Hudson Stuck

Hudson Stuck (November 4, 1863 – October 10, 1920) was a British native who became an Episcopal priest, social reformer and mountain climber in the United States. With Harry P. Karstens, he co-led the first expedition to successfully climb Denali in June 1913, via the South Summit. He published five books about his years in Alaska. Two memoirs were issued in new editions in 1988, including his account of the ascent of Denali.

Stuck was born in London and graduated from King's College London. He immigrated to the United States in 1885 and lived there for the rest of his life. After working as a cowboy and teacher for several years in Texas, he went to the University of the South to study theology. After graduation, he was ordained as an Episcopal priest. Moving to Alaska in 1904, he served as Archdeacon of the Yukon, acting as a missionary for the church and a proponent of "muscular Christianity". He died of pneumonia in Fort Yukon, Alaska.

Stuck was born in Paddington, London, England to James and Jane (Hudson) Stuck. He attended Westbourne Park Public School and King's College London. Yearning for a bigger life, he immigrated to Texas in 1885, where he worked as a cowboy near Junction City. He also taught in one-room schools at Copperas Creek, San Angelo, and San Marcos.

In 1889 he enrolled to study theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. After completing his studies, Stuck became an Episcopal priest in 1892. He first served a congregation in Cuero, Texas for two years.

He was called to St. Matthew's Cathedral in Dallas in 1894. Two years later, he became dean. He stressed progressive goals in his sermons and regularly published articles related to his causes. There he founded a night school for millworkers, a home for indigent women, and St. Matthew's Children's Home. In 1903 he gained passage in Texas of the first state law against child labor. He regularly preached and wrote against lynching. It was at an all-time high in the South around the turn of the century, which was also the period when state legislatures were passing legislation and constitutions that disfranchised blacks and many poor whites.

In 1904 Stuck moved to Alaska to serve with Missionary Bishop Peter Trimble Rowe. Under the title Archdeacon of the Yukon and the Arctic, with a territory of 250,000 square miles, Stuck traveled between the scattered parishes and missions by dogsled and boat as well as foot and snowshoe. In his first year, Stuck established a church, mission and hospital at Fairbanks, the new boomtown filling up with miners and associated hangers on. Some staff came from Klondike, where the gold rush had ended. The small hospital treated epidemics of meningitis and typhoid fever, as well as pneumonia common in the North.

In 1905, Rev. Charles E. Betticher, Jr joined Stuck in Alaska as a missionary. They founded numerous missions in the Tanana Valley over the next decade: at Nenana (St. Mark's Mission and Tortella School at Nenana, the school in 1907), St. Barnabas at Chena Native Village, St. Luke's at Salcha, and St. Timothy's at Tanacross (near Tok, formerly known as the Tanana Crossing). All served the Alaska Natives of the region. Tortella School was the only boarding school to serve native children in the Interior of Alaska, and was supported by scholarships and offerings raised by the Episcopal Church. Missionary Anne Cragg Farthing ran the school and was the primary teacher. Her brother was bishop of Toronto, Ontario.

Five hundred miles up the Koyukuk River from its confluence with the Yukon, at its junction with its tributary the Alatna River, in 1907 Stuck founded a mission he called Allakaket (Koyukon for "at the mouth of the Alatna") but others called St. John's in the Woods for the several hundred Indians here. For years Episcopal woman missionaries ran the remote station just above the Arctic Circle, including Deaconess Clara M. Carter and Clara Heintz. The mission served both Koyukon and Iñupiat, who were settled on opposite sides of the river. The latter had come up the Kobuk River from lower areas. Thus the missioners had two Native languages to learn.