Barbara Hannah (Griffith) Hanulik

Barbara’s paternal grandparents, Willard Griffith and Margaret Roberts, were born near Remsen, New York, outside of Utica about 1870. They lived in a large enclave of Welsh people on farms. After they met and married in the 1890s, they moved to Utica where Willard worked in the postal section of the New York Railroad. Margaret kept house and raised their son, James Dayton Robert, and a daughter, Nina, who was adopted.

Lillian Van Kirk, Barbara’s maternal grandmother, was born in Paterson, New Jersey, to a respected Dutch family of five girls and one son. Lillian married Jake Cox and they had one daughter, Miranda Cox, who became a nurse. The marriage did not last, leaving Lillian to raise Miranda. Lillian became a seamstress and designed mainly ladies’ wear for many well-to-do customers. Lillian eventually married a second time to James Kelly.

James Dayton Griffith Sr., Barbara’s father, was born in Utica, New York, in 1900. He took his medical training at Cornell in a New York City hospital. During his intern years he spent time at Paterson General Hospital in New Jersey where he met his future wife, Miranda Cox. They were married in 1927 and moved to Dolgeville, New York, where Dayton bought a practice from a retiring medical doctor. Dayton and Miranda raised two children, Barbara, born in 1930, and Dayton Jr., born in 1933. In 1942, Dayton Sr. joined the Army Air Force and spent the next four years in the service, including a year in India and Burma, after which he joined the Red Cross Blood Transfusion Organization and they moved to Mobile, Alabama.

Barbara’s mother, Miranda, was born to Lillian and Jake Cox in Paterson, New Jersey. She took her schooling in Paterson and she was helpful to her mother after Jake suddenly left them. Miranda took her nurse’s training at Paterson General Hospital, where she met and married a young doctor, Dayton Griffith. Miranda helped her husband in his practice in Dolgeville and ran his office in a section of their home. She was very active in ladies’ groups and her children’s activities.

Barbara Griffith was born in the family home in Dolgeville, New York. She attended school there and graduated from high school in 1948. She took part in many school activities, notably the school newspaper and the cheerleading group. However, in Grade 7 and 8, during World War 11 when her father joined the Medical Corps, the family followed Dr. Griffith to Tennessee, Texas, and Indiana.

She attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, for two years before entering nurses’ training at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, New York, where she graduated in 1953. She received a Bachelor of Science in Nursing at Columbia University.

Barbara worked in New York Presbyterian Hospital, New Hampshire General Hospital in Portsmouth, and Broward General Hospital in Fort Lauderdale. She lived with her grandmother, Lillian Kelly, in Fort Lauderdale for three years while nursing there.

With a friend, Barbara moved to California to join other Lauderdale friends in Sacramento. She worked for several years at Sutter Memorial Hospital with the exception of a year back in New York studying operating technique. She remembers that while in the operating room at Presbyterian Hospital, Elizabeth Taylor had a caesarian section not far down the hall in another operating room.

After the Anchorage earthquake in 1964, Barbara and a friend took off in a van full of camping equipment for the North (no hotels for them) where they spent the entire summer in Alaska and the Yukon. However, they got sidetracked at Whitehorse where they heard about Dawson City, a City of Gold. They decided to visit Dawson City to pan for gold and they even found a couple of flakes. Dawson City intrigued them and they decided to work hard all winter in Sacramento and return North the following summer.

The next summer, Barbara met Henry Hanulik at a nurse’s party in Dawson City. Henry and his friend took Barbara and her friend for a trip down the Stewart River to Dawson City, camping out all the way.

Barbara and Henry wrote letters during the winter. The third summer Barbara and her friend travelled North again. They arrived in Dawson City and a week later Barbara and Henry were married in St. Mary’s Catholic Church on July 19, 1967, by Father Bobillier.

Her husband, Henry, was born in Podvazie, Slovakia, in 1927. Shortly thereafter his father and two friends left for Canada to make their fortunes.

Henry’s father, Jozef, sent home what money he could to keep his family alive but he was not able to send for them until 1937.

