In 1897 Benjamin Robert Leivers, a married father of three, left his home in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire and travelled by the ship Sythe and landed at Boston, Massachusetts, en route to Salt Lake City. The passenger lists state he was travelling with a friend George Carrington (who would later marry Benjamin’s sister) and they were on their way to join their relative, J. Hopkin of Croydon, Morgan County, Utah.
The J. Hopkin in question was Benjamin’s maternal uncle. He had converted to Mormonism and left Eastwood, Nottinghamshire over 30 years earlier to sail to America with thousands of other converts. Once in America he had settled in Utah and became a well off man, owning land and managing coal mines. He also become a polygamist, eventually having five wives. Whatever did his family back in Eastwood think of this? Whatever their misgivings, the family kept in touch and no doubt encouraged by the material success of John Hopkin, Benjamin emigrated in 1897 followed two years later by his parents, two sisters and a brother together with Benjamin’s young son. It seems that Benjamin’s wife did not follow him. She stayed in Nottinghamshire with the two youngest children whilst the eldest boy James Wilfred (known as Bill) accompanied his grandparents on the trip to America. Did Benjamin’s wife originally agree to emigrate and later change her mind? Or were the two already separated? A divorce has not been found and Benjamin’s wife never remarried or it seems had another partner. However Benjamin himself remarried in 1907 to an American lady of Norwegian migrant parents.
On arrival in Utah Benjamin worked in the coal mines. A descendant has a letter which suggests that Benjamin was an inspector in the mines. He had been involved in the greengrocer business of his mother’s relatives. He had possibly worked in the mines too, as many young Nottinghamshire men did.
After a few years in Utah the family headed west to Seattle in Washington. Benjamin and his second wife Maggie sailed up to Alaska and settled in Douglas which was a gold mining area near to the future capital of Juneau. The couple opened a grocery store and ice cream parlour. They also sold tobacco and at Christmas toys and presents and at Easter they would import flowers to sell.
Benjamin and his wife were active in the public and social life of the Douglas and Juneau area. Benjamin was on the local council and when a local woman died leaving five small children motherless, the children’s father requested local families to adopt some of the youngest to give them stability. Benjamin and Maggie adopted little Rosie who was almost blind. They spent time and money taking her to specialists around the country trying to save her sight. Unfortunately it seems Rosie died aged just 14.
The Leivers & Leivers Store was very successful and well known, they made their own candy and prided themselves of the quality of their homemade products.
The majority of their customers would be the thousands of miners who worked at the Treadwell mine, the largest in the region. However, disaster struck in 1917 when the mine caved in. The miners were all recovered, apart from one. It was thought locally that the man in question had used the opportunity to disappear from the area.
The mine eventually closed and hundreds of miners were out of work. Many left the area for jobs elsewhere doing war work. The United States had joined the World War just 16 days before the mine had caved in. Almost overnight the place became a ghost town.
A few months later, in September 1917 Leivers & Leivers were bankrupt. The stock was sold and taken to Juneau and the newspaper reported that Mrs Leivers and her adopted daughter had left Douglas on the boat to Seattle, sad at saying goodbye to their many friends. No mention is made of Benjamin but a few years later he is recorded as running a poultry farm in Washington.
Benjamin died in 1958, his wife having died in 1943.
Benjamin’s two youngest children had stayed in Nottinghamshire with their mother. Ethel Gertrude was a teacher who taught at Kinoulton School for 50 years. Her brother Harold was disabled. Neither had any children. It is not known if they ever visited their father and his new family in America.
Benjamin’s eldest son, James Wilfred, known as Bill, stayed in Alaska. He was a photographer for the Winter & Pond Co., a photography studio in Juneau that specialized in scenes of the Klondike gold rush, the native Tlinglit tribe, glaciers, and the Juneau region. He was also an artist, some of his paintings surviving in the family to this day. Eventually Bill became Clerk for the State Supreme Court In Juneau a highly responsible position.
Bill died in 1975. He and his wife had one daughter who married and had children. However the Leivers name in Washington and Alaska died out with Bill. Bill had left his Nottinghamshire home and his mother, sister and brother and settled with his father and paternal grandparents in first Utah, then Washington then Alaska. How different his life must have been having emigrated. Rather than a probable life down the Nottinghamshire pits, he instead had travelled the Yukon, photographed the wilderness and native Tlingit of Alaska then served in the government. What an amazing adventure.
