to their agreement, Barnette, his wife Isabelle, five hired workers and 130 tons of supplies were unloaded on the riverside. The crew quickly set up two log cabins and a row of tents , and set up the trading post called Chena City . Adams returned downstream and Barnette had his first visitors just hours later. Pedro and Gilmore, who were still looking for their Lost Creek , sat on a nearby mountainside and saw the plumes of smoke from the departing steamship . Both of them went into the camp, bought supplies, and moved north again into the hills there. At the request of James Wickersham the camp in March 1902 by Senator was Charles W. Fairbanks RI from Indianapolis ( Indiana ) in Fairbanks renamed.

Pedro Creek in Tanana, Alaska. After Felix Pedro's gold discovery in 1902, the Alaska gold rush began here.

On or about July 22, 1902, Felix Pedro discovered gold in the Tanana Hills, northeast of Fairbanks, in a small creek unnamed at the time and now known as Pedro Creek , causing him to exclaim, “There is gold in the hills over there “And thus triggered a real gold rush.

Business was booming for Barnette, but he wanted more. He sent letters to Dawson City that arrived in the middle of winter and were published in the Dawson Daily News on January 3, 1903. This triggered an influx of over 1,000 more gold prospectors at temperatures as low as –47 ° C. The population in Fairbanks continued to grow and by 1908 it was Alaska's largest city.

death

Felix Pedro died on July 22, 1910 at the age of 52 in St. Joseph's Hospital in Fairbanks, Alaska, allegedly of a heart attack . However, this has been questioned by his business partner Vincenzo Gambiani, who denied that Pedro had heart problems and instead suspected Pedro's widow, Mary Doran, of foul play . Years later, Gambiani was questioned again about Pedro's death on his own deathbed. Unable to speak, he wrote only two Italian words moglie-veleno (German: Frauengift ).

Pedro's body was embalmed and shipped to San Francisco and buried in nearby Colma , California . On October 12, 1972, Pedro's body was found, exhumed, and transferred by Cortelloni Amato to Italy, where an autopsy was performed and the hair samples reportedly confirmed the conclusion that Pedroni had been murdered. His remains were then reburied in a small cemetery in Fanano.

legacy

In 1947, a Felix Pedro Memorial was erected at mile 16.1 of the Steese Highway near Pedro Creek. The Discovery Claim on Pedro Creek , its original claim location where the marker is located, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places .

Pioneer Park in Fairbanks

Alaskaland Park in downtown Fairbanks opened in 1967 on the 100th anniversary of the Alaska purchase. On July 22, 2002, however, the park was officially renamed Pioneer Park on the alleged 100th anniversary of Pedro's gold discovery (known as Felix Pedro Day in Alaska ) . Pioneer Park's annual Golden Days festival includes a Felix Pedro likeness contest. Also on that day, the city of Fairbanks in Alaska and the Italian community of Fanano became twin cities.

literature

  • Alaska Gold Trails , Volume IV. The life of Felix Pedro and The life of Earl Pilgrim , James A. Madonna, Fairbanks, Alaska: A. P. Pub., 1999 OCLC 42964132

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Tourist gold mines: Fairbanks, Juneau - tales of Alaska, gold and history, M. T. Schwartzman, Travel America, March 2002, (English)
  2. ↑ Francesco Benozzo and Giovanni Monterastelli: Traveling notes about Felice Pedroni . Ed .: Aberystwyth University - Fanano. January 25, 2005 (English, archive.org [accessed July 11, 2020]).
  3. ↑ Fascinating tale: Pedro's story of the strike, and how Klondikers won out , Dawson Daily News, October 16, 1906 (English)
  4. ^ Murray Lundberg: Felix Meets E. T .: The Founding of Fairbanks, Alaska. In: ExploreNorth. 2007, accessed on July 11, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Webb, Melanie: Yukon: The Last Frontier . Ed .: Lerner Publishing Group. 1993, OCLC 940541427 , pp. 201 (English).
  6. ↑ a b Dermot Cole: Exact date of Felix Pedro's gold discovery remains a mystery . Ed .: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. July 22, 2002 (English).
  7. ^ Italians in the Gold Rush and beyond: Felice Pedroni . March 13, 2005 (English, archive.org [accessed July 11, 2020]).
  8. ↑ Pedro genealogist uncovers details of miner's troubled home life, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, August 25, 2002
  9. ↑ Steese Highway, Alaska highways. In: Bell's Travel Guides. Retrieved July 11, 2020 .
  10. ↑ La Storia di Felice Pedroni. In: Regione Emilia-Romagna. January 22, 2009, accessed July 11, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Stampeders' Country: Journeys through Alaska and the Yukon Territory, by Ludwig Witzani, series “Weltreisen” Volume VII, epubli Verlag, Berlin, 2017 in the Google book search
  12. ↑ Giorgio Comaschi Felix Pedro, La straordinaria avventura di Felice Pedroni dalla miseria dell'Appennino all'oro dell'Alaska , (German: The extraordinary adventure of Felice Pedroni from the misery of the Apennines to the gold of Alaska ), In: pendragon.it, ( Italian)
personal data
SURNAME Pedronini, Felice
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pedro, Felix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian USA immigrants and prospectors
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Fanano Duchy of Modena and Reggio
DATE OF DEATH July 22, 1910
Place of death Fairbanks