T. S. Lippy

T. S. Lippy returning from the Yukon with a packtrain in 1899, carrying about one ton of gold Thomas Sergent Lippy (December 2, 1860 – September 13, 1931 ), know variously as T. S., Thomas or Tom S. Lippy, was an American millionaire and philanthropist who became wealthy as a prospector in the Klondike Gold Rush.

Lippy was the athletic director of or an instructor at the Seattle YMCA, before he and his wife Salome headed north in search of gold in 1896 or 1897 after an injury forced him to leave his YMCA job. Some Scotsmen from Nanaimo had staked claims Fourteen to Seventeen on Eldorado Creek in the Klondike region of Canada. They decided to abandon Sixteen and Seventeen in order to concentrate on some other claims. Lippy had a claim further up the creek, but restaked Sixteen because his wife wanted a cabin, and there was timber there. Clarence and Ethel Berry, who also became rich, were neighbors of the Lippys, living a mile away. He sold his holdings in 1903. That same year he became an investor in The Seattle Automobile Company, the first car dealership in the city.

He and his wife went on a worldwide tour, before building a lavishly decorated 15-room house in Seattle. and the Anti-Saloon League, and donated the land for a five-story addition to Seattle General Hospital. and sent "a library of 1000 volumes" to Skagway, Alaska.

He won the 1907 Pacific Northwest Amateur golf tournament and was the Port Commissioner of the Port of Seattle from 1918 to 1921. However, his widow was provided with $50 a month from a hospital land agreement. Salome Lippy died in 1938.