obert Courtnay, who was born in Oregon in 1877, went to the Klondike in 1898 with a load of hogs. When the barge carrying the hogs sunk on Lake LeBarge, Robert survived, but the hogs drowned. In 1900, he returned to Seattle where he married Martha Glascock, who had been born in Susanville, California in 1880. The following year, the couple moved to Fairbanks. Their son, Ralph W. Courtnay, was born there in 1908.

Shortly thereafter, the family moved to Anchorage, where Robert was employed as an accountant. In 1920, Martha moved back to Seattle with the children, Ralph and Lois. Ralph returned to Anchorage four years later, and was employed alternately by the J. B. Gottstein Company, the Lucky Shot Mine, and the Alaska Road Commission.

In 1934, Ralph met and married Vanny Jones, a fifth-grade schoolteacher and a daughter of Evan and Bronwen Jones, another Anchorage pioneer couple. For a time, Ralph and Vanny ran the Northern Commercial Company stores in Takotna and Bethel, but eventually they came back to Anchorage where Ralph was employed as an agent for Star Airways and later Pacific Northern Airlines.

Ralph and Vanny Jones Courtnay had two children, Ralph W., Jr., born in 1939 and Bronwen, born in 1944. Ralph, Sr. suffered from Addison’s disease for many years, and the family moved many times in search of a climate more suitable for him. He died in 1948. There is more information about his widow, Vanny, in the section about the Evan Jones family. Ralph W., Jr., had two children, Craig Thomas and Julie Anne. Bronwen also had two children, Megan Alyce and Christopher Evan.

Robert M. Courtnay died in 1938, and Martha Glascock Courtnay passed away in 1943. Ralph W. Courtnay, Sr., died in 1948 and his wife, Vanny, who later remarried, spent the rest of her life in Alaska. She died in 1996 after living for ten years in the Anchorage Pioneer Home. Ralph and Vanny are both buried at the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery.