Family Legends - "Uncle Jack Meals"

Walter (Grandpa), Charlotte and oldest sons

I had heard the story all my life. Grandpa went to Alaska during the gold rush...



My maternal grandmothers father (my great grandfather) went to Alaska in 1900, at the urging of his uncle (his mother's brother), who had gone in 1898. He came home with, according to family legend, a gold nugget he had made into a ring. He did not become rich, unfortunately for the rest of us. 

 

 

 

Andrew J and Hannah Meals and Children

 

 

 

 

 

 

His uncle though, became the stuff of family legends. 'Uncle Jack Meals' was that legend. He had moved from Missouri to Nebraska, he went to Alaska. He was the quintessential gold rush guy in my mind, and I even had a mental picture of him that included a pick and shovel and all the trimmings. Here was the best part...he stayed in Valdez, Alaska! Alaska...home of Grizzly bears and Caribou and Igloos, home of the tallest mountains in North America, home of Louis L'Amour novels and stories. Alaska loomed large in my mind back then, the romance of the 'last frontier' in the mind of a 'western girl'.

List of gold rushers showing Grandpa Walter Quint

Fast forward to 1997. My Grandmother was a month and a half away from 85 and she too had always wanted to go to Alaska, to see the place her father went. So she did, and she took her 3 daughters and their husbands with her. They stayed in B & B's, they went fishing for salmon and halibut, they saw a lot of country, and they went to Valdez, where they were hoping to find a trace of Uncle Jack. They stayed in a B & B in Valdez that just happened to be run by a lady who was a veritable historian of Valdez. She knew the Meals family...

List of gold rushers showing AJ Meals

Andrew Jackson Meals went to Alaska in February of 1898 with another man from Nebraska, George Cheever Hazelet. Mr Hazelet was a former Superintendent of Schools and was well educated. He kept a journal, painstakingly handwritten at the time. The history lady at the B & B had a copy and let mom and her sisters copy it. There was a home built by A.J. Meals' son Owen that they got to tour, there were streets named 'Meals' and 'Hazelet', they got to meet Marie who was a cousin, just a couple of years younger than grandma! Turned out Uncle Jack and family were kind of famous! The only problem was they were near the end of their trip and would have liked to spend a little more time.

My mom spent a lot of time carefully copying and typing and, eventually we all had a typed copy of what we called Hazelet's Journal. It read like a novel, Hazelet was a good writer and he told the story well. Mom and her sister kind of wanted to go back, and I had wanted to go to Alaska forever it seemed. We had done some more research and found some more family history. Now we wanted to go there and see it, knowing where they were, we wanted to trace their footsteps as it were. When mom started making noises like she wanted to go soon, I shamelessly encouraged her. We decided on the summer of 2018 in the summer of 2017.

A.J. and Hannah Meals

I decided I needed to reread Hazelet's Journal since it had been quite awhile. I had forgotten it ended sadly – the last phrase he wrote was “sign yourself a failure and quit”. I knew though, that he had become successful, and I sort of needed a happier ending. I went on the internet and googled him thinking I might get lucky....and did I ever! The first thing to pop up was a book titled “Hazelet's Journal”, I couldn't believe it and I raced to Amazon to check on this book, I was so excited when I read the synopses...it was the same journal, published by his great grandson John Clark! This journal though had the family pictures and some extra information and included pictures of A.J. Meals that we had never seen. I immediately ordered two, one for me and one for mom. Of course both her sisters had to have one as well, and now we were well and truly 'up for the trip'.

The vast expanses of Denali NP

So we went to Alaska, my Mom, her sister Aunt E, my brother and his wife and myself and my husband. We decided to do the big circle leaving Anchorage...we went to Denali national Park, we went to Fairbanks, we went to Tok. All of this was beautiful, fun and educational, but now we were coming to the goal...

Mom and Aunt E on the Copper River

The road from Tok to Valdez. We didn't have any information that indicated that the Meals and Hazelet party got all the way to Tok, but we knew that they had been quite far north in their search for gold and eventually copper. We knew they got to Mentasta Lake and Mentasta Pass on the early trips. We stopped at every pullout with a sign in it and took lots of pictures. It was an interesting feeling being where they were, standing in some of the same places they stood and comparing our present day views to the pictures in the books. We ate in the community of Copper Center where all of the 'gold-rushers' stopped in to rest and pick up mail etc..

