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sea otter, 5.1,MX); 2,(XX) mink. S2,-000; 180 white fox. $600; 50 cross fox. $200; 7 silver fox. S550; I black fox. $100; 10 lynx, $50. The presence of lynx, black bear and fox pells in the mix indicates that not all of the furs had been taken on Baranof Island, but at that lime one of the Sitka merchants had branches at Yakutat and Hoonah and a couple of others made trading voyages with small sailing vessels.The fur end of the business gradually died out among Sitka merchants, probably because it was often unprofitable. The world mar kct was volatile, at best, and determining the quality of raw furs being purchased required a good deal of skill. The last of the Sitka merchant-fur buyers appears to have been the Sitka Ba/aar, whose founder. Mane Rigling Peterson, was one of the town’s shrewdest and most successful business women.Marie Rigling was bom in Alsace-Lorraine just a year after France ceded that area to Germany. She came to the United States with a number of members of her family and arrived in Sitka in 1903 to become nursemaid for Waldo Mills, who had been bom with club feet and had undergone numerous surgical operations. Two years later at Juneau Miss Rigling married George H. Peterson, who had previously lived in Sitka but was then a millwright at the Eagle River mine north of Juneau.In 1908 George Peterson joined the U.S. Forest Service and was stationed at Petersburg. In 1911 he was placed in charge of the Sitka district and the family, which by then included Martha. Cecelia and Charles, moved here. They lived for a time in a house George owned on Etolin Street, then moved to the upstairs of what was still known as the Custom House although there was no longer a Customs officer stationed here. Peterson became the custodian of the building which in addition to a Forest Service office had the Post Office and the office and court room of the U.S. Commissioner on its lower floor.Just cast of the Custom House,by treaty, but commencing in 1921 Native residents of the U.S. and Canada were permitted to resume pelagic sealing, using canoes or rowboats and. the law said, hand thrown harpoons.In 1921 the Sitka catch was small, fewer than 200 skins, and it is not known whether Mrs. Peterson bought any of them, but in 1922 she was bidding against Charles Goldstein of Juneau and Henry Moses of Spokane and she bought the entire local catch, 550 pelts at $16 apiece. During the next 15 years or so that scaling continued here, Mrs. Peterson was the premier buyer of the pelts.In 1927 additional government agencies required space in the Custom House and the Peterson family, including a fourth child, Florence, moved to the Tilson Building. now occupied by the Log Cabin Cache. Mrs. Peterson set up her shop in the end of the building un-»il recently occupied by Stereo North, with an expanded line of merchandise. She also, at that time, became the Sitka agent for the American Railway Express Company, handling parcels and selling money orders.In June 1928 Mrs. Peterson purchased the Cohen property at Lincoln and American Streets. Buildings on the property included the Baranoff Hotel, then vacant, and the Cohen Building. The buildings were razed and Mrs. Peterson’s brother-in-law, Benjamin Schramm, came up from Bellingham and put up a two-story worn! frame business building for her.The Sitka Bazaar opened in the new building in 1929. Curios were still a large part of the inventory, but there was also a line of groceries and of clothing, the Railway Express office and the fur business.In addition to buying furs in town, Mrs. Peterson’s son Charles made fur-buying trips to outlying villages. That branch of the business continued for nearly 20 years. In addition to her business enterprises. which included property ownership and management, Mrs. Peterson served as a member of the Sitka School Board and for many years she was city treasurer and tax rnltartnr In ihp «hi* mnvpH
Newspaper Details
Daily Sitka Sentinel
Sitka, Alaska, US
Mon, Feb 22, 1993
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
Chuck T.
AK, USA 02 Jan 2018
Other Publications Near Sitka, Alaska
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