Late in 1937, Henry and his mother, Maria, took a boat to the New World and a train west, then a boat to Skagway, a train to Whitehorse, and the last boat of the season to Dawson City where a friend of Jozef’s met them at the dock and escorted them to their humble home on the banks of the Klondike River.

Henry attended school at St. Mary’s Catholic Church for a few years before he quit in his early teens to join his father woodcutting up the Yukon River.  He worked on various creeks for miners and on several dredges for Yukon Consolidated Gold Corporation (where he was the youngest recorded winch man on Dredge #4). On the Dempster Highway he worked for Socony Mobile on the cat trains. During the winter, Henry went trapping, first with his father, then later with his son, John.

Barbara and Henry lived on the Dempster Highway at 41 Mile Maintenance Camp from 1967 to 1971. Henry worked as an equipment operator on highway maintenance and Barbara was the camp cook. Their son, John, was born in July 1971 so Barbara and John moved to a house they bought in Dawson City. The house flooded in 1979 so they moved to 8thAvenue. Henry continued to work on the Dempster Highway for several more years, coming into Dawson City every second weekend.

After retiring from the Yukon Territorial Government, Henry went mining and prospecting. Barbara and John joined him in his work when possible, spending several summers at Dago Hill and Glacier Creek in the Sixty Mile area.

 Henry died in September 2001 after living a year in the newly built home in Dawson City, which was his pride and joy.

Barbara worked at the Visitor Information Centre in Dawson City for several years.

Barbara was a great volunteer in Dawson City, always supplying baking or volunteering her time for many events and organizations. Some of those organizations were the Dawson City Museum, the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture, and the Nutty Club, which published the Klondike Korner. She was also a member of the Pioneer Women of the Yukon, Dawson City Lodge.

Barbara wrote colourful stories for publication when they lived at 41 Mile Camp. Some of the stories were published in the Alaska Magazine. She wrote poetry, particularly limericks for contests and acted in a number of productions in Dawson City for the Breakup Festival.

She was famous for her homemade pot holders that she gave away; rugs that she made from recycled polyester for family, friends and donations; quilt squares with Dawson City themes that were given to people when they moved away from Dawson City.

She moved into Alexander McDonald Lodge in Dawson City in December 2016, which she refers to as “her palace.”

Barbara states that the poetic expression “rooted like an oak…in this place” speaks to her.

It speaks to me of my place here in this small town of Dawson:

When I arrived it was as a summer tourist—

here for a day or two— gone with the weekend,

on to Mount McKinley, and points North and South.

But there was this little town and its quaintness,

its history, its gold flakes and gold pans,

dirty streets and dusty air,

its leaning buildings with blocks of willows

and weeds between them,

and the laughing people, as they sold you the warm loaf

or sat down at your bar table with a double whiskey

in each hand.

And the big fat husky dogs wandering up and down

the streets chasing ravens,

barking and leaping at the birds sitting on grocery bags

in the back of bedraggled pickup trucks.

Does this small town have an oak tree root for me to cling to?

I returned—again and again—with my tent

and my Coleman stove,

my Nash Rambler, my Ford Fairlane—

couldn’t wait for that O.P. Rum in the Bonanza Bar

or that panning expedition on Eldorado

and the boat trip down the Stewart.

And now it’s been 30 years and what am I doing here?

Yes—love, courtship, marriage, motherhood,

primary school and high school—

working, cooking, sewing, knitting,

greeting tourists, answering questions that I once

asked of others—

widowhood, now alone—

and 30 years gone by like a few flying days.

No more the Cheechako—

Now an old timer—

A pioneer? No, not a pioneer,

They all died years ago—

I used to offer car rides to the elderly ones

I saw on the street, and groceries—

now they offer me rides—

I must be elderly!

older than I figure myself to be—

I just got here not long ago—meant to stay a few days—

gone in a week—on to Alaska.

Written by Barbara Hanulik

Barbara Hanulik passed away on December 6, 2022.