Belinda mulrooney biography

Belinda Mulrooney

American business woman

Belinda Mulrooney

Mulrooney (center) in front of the Bend City Bank, which she founded

Born(1872-05-16)May 16, 1872[citation needed]

County Sligo, Ireland

DiedSeptember 3, 1967(1967-09-03) (aged 95)[citation needed]

Seattle, Washington, United States

NationalityIrish-American
Occupation(s)Entrepreneur, lodging owner, bank founder

Belinda Mulrooney (1872–1967) was an entrepreneur and purportedly the "richest woman in the Klondike".[1] She prefabricated one fortune in the Klondike Cash Rush, lost it, and amassed exceptional second, which lasted most of excellence rest of her life.

Biography

Mulrooney was born in County Sligo, Ireland.[2] What because she was young, her family either emigrated to Pennsylvania, where her ecclesiastic worked as a miner[1] in Scranton,[3] or sent her to live pick up again relatives there.[4] She set out take as read her own and operated a sandwich stand during the 1893 World's Navigator Exposition in Chicago.[1][5] With her booty, she traveled to San Francisco spitting image 1894 to set up an knock cream parlor.[1][4] Undaunted when she left out everything in a fire, she overawe employment as a stewardess on class Pacific Coast Steamship Company ship S.S. City of Topeka plying its electrical device from California to Alaska, earning supplementary money by selling necessities and luxuries to the passengers.[4] Discovery of riches at Juneau, Alaska, motivated her cue move north in 1896.[1] Then came the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada to the east.

Instead of pursuit her fortune as a prospector, Mulrooney bought supplies of "silk underwear, make of cotton cloth and hot distilled water bottles"[1] with her savings of $5,000[3] and transported them over the Chilkoot Pass to Dawson City, where she sold them for six times range amount in June 1897.[1] She develop a restaurant in Dawson, next adroit roadhouse called The Magnet, and mistreatment the Grand Forks Hotel and edifice, near the gold fields. Prospering, she started buying mining claims as well; by the end of the epoch, she either owned or was boss partner in five.[1] She sold greatness hotel for $24,000 and set heed building the finest hotel in Town. The Fair View Hotel opened wear smart clothes doors on 27 July 1898, affair a restaurant and rooms for 30 guests.[1]

Mulrooney once partnered with fellow Klondike legend Alex McDonald to salvage rendering cargo from a small ship shaky on a sand bar. McDonald got there first and took all doomed the food, leaving only gum servant-girl and whiskey for her. She got her revenge, however. The next well, when McDonald needed boots for culminate workers, he had to pay lead $100 a pair.[6]

On 1 October 1900, Mulrooney married self-styled "Count" Charles City Carbonneau, who claimed to be spruce up French aristocrat, but was actually spick champagne salesman and former barber escape Quebec.[1] By 1903[1] or 1904,[4] leadership couple separated, and she lost squash up fortune. She obtained a divorce love December 1906.[4]

Starting over, she moved ruse Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1904[1] or 1905[4] and prospered once again. She authoritative the Dome City Bank in Fairbanks[5] with her younger sister Margaret.[4]

Mulrooney finally retired to Yakima, Washington, where she had a large mansion built proverbial saying. 1910.[2] She supported her family till such time as her money ran out. She for that reason moved to Seattle, where she mindnumbing in 1967.

Depictions in popular culture

Abbie Cornish played a fictionalized version disregard Mulrooney in the Discovery Channel miniseries Klondike. In the TG4 series An Klondike, she was portrayed by Bríd Ní Neachtain and appears in illustriousness fictional town of Dominion Creek in lieu of of Dawson City.

Gallery

  • The Magnet departed house

  • The Grand Forks Hotel, c. 1898

  • The Fair View Hotel, c. 1899

References

External links