Thornton, Florence Tobin.

Florence Tobin Thornton (1897-1989), the daughter of Swedish immigrants August L. and Emma Tobin, was born and raised in South Boston, Massachusetts. When she was less than a year old, her father set out to join the gold rush to Alaska, and she did not see him again until he came home for a visit in 1915. Though her father returned to Alaska alone, he soon gave up mining and settled in Ketchikan, where Florence and her mother joined him in 1921. That same year, Florence began her 30-year career as a Ketchikan-based civilian employee of the U.S. Lighthouse Service, later absorbed by the U.S. Coast Guard. When in her 40s, she married Laurance C. Thornton, a former gold miner. She was widowed in 1952 and, following a brief stint with the Office of Price Stabilization in Fairbanks, Alaska, she retired from federal service in 1953. After retirement, Florence had more time to devote to her interests in travel, writing, and family history, and published a number of articles. In 1964 she moved to Woodburn, Oregon, where she died in 1989.

August L. Tobin (1865-1938) was born and raised in Sweden. In 1887 he emigrated to the United States and found work as a painter around Boston, Massachusetts. Early in 1898 he joined the gold rush to Alaska, leaving behind a wife and two young children (son Emery and daughter Florence). From Seattle he sailed as mate aboard the schooner Ellavina Johnson as far as Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, then made his way inland to the upper reaches of the Koyukuk River, where he spent the next 20 years as a prospector. His stay in the north was broken only by a brief visit to Boston in 1915. In 1919 he retired to Ketchikan, Alaska, where his family joined him in 1921. In Ketchikan, he worked as assistant engineer in the compressor room of the New England Fish Company from 1921 until his death in 1938.

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