| Notes |
- Published in The Province, pg. 57
March 29, 1947
Vancouver, BC
The long-stilled voices of the "Jack of Clubs," the "French," "Lowhee" and other fabled creeks which lured men to the Golden Cariboo almost century ago, spoke faintly again with the recent passing of Mrs. Elizabeth Elliott.
Wife of Dawson H. Elliott, 1242 Melville, she had lived in Vancouver 44 years. But she was a child of the Cariboo and knew its high excitement intimately. Her family name -- Pinkerton -- is a permanent part of B.C's history. A ledge, a tunnel, a creek and a mountain bear that name.
Elizabeth Elliott's father, John Pinkerton was one of that famous overland party which left western points for Cariboo in the spring of 1862. The press sang of gold for every man. Many gave up without trying, traveled south along the North Thompson to Kamloops. John Pinkerton kept going, was one of a tiny band of men who actually saw the diggings on Williams Creek.
And the fever never left him. For more than half a century he followed the golden hope up and down the creeks of the Cariboo country. His brother Matthew, too, began mining in the seventies and only death stopped him in 1897.
John Pinkerton's golden search prospered and he returned to his old Ontario home to marry Margaret Jane Blair. Back to the mines he went almost immediately with his girl bride. She settled in her new home on French Creek and the unusual became the ordinary. The Cariboo "Sentinel" of May 1, 1875 tells how a huge bear visited the Pinkerton's one hot summer day.
Finding it too warm to sleep, John Pinkerton opened the door and went back to bed. While the household slept a bear entered the cabin and pulled the bed-covering from the sleeping couple. Then he retired and called at a cabin a few yards distant, where he hammered at the locked door. The inmate awoke, thinking he was being summoned for the morning shift. Only evidence next morning was a set of huge bear tracks.
Concluded the "Sentinel": Mr. Pinkerton may rejoice at having received no damage from his strange visitor, although we have heard of an English tourist who visited Cariboo a year or two ago and travelled over the mountains in quest of game who declared that 'it would be awfully jolly and glorious to be killed by a bear.'
On September 21 1875, at the home of Mrs. W. Hodgkinson ("Hucky") in Barkerville,
Elizabeth, the Pinkerton's first child, was born. Three more children followed and in 1880 the 21-year-old mother died and was buried in the old Cameron cemetery down the creek from Barkerville.
These pioneer women, martyrs to marriage, were part of a female population mainly composed of dancing girls or saloon keepers. Mallandaine's directory of 1874 reported that four out of nine saloons on Williams Creek went under the names of women.
John Pinkerton decided to send his three motherless children down country to St. Ann's Academy in Victoria, with Mrs. George M. Byrnes overseeing the trip. As the express began the trip the horses ran away. The passengers stayed in a bachelor's cabin overnight and continued on to Yale by ox-team. From Yale they went by boat to New Westminster, transferred to another boat to Victoria.
Sister Mary Theodore, historian of St. Ann's Academy, records the children "were admitted to the academy as boarders, February 1, 1883." They probably left in January 1885.
They stayed with relatives in Ontario, then returned to Barkerville in the spring of 1899. In the fall Elizabeth was married to school teacher Dawson H. Elliott by Rev. Field Yolland, former assistant to Father Clinton, of Vancouver. Mrs. Elliott had two daughters, Mrs. E. W. Basset, of Victoria, and Kathleen at home. D. H. Elliott makes his home at 1242 Melville Street.
Six brothers followed Mrs. Pinkerton to Cariboo. Two worked on the building of the first bridge over the Quesnelle River at Quesnellemouth in 1875. One was killed in a mine tunnel at Whiskey Flat.
Only brother of Mrs. Pinkerton's now living is Henry Blair, sole survivor of the 125 men who signed the application for incorporation of the city of Vancouver in 1886 and who still lives there.
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1875 - 1946 (71 years)
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