HENRY FREDERICK KROLL, “Hank” was born on April 9, 1904 in New London, Wisconsin to William and Ida THIMM Kroll. He married Lois Elenor Harris in Seldovia on January 3, 1941.
Lois was born in Lodi New York in 1905. She graduated NYU and received a scholarship to train in pediatrics at Eden Borough Castle, Scotland. After interning in Harlem she worked for Frontier Nursing Service as a Kentucky Mountaineer delivering babies on horseback. One day she saw an ad for a Public Health Nurse that was needed in Seldovia. She wrote back and was accepted. Upon arriving on Alaska Steamship Denali she met the outgoing nurse who willed her the cat and her boyfriend who happened to be Hank. The year was 1936. At the time it was unusual for a woman to travel by herself. She traveled by fishing boat to the towns of Kenai, Homer, Anchor Point, Port Graham and English Bay to administer shots or diphtheria and tetanus. Lois and Hank had two sons, Henry and Herbert (1946-1974). She died in Seattle in 1987.
Lois wrote about her life in her autobiography “Alaska Frontier Nurse” published by her son Henry Kroll in 2014. Hank also wrote a biography of his father “Mad Trapper of Alaska”. Both are available from Guard Dog Books.
Here are a few tidbits from the many articles written about Hank:
Henry Kroll, 64, veteran Alaskan trapper, fisherman and prospector, died September 21, 1968, while prospecting in the Moose Creek area near Ferry on the Alaska Railroad. Kroll, whose exploits on the trapline, bush flying his own aircraft, live-trapping animals and prospecting made him a legend in the thirties when he earned the sobriquet of “The Mad Trapper,” first came to Alaska in 1929 to the Wrangell area. He later moved to Cordova and then to Seldovia and to a homestead on Tuxedni Channel near Chissik Island. He is survived by his widow and two sons, Henry II, Halibut Cove, and Herbert, with his mother at the homestead. Source: Alaska Sportsman, Mar 1969
From his grandson, Henry Kroll III: Among the legends from Alaska’s settling days, few stand out more than those of my Grandfather and namesake, bush pilot, cannery operator, linguist, musician, rifleman, bounty hunter, and pioneer, Henry Kroll, also known as “The Mad Trapper.”
Henry ran away from home at age eight and was raised by the Nez Perce Indians, learning their language and culture. He later became a circus strongman, chopper pilot, commercial fisherman, and deputy US Marshall, among other things…
We didn’t have television, growing up. For entertainment, people would light a fire, drink coffee, play music, laugh, and tell stories. It may seem like there would be a tendency to stretch the truth under these circumstances, but there are no tall tales here. I believe Grandpa achieved the peculiar designation of Mad Trapper by being written up in The Anchorage Times as the first to capture live wolverines, though he may have earned it prior to that. He lived adventure like that every day, once catching a barn owl with his bare hands, and another time killing a bear with an ax. The story of how he brought the wolverines into town to collect the reward is worth reading in itself.
Henry was a constant source of invention and excelled at everything he did. He went out into the bush and built several boats, sawmills, houses, tools, and machines. At left is a picture of a light-weight, folding snow machine that he cobbled together out of spare parts to assist him on his trap line. It was pushed by an air-cooled outboard motor retrofitted with an over-sized propeller.
Below is a picture of his helicopter. I recall home movies of him skillfully maneuvering to knock over a tin can with the chopper’s landing skids. I am pretty sure he could have played golf with it.
Henry Kroll, along with his wife, Lois, a public health nurse, wintered in the small fishing village of Seldovia, Alaska. He was a reputable gold miner, homesteader, and the owner and operator of a large, floating cannery in the vicinity of Snug Harbor. A genius by nature, Henry was a self-taught airplane and helicopter pilot. As a musician, he played every instrument. His singing, as they say, would bring a tear the eye, and he also spoke seven languages fluently. It’s my birthday tomorrow, so it’s fitting that I take some time to remember him.
Mad Trapper of Seldovia By Eileen Mead The Free-Lance Star - August 20, 1988 Reprinted with permission
When I saw the movie “Crocodile Dundee” recently, I was reminded of Henry “Hank” Kroll, the legendary Mad trapper of Seldovia, whom I met the summer after my sophomore year at the University of Alaska.
A college friend, the late Midge English, had invited me to spend the Summer of 1949 with her and her family in Seldovia on Cook Inlet. It was a picturesque fishing village of about 200 people, and at the time, it could only be reached by boat or seaplane.
I had been there about a week when Midge and I joined some of her friends at the movies. Shortly after we were greeted, someone behind me suddenly grabbed two clumps of my long, curly hair and yanked.
