This book - Centro de Estudos Anglicanos

304STUCK, HUDSONHudson Stuck, a priest and missionary to Alaska, was born in Paddington,England, in 1863. After immigrating to the United States in 1885, he worked asa cowboy and as a teacher before studying for the priesthood at the Universityof the South. An Anglo-Catholic, he had a strong sense of the church’s responsibilityto the larger society. The church, he said, “should be the neighbor of allthe world and love that neighbor and help that neighbor.” Ordained in 1892, heserved for two years as the rector of Grace Church in Cuero, Texas, and for 10years as dean of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas. At St. Matthew’s he foundeda grammar school, a home for children, a home for aged women, and a nightschool for millworkers. Unafraid to challenge his richest parishioners, he campaignedagainst child labor, helping to secure passage in 1903 of the first factorylaw in the state of Texas.Eager to satisfy both his wanderlust and his keen desire to perform missionaryservice, Stuck moved to Alaska in 1904, a time when that frontier region was thesite of the last great expansion of the Episcopal Church’s mission work. Basedfirst in Fairbanks and later in Fort Yukon, he became the archdeacon of the Yukon,ably serving under Peter Trimble Rowe, the first missionary bishop of Alaska.Traveling by dogsled and motorboat, Stuck proved himself an industrious andsensitive missionary to both native peoples and miners. Opposed to the completeassimilation of native peoples, he sought the protection and continuation of traditionalways of living and working. He also favored native clothing and architectureover European-style dress and dwellings. Indeed, he was unusual amongwhite missionaries in his toleration, even admiration, of what was best in thenative culture.An enthusiastic, energetic, adventurous man, Stuck was a bachelor whose vocationand avocation united to form one passion. In 1913 he and three companionsmade the first complete ascent of Mount McKinley, the tallest mountain in NorthAmerica. His writings and speeches about that adventure and about other equallybold exploits won him a sizeable audience, and this wide appeal assisted hissuccessful efforts to raise funds for mission work. Among his greatest admirerswere progressives and conservationists such as Theodore Roosevelt. His campaignto shut down a salmon cannery at the mouth of the Yukon River thatthreatened native fishing also helped inspire the later development of evenstronger environmental measures in the 1920s.Stuck died in October 1920 at Fort Yukon after contracting bronchialpneumonia.BibliographyA. Papers at AEC and at the archives of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks; The Ascentof Denali (Mount McKinley) (New York, 1914); Ten Thousand Miles with a DogSled (New York, 1914); Voyages on the Yukon and Its Tributaries (New York,1917); A Winter Circuit of Our Arctic Coast (New York, 1920).B. ANB 21, 83–84; DAB 18, 178–79; EDC, 505; WWWA 1, 1202; Grafton Burke, “Hudson