After returning from an unsuccessful gold expedition to Baja, California, her widowed sister Fannie died of tuberculosis, leaving Nellie to raise her five children. In 1886, Nellie sold the Russ House and left Tombstone with the children in tow. Traveling to several places in Arizona, including, as Nogales, Jerome, Prescott, Yuma and Harqua Hala, she again set up restaurants and worked part time at prospecting. Later, she wandered other mining camps in Wyoming, Montana, and the New Mexico. Under her care, all five children became successful, productive citizens, despite their constant wandering.

When the Klondike Gold Rush began, Nellie headed to the Yukon in 1898. In Dawson City, she set up yet another restaurant and mercantile, again helping the miners whenever they were in need.  In 1904, she went to Fairbanks where she opened a grocery store. All the while, she was collecting claims in the region which she worked on when she could.

Dawson City, Alaska, 1899, photo by Eric A. Hegg.

This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!

Nellie finally settled down in Victoria, British Columbia in 1923. Two years later, in January, 1925, she died of pneumonia in the very same hospital she had helped to build – St. Josephs.

Because of her giving spirit, when she died she was known throughout the West and her eulogy was published in papers as far away as New York.

The diminutive woman, who often dressed as a man and never married, had made her mark as one of the first women entrepreneurs in the west, as well as a miner, and an "Angel of Mercy.” Throughout the various mining camps, she had variously been called the Frontier Angel, Saint of the Sourdoughs, Miner's Angel, Angel of the Cassair, and The Angel of Tombstone.