The Diary of Myrtle Ryan by STEPHANIE CRAGO
This project explores the journal of a young woman who leaves her life in Los Angeles, California, to venture north to Alaska. The journal was created in January of 1900, around five months after the first mining season opened in Nome, Alaska, in August of 1899. Myrtle left her life with her sisters and her job, where she was a forelady, to an unknown territory. Her diary doesn’t disclose the reason for the adventure alone other than some travel companions; I would guess it may have been for love. A large section of the diary was removed per the transcription that may have indicated an affair with a young married gentleman during her travels through Dawson City. She documents the troubles along the trip while traveling via steamer up the western coastline and the dangerous elements once they hit the road to travel to Dawson City and then took boats into Alaska. No special accommodations were made for single women on these trips north; they were expected to pitch their tents and break trail for the horses if necessary. She arrived in Dawson City in March of 1900, where she stayed a few months to work off some trip debts and where she met Mr. Smith would provide her the opportunity to head to Nome.
While in Dawson City, we got a glimpse of a woman’s life in the 19th century; she talks of a theatre that is not nice for respectable “‘wimin’ so we are ‘bared’ out” (Ryan, April 16). When they reference respectable women, it would be anyone who wasn’t working class; the dancehall girls and the prostitutes would be the ones in the theatre. During this time, women were primarily required to tend to their husbands, children, or social duties such as a church, or luncheon. During the Goldrush through the Yukon Territory and Alaska, women were met with hatred and harassment and the stereotypical response that there isn’t an honest job for women in those places. They were all labeled either whores or the “suffrage” type that we now refer to as feminists. The Women’s rights movement started in 1848 for education and occupational rights and later fought for the right to vote. Many were not allowed to sit alone at tea tables. However, we also see why some women may have wanted to head north. There is freedom in fending for yourself; she learned how to shoot a rifle to hunt squirrels.
There is speculation that she fell in love while in Dawson with a married man. There was an entry on May 8th, and then a transcriber mentioned that there were pages torn out, and the second diary starts on July 28. It is assumed she left Dawson on July 22nd via a boat on the Yukon River to the Bering Sea, then traveled onto Nome. She arrived in Nome on July 29th, 1900; by this time, the population had grown from 250 to around 3000 people. Alaska was still under military control and mimicked a true wild west scene from the movies attracting not only those with an adventurous spirit but also the undesirables, which caused extreme tensions and fights that were common everywhere. Unlike the other gold discoveries within Alaska and the Yukon, which was a stroke of luck, Nome was a four-part expedition led by some prospectors out of the Seward Peninsula.
English was prevalent in Alaska upon Ms. Ryan’s arrival, with a mix of dialects from travelers from all over the United States and other countries showing up to mine and create a new life. Her diary was filled with pronunciation spellings, which were spelled as they would have sounded if you spoke the word. These were everyday words like “youst” for “used” or “offel” for “awful”, and even as noted above, “wimin” for “women.” There were also entries she scribed of interactions with others that she was unsure of what they meant due to her lack of understanding of the use by the speaker. Each use of a pronunciation spelling was then enclosed with single quotes, and with the unfamiliar words spoken to her, she would use parentheses around the word she thought it meant with a question mark behind it. At this point in the project, there is only speculation as to why she used single quotes around the words. At this point, we know that not all women were educated to a point where their vocabulary for spelling would have been sufficient to capture all their thoughts properly.
STEPHANIE CRAGO is a senior pursuing a degree in English and received an occupational endorsement certificate in professional writing in 2023. Selected by Jennifer Stone.