William Judge

Who was William Judge?

Father William Judge was a Jesuit priest who, during the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush, established St. Mary's Hospital, a facility in Dawson City which provided shelter, food and any available medicine to the many hard-luck gold miners who filled the town and its environs. For his selfless and tireless work, Judge became known as "The Saint of Dawson".

Judge was born into a religious family in Baltimore, Maryland. Becoming a Jesuit priest, in 1890, at the age of forty, he volunteered to go to Alaska. He served for two years at Holy Cross Mission, on the Yukon River, before being assigned to a smaller mission at Nulato, Alaska. There he built a church and taught the native children. He was then reassigned to the small mining town of Forty Mile, Yukon. He established a mission there in 1894. When gold was discovered in the Klondike, practically the entire community relocated there. He followed, arriving in Dawson City in March 1897.

He acquired 3 acres and set about building a hospital, church and residence. The hospital was completed on August 20, 1897. Until the arrival of the Sisters of St. Anne in the summer of the following year, he worked single-handedly, raising funds, supervising the construction and the hospital, and tending to his congregation.