“Searching for Fannie Quigley” Jane Haigh

I started reading “Fannie Quigley” two years ago when I was in Alaska. I was living in a 14x8 foot building that would eventually be a sauna. I slept on the bench, had an electric heater, and hung my clothes up on the hooks where towels and bathing suits would go in the future. There was an outhouse about 20 feet away, but instead of going out there in the middle of the night, I would usually use my FUD (female urinary director) and pee into a jug that I would empty in the morning. Once, when I was in the outhouse, I saw a moose in the yard. Fortunately my sister had the foresight to put a window in the door of the outhouse, which she said was to be able to look at the scenery while you were having a little quiet time, but I used it for spotting wildlife that might not be too friendly. Moose can be dangerous, and this young male did not look like he wanted to shake hands and be friendly. So, I spent some more quiet time waiting in the outhouse for the moose to ramble away.

I mention this partly in fond remembrance, but to point out that meager living in and around Fairbanks nowadays comes with a lot of convenience. I have roughed it harder than this when I am camping, but most people in the “metropolitan” area of Fairbanks have many modern conveniences. “Searching for Fannie Quigley” is a historical perspective on the life of a woman who came to Alaska when she was young and spends most of her life living in a log cabin “in the shadow of Mount McKinley,” as the cover of the book says. In Fannie’s time, she died in 1944, there was no road to where she lived, and she and her husband Joe lived mostly off of the land. She would put in an order for goods once a year, which is where she would get sugar, coffee, flour and the like, but between trapping for food and raising a healthy-sized garden, she provided for herself without the conveniences we have now. She was known for putting on a big spread for visitors, so she did not live the spare life that Krakauer describes in “Into the Wild.” To feed herself and her husband through the long winter required a sure hand in the kitchen and the garden, knowing what to grow and how to preserve it. Because they were also miners, Fannie had tunnels that were dug for the mine that also served as cold storage in the summer, so she was able to freeze meat and prepared foods all year long. I just can’t imagine what kind of planning and sheer hard work it took to do this, and to do this year after year. From the sound of it, her husband Joe was not around a lot of the time, and they eventually divorced, so Fannie did it all---gathered the wood needed for both heating and cooking, hunted for food and hoping to get a bear, a moose and several caribou each year not to mention small game, trapped for food and furs which enabled her to purchase food she couldn’t raise, and grow vegetables and gather berries. From the sound of it, she worked hard and fast, but no matter how much one loves the lifestyle, this is a full-time job.

Haigh studied family letters and records, newspaper accounts and second-hand stories to build the narrative. Where Fannie lived, worked and died is well known, and the “searching” that Haigh refers to is trying to make sense of the stories and accounts and looking for the real story of Fannie’s life. Haigh believes that some of the stories attributed to Fannie are common stories that may or may not be true about Fannie. There are conflicting accounts of where Joe Quigley was at different points in time, and some stories related by visitors to Fannie never mention Joe, but it is not known whether he wasn’t there or if he just wasn’t mentioned. The common features of these stories make it clear that Fannie was an incredibly hard worker and fed people well, but that she used strong language and was not afraid to let you know when you screwed up. Toward the end of her life, and especially after Joe left her, she drank a lot.

It was the process of constructing history that I liked most about the book, and reading about Fannie’s early life in Nebraska and the Yukon, and how Haigh investigated that part of her life, were interesting. I stopped reading the book two years ago when I began to bog down in the history of mining in the Kantishna area near Mt. McKinley. Also the book belonged to Russ Wood and I needed to leave it with him when I left Alaska. I picked it up to finish on this trip to Alaska, and my Des Moines Airport bookmark was exactly where I left it. If I had just made it through a few more pages of mining history, I would have found the rest of the book more enjoyable.

My sister and I went “Searching for Fannie Quigley” tonight. Haigh said that she was buried in the Birch Hill Cemetery overlooking Fairbanks, and that is only a few miles from the cabin I am staying in this time (which has many more amenities than my 8x14 foot cabin from two years ago). We did an internet search to see if we could locate the grave before we went, but no such luck. I’m particularly bad about finding graves and so B.J. made a plan for a grid search. We spent much more time preparing to look for the grave than it took to find it, and it was the fourth one B.J. looked at. The headstone is pretty nice, and has an Alaska Pioneers emblem. Haigh points out that it is ironic that the grave overlooks a new commercial part of Fairbanks, where one can buy goods at Lowe’s, Wal-Mart, Fred Meyers, Home Depot and Sportsman's Warehouse any day of the year. Reading about Fannie makes me think about how easy living is for us now.