IRISH NELLIE CASHMAN: A FRONTIERADO LOOK

The Frontierado Holiday falls on Friday, August 7th this year. As always, the holiday is about the myth of the Old West, not the grinding reality. For looks at female gunslingers of the West click HERE. For looks at other women and men of the Far North Gold Rushes click HERE.

IRISH NELLIE CASHMAN – Nellie Cashman was born Ellen O’Kissane in 1845. Sometime between 185o and 1852 her family moved to Boston, where the ambitious young woman was later working as a bellhop at Boston hotels. During the U.S. Civil War Nellie did some spying for the Union cause, following which she and her family moved to San Francisco in 1866.

Irish Nellie worked at various legal professions in Virginia City, NV and Pioche, NV before heading North to British Columbia in Canada during the 1870s Gold Rush. Cashman established a boarding house for gold miners at Telegraph Creek. The savvy businesswoman made money from that venture as well as investing in the gold claims of some of her boarders.

Irish Nellie used part of her growing fortune to finance the Sisters of Saint Anne. When snowstorms trapped dozens of gold seekers in the Cassiar Mountains in a series of avalanches, Irish Nellie heard that Canadian authorities were advising against rescue attempts due to how dangerous the Cassiars were.

That kind of talk was the proverbial music to Nellie’s ears, and soon she took charge of a half-dozen men and led them to the rescue of the trapped gold seekers, many of whom were already dead. She brought food and medicine to them. Cashman herself was briefly buried in one of the series of avalanches but managed to dig herself out. The “Angel of the Cassiars” saved the lives of around 75 people.  

In 1876 she returned to America, where she ran businesses in California before moving to Arizona in 1879.

In Tombstone, a loyal customer who praised Nellie’s cooking was one Doc Holliday, whom legend holds even got in a gunfight defending Irish Nellie’s good name. After ventures in Tucson, Cashman and the nieces and nephews she was raising after her sister’s death moved to the Baja, CA gold fields in 1883. She had no luck there and moved back to Tombstone later that same year.

Our lady was in Tombstone for the Bisbee Massacre on December 8th, 1883, committed by the Cochise County Cowboys crime faction. Five members of the Cowboys were legally hanged, while ringleader John Heath was sentenced to life in prison instead. A lynch mob dragged him from his cell and lynched him.

Cashman supposedly converted three of the condemned Cowboys to Catholicism as they awaited execution. Nellie also saved a Tombstone mine superintendent from angry miners in 1884.

The year 1886 saw Irish Nellie leave Tombstone. Over the next decade she started businesses and invested in precious metals claims in New Mexico, Colorado, Montana and Idaho.  

The Carmack gold strike in 1896 started the Klondike Gold Rush once word of it had spread below the border. The years 1897 and 1898 saw thousands heading for the gold fields. Nellie herself got into the act, being one of the pioneers along “the Trail of ’98”. 

By April of 1898 Cashman was in iconic Dawson City. In the years ahead she would open a restaurant called Delmonico’s, purchase more gold claims, open a second restaurant called the Cassiar and open a “respectable” alternative to saloons called the Prospector’s Haven of Retreat. Her nephew Tom soon joined her there to help run her growing business empire.

Irish Nellie also paid to expand the local hospital and once clashed in court with Belinda Mulrooney herself.   

Our heroine’s wanderlust eventually took her to various locations in Alaska, where she settled in Fairbanks in 1904. Cashman ran a grocery and mining supply store while also raising money for charity. In 1905 Irish Nellie moved to Koyukuk, Alaska, where she eventually owned ELEVEN gold mines.

At age 77, this indomitable woman traveled by dogsled team to Anchorage, Alaska. In 1925 Nellie Cashman passed away and her death was marked with headlines from coast to coast.