“Scooch down in your seat. I hates bushy-haired women,” a man growled into my ear.
I whirled around expecting to see one of Midge’s friends, but found myself looking into the glowering face of a bearded older man, a stranger to me.
I “scooched” down and looked questioningly at Midge, who appeared not to have noticed the encounter. I stayed in my crouched position during the movie, until I forgot and sat up in the midst of an exciting chase scene.
I felt a hand pushing down on the top of my head and heard the man behind me say, “I knew you wouldn’t sit still.” I was afraid to get up and leave, so I sat cowering.
Finally, the movie was over and the lights went on. I told Midge, in a whisper, what had happened. She laughed out loud and said, “Oh, that was only the Mad Trapper.” As we walked outside, the bearded man, Kroll, came forward and introduced himself.
“Sorry, I just loves to scare pretty girls,” he said, laughing. He invited our whole group to his house for some “good music.” Surprisingly, Midge and everyone else started walking toward the house, pulling me along with them. Midge explained that the trapper was harmless, but very unpredictable. He and his wife, Lois, a public health nurse, owned and operated a large floating cannery at Snug Harbor and a goldmine near Mount McKinley, and he often carried around a fruit-jar filled with gold nuggets. They had several “nice, normal” little kids.
She said Kroll was considered to be a true genius. He had taught himself to play every instrument from the violin to the tuba.
Hed also taught himself to fly an airplane, and he built his own airplane from spare parts. after Kroll had been flying it for some time, she said, he flew the airplane to Anchorage and hired an instructor do take him up for a “refresher course.” Once They were airborne, Kroll started asking questions about flying that prompted the instructor to ask him who had taught him to fly. When Kroll said he’d taught himself and had built the airplane, the instructor bailed out. Some time later, Midge said, the engine fell out off the airplane near Valdez and Kroll managed to glide in and land on a glacier.
The trapper earned his title, she said, because he was an excellent trapper. Once a movie company came to town to shoot some scenes and said they needed some live wolverines. Kroll went out into the woods and a short time later came back with one wolverine strapped to his backboard and leading another by a makeshift leash. He had muzzled the animal by strapping a stick between its teeth. Another U. of Alaska alumnus, Dick Inglima, who now lives in Homer, Alaska, recalled the time he flew with Kroll to Anchorage. Midway there, he said, Kroll said he was tired and asked him if he would fly the airplane. Inglima said he didn’t know anything about flying, so Kroll gave him a few instructions and told him to follow the cliffs into Anchorage, and then he fell asleep. As they approached Anchorage, Inglima became nervous and awakened Kroll.
“Kroll thanked me for waking him and told me he was glad I hadn’t tried to land it myself,” Inglima said. Once, Inglima said, Kroll had a dispute with a fishing partner but he told the partner that they would wait until they got back to Seldovia where they could fight it out under the boardwalk, where all disputes are settled in the town.
“His partner was younger and more agile and he won the fight. Kroll got up, brushed himself off and asked his partner if he wanted to fish with him again the next summer,” Inglima said.
The night I went to Kroll’s house with Midge and her friends, he insisted upon making us his “special” drink. He poured Eagle Brand, a sweetened condensed milk, and cherry Kool-Aid into a seltzer bottle and inserted a charge.
A thick, pink substance billowed out of the container into our glasses and, although it was sickeningly sweet, we politely drank it.
When we finished, he laughed and slapped his knee saying, “Isn’t that horrible stuff? I only make it to watch people squirm while they drink it.”
I forgave him for everything after I heard him play the violin and then the piano. Like I was told, the man was a genius.
According to WALTER McINNES:
Henry Kroll, Sr. was known as the Mad Trapper. And he started out in the Cordova area. And he used to have a small plane and he’d fly over the city of Cordova and play a violin. And then he didn’t like one bartender so he went into his bar and shook a wolverine out of a bag loose in the bar. And another time, when the Fourth of July or something, he had a wolverine on a line in front of him, and I think, though I don’t know all the details, but I think he had a chain and rattled it. But any rate, the wolverine respected him and didn’t turn around and attack him. And if you know anything about wolverines, for somebody to get ahold of and master one was really, really significant. He did anything and everything he wanted to and he was capable of doing anything and everything. If he wanted a fish site, he’d go and get a fish site. And if he wanted a boat that would take more punishment and harder than anybody, he built it himself. And he built it stronger. And if he wanted some lumber to build his boat or to build his house on the other side of the Inlet, he’d start up his own sawmill. He did just everything. He went gold mining and built a reputation for himself. That’s why he was the Mad Trapper – because he did mad things.