Thompson Pass from the top

We went over Thompson Pass on the roadway that my great grandfather helped to build. (much improved, to our delight!) 

 We stopped at the Gakona Roadhouse Mentioned in the Journal...

 And Gakona still had one of the original buildings.  We knew this was a place they had been!












We got to Valdez, home of AJ Meals...

Description of the climb over the Glacier

Valdez! The first night was a meal on the wharf – wonderful seafood. And we drove around just looking at the town. It's not that big – a little less than 4000 people. Getting a feel for where things were. The next day we did two museums, and there - all over - were Uncle Jack Meals and his son Owen Meals, Owen was an aviation pioneer in Alaska among other things. We were just tickled at how much information we were finding on the family that we didn't have before. Around noon-ish we were eating and it turned out Mom and Aunt E and I were the only ones who wanted to go out to the old townsite (pre-1964 earthquake) and the cemetery.

pre 1964 location

Having watched the videos and the scenes from old Valdez and the aftermath of the 1964 earthquake (still the 3rd biggest in the world), and read stories about the people who were killed in the earthquake the old site was kind of eerie. They moved the homes that could be moved and burned those that were left as a safety hazard. The Meals and Hazelet families donated land for the new townsight of Valdez (where it is now). Going to the museums in the morning and watching the videos of the earthquake and the interviews of survivors made the old site much more meaningful.

We continued on to the cemetery to take pictures of the headstones of the Meals relatives...

Andrew Jackson Meals -  "Uncle Jack"

 Alaska is famous for it's mosquitoes, there is a joke about the state bird being the mosquito. The cemetery was full of them and we were walking up and down the rows looking for Uncle Jack's headstone and swatting bugs, when this nice woman came up to Aunt E and asked her who she was looking for... she might be able to help. When Aunt E told her who we were searching for, she asked if we were related and we said yes, turns out she was a descendant as well and a cousin of ours! She was there visiting her mother's grave as it would have been her mother's birthday and she had passed not long ago.

Our Alaska cousins!

She called her cousin who lived in town and she met us at the coffee shop with an envelope full of pictures of Jack Meals – some of which are in the book 'Hazelets Journal'! We sat and visited until the coffee shop closed, took pictures, traded emails and swore we would stay in touch. It was such a treat to talk to them and it really was like we had known each other forever, they were both so comfortable.

By the time we got back to the hotel my brother and his wife had decided they wanted to go for a helicopter ride over the glacier. Mom and I and Hubby decided not to (I was sure my vertigo and a helicopter would not be a good combo!) but Aunt E thought that sounded cool and she would go along as well. They made reservations and Mom and I agreed to drive them to the airport. The road to the airport wound up toward the Valdez glacier where the helicopter would take them and we decided we had time to drive up it a little ways. We ended up going all the way to the lake at the foot of the glacier and it was kind of amazing how cold the breeze was just blowing over the lake. We were standing at the foot of the mountain looking up, knowing that the glacier covered the top of that huge summit, trying to imagine pulling supplies for a year over the top of that.

Mike at the airport

 We went back to the airport and met the guy who worked there, a pilot, who asked the innocent question “what brings you to Valdez?” and got the Meals connection story! He then told us that Owen Meals was his hero and he used to visit him at his home and feed bluebirds, that Owen was the reason he learned to fly and that his dad and Owen were friends and he told us some stories about them. The helicopter ride was enjoyed by our intrepid 3 but we all agreed that meeting new friends and relatives was the high point of the day! Our new acquaintances had managed to lift Uncle Jack and his son off the pages of newspaper articles and out of the museum displays and make them real people.  What a treat that was!

Valdez Glacier 2018

Grandpa helped build the road from Valdez that eventually connected them to Fairbanks. He then came home and lived his life apparently content in Northeast Missouri. Uncle Jack stayed out there on the frontier and became an important and influential pioneer, helping to settle the Valdez area, and contributing to the development of the transportation systems. His son Owen was one of Alaska's Aviation pioneers, he was a pilot and served as the manager of the Valdez Airport until 1964, started the Valdez Electric Light and Water Company, and he ran his own Ford dealership.

In the picture above is the Glacier trail.  The glacier covered up to the two peaks in the middle and the trail led up and over, amazing when you really think of it!  There were two more days in our trip through Alaska and we had a wonderful time. Our family “legend” had not only turned out to be true, but was a bigger story than we ever guessed. We may have to investigate some other legends now...