Hank Nuwer
When The Right Rev. Peter Trimble Rowe died in British Columbia at age 85 in 1942, his thousands of friends and admirers in Alaska expressed surprise. His adventurous, rugged outdoorsman adventures, while Episcopal bishop in the North for nearly a half century, made him seem indestructible.
Part of his appeal was his skill as a speaker, bringing his tales of derring-do to international congregations as far away as London, England, to raise funds needed for the upkeep of churches and hospitals he established or maintained in Alaska.
In 1895, he felt called to preach in the wilds of Alaska. His first visit he journeyed over the Chilkoot Pass. When a snowslide there killed 78 men, he searched for survivors and helped dig out bodies, according to a reminiscence in the Cordova Times of December 4, 1916.
Before there were churches there were saloons. And saloon keepers such as Tex Rickard of Nome and Cy Marx of Fairbanks showed little hesitation when he volunteered to step on the sawdust floors and preach.
“It is a wonder I am alive today,” he told members of Montana dioceses at a 1924 convention in Anaconda. “In the winter we brave the cold and, in the summer, fast rivers, rapids and streams in our travels from one mission to another.”
Cordova was often a jumping-off point for the clergyman when his ministrations to his Alaska and Canada flocks were annual events. He often traveled on the Yukon by famed motor scows known as the old and new Pelican to visit prospectors and Alaska natives.
While mainly, he traveled with flour, bacon and beans for himself, reserving frozen meat and fish for his dogs, he acknowledged accepting raw dog and whale from native benefactors after his grub winked out. He joked that his digestive organs were made of cast iron.
In 1914, he and his dogs outlasted a three-day storm at about -65 degrees by burrowing closely next to each other under the snow.
In addition to the teachings of Christ, he carried some news clippings with him. For many trappers and prospectors, their only source of election and world news was the good reverend. He also pulled teeth and did his best to serve as amateur doctor when needed. On more than one occasion, he buried trappers and prospectors he found frozen on the trail.
One time he and a pilot became lost in the air. The plane came down low and Rowe signaled that they needed directions. The Alaska native used their arrows to point the men to safety. Much later he learned these were natives educated at one of Rowe’s missions.
His stamina was impressive. He routinely traveled 2,000 miles into the Interior on snowshoes and by dogsled. He grew more ambitious as transportation methods improved in a more modern age. One year, by air, sea, and dogsled, he estimated he traveled 11,000 miles throughout the state. Near Point Barrow on a distant, icy trail, he made the acquaintance of Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson and his party.
One of his hallmarks was the construction, often with his own hands, of hospitals across Alaska. He created St. Matthews Hospital in Fairbanks in 1904, and it served the community for 15 years.
Rowe was born in Meadowvale, Ontario and married fellow Canadian Dora Harriet Carry in 1882. She lived as a helpmate to her husband with his congregations in Sitka, Alaska and Washington State, but rarely ventured out on the trail with him.
Mrs. Rowe suffered ill health toward the end of her life and was attended to by a nurse named Rose Fullerton at the Rowe household in Seattle. Fullerton was a parishioner who sang in the choir at Trinity Parish Church and formerly worked three years at a hospital in Ketchikan. The first Mrs. Rowe died in 1914.
One year after his first wife’s death, the bishop lost his son E. Cyril Rowe, 31, a lifelong invalid, in Washington State. The son died a painful, lingering death from burns on April 12, 1915, after a gasoline tank exploded and lit him afire.
Rowe was away at that time ministering to his Alaska flock on the Yukon, Koyukuk, and Tanana Rivers, with one excursion to Point Barrow via a U.S. Coast Guard cutter. Bishop Rowe also said he endured the sorrow of several nurses in remote areas who lost their minds in the wild. He attributed their decline to loneliness.
When he returned after nine months, he married his late wife’s nurse in a private ceremony in November, 1915, at St. Mark’s Church in Seattle. He was 58 and Rose Fullerton was 36. After a six-week honeymoon, the couple began their rounds visiting his congregation in Cordova.
After 1920, Bishop Rowe’s base was Seattle, but he still made planned visits to his Alaska outposts. He built a lovely home in Sitka.
Bishop Rowe’s final mission tour to the Alaska Territory took place at age 84 in July of 1941. He preached at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Fairbanks, then embarked to see his constituents at missions in Tanana, Eagle, and to Dawson and Whitehorse in Canada.
At the time, his church served 37 missions over an estimated 600,000 square miles in Point Hope, Point Lay, Cape Wainright and Port Barrow.
Second wife Rose Fullerton Rowe died at Vancouver Island on October 14, 1971. She and her husband reared three sons.