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Page 8, Daily Sitka Sentinel, Sitka, Alaska, Tuesday, October 17, 2017 By ROBERT N. DEARMOND (From the late historian’s “‘Sitka’s Past” series, published in the Sept. 26, 2003, issue of the Daily Sitka Sen tinel.) I have gained the impression from Chief Manager Maksutov’s actions and from subsequent events that the Rus sian American Company was perhaps ahead of its time in its treatment of its retired employees. After Governor Seymour of British Columbia visited Sitka in June 1867, he stated: “Many of the residents are widows and orphans of men who had died in the service of the company, and they receive a pension. There are ex cellent schools for the orphans, divided into upper and lower grades.’ After 1885, when Sitka got a news paper, the paper sometimes noted that the quarterly payment had been re ceived from Russia and would be dis tributed from the U.S. Customs office. This may have been a government rath er than a company payment as it ended in 1917 with the Russian revolution. Sitka was a company town, with its one store, a soup kitchen for the em ployees and most of the housing owned by the company. The people who did own their houses were without any document showing such ownership. Maksutov solved this by issuing cer tificates of ownership which could be recorded in the system set up by the Army. From the number of such cer tificates that were recorded, it appears that Maksutov made outright gifts of company houses to the people who oc cupied them and who were remaining in Sitka. A select few of these recorded cer tificates are noted herewith, when available, additional information. October 26, 1867: “Certificate that Illarion Archmandritoff was authorized to build a house on the right shore of the mouth of Koloshinskaia or Indian River and the house is his private prop erty.” A long way from the center of town and no further mention of the house has been found. It could have been swept away by one of the freshets for which the river is noted. Illarion was born on St. George Is land in 1820 of a Russian father and Aleut mother. He served for many years as a shipmaster for the Russian Ameri can Company. After the sale of Alaska he moved to San Francisco for a time, then entered the employ of Hutchinson, Kohl Company which later became the Alaska Commercial Company, and skippered one or more vessels for them. He died about 1872. October 25, 1867: “Elizabeth Boll man, widow, is the owner of Building VII, behind the Russian American Co. counting house, and claims the vacant lot running to Russian Street.” Russian Street is now Maksoutoff Street. The counting house (business office) stood on the site now occupied by the Frank lin Building. October 26, 1867: “Certificate that Building 45 is the private prop erty of widow Natalia Kashevaroff.” This building today would be on Bar racks Street, which did not then exist. The Kashevaroffs were numerous in Russian America as well as after the American flag was raised. Natalia Kon drakova, daughter of a company book keeper, married Gavrilo Filippovich Kashevaroff, a bookkeeper, on July 20, 1830. They lived at Kodiak, Atka and Sitka and had eleven children. He died on July 8, 1866, and the widow was awarded 100 paper rubles a month until the children were grown. October 26, 1867: “Maksutov certi fies that Building No. 69 is the private property of John Peterson, a Russian subject and resident of New Archan gel.” Nothing has been learned of Pe terson. He is not listed in the census of Sitka taken by the Army on October 24, 1870. October 25, 1867: “Maksutov cer tifies that with my permission Anton Bardt has erected two houses on a va cant lot on the north shore of Japonski Island and these houses are his private property.” October 25, 1867: “Maksutov certi fies that Buildings II and III were erect ed with my permission on a vacant lot, both fronting on the street and close to the sawmill, and the buildings are his private property.” Nothing has been discovered about Pavloff, but Building II was a dwelling which adjoined No. Ill, a long, narrow building extending toward salt water and housing a bowl ing alley. This was close to the site of the bowling alley later operated by Robert Witz and then by Hans Ander sen. Others certified by Maksutov in Oc tober and November, 1867, as owners of private property include Sidor Si deroff, John and Catherine Wilkofsky, Mathew Ivanoff, Gabral Lyloff, Na deshda Timofejeff, Kusena Twentieff, John Kaisky, Andrew Liazeff, Joseph Lugibil, and Wilhelm Wikstrum. The single-family dwellings dis posed of, Maksutov still had two tene ments, both filled with people, to deal with. Both were two-story log build ings. The larger one, known as the Double-Decker, was on Lincoln Street in the approximate location of the pres ent Service Transfer Co. building, 321 Lincoln St. When the Army took a cen sus in October 1870 it found more than 100 people living in the building. Maksutov turned to William S. Dodge, who had come to Sitka in Octo ber 1867 as U. S. Customs Agent, had purchased a number of business prop erties and had worked hard to make Sitka a thriving American town. At the end of December, 1868, he was Sitka’s mayor, and this document was recorded on the last day of the year: “In Trust: Russian American Com pany to William S. Dodge, as trustee, for $1. Trustee for Russian subjects and naturalized citizens of the U.S. who were Russian subjects by birth, now residing in or who may hereafter reside in Sitka and who may be destitute of a place in which to live; the trusteeship to terminate and the building to become the property of W. S. Dodge when there shall no longer be any who need such a dwelling.” There is no telling when that might have happened, but Dodge has moved to California before the end of the de cade and the building itself had disap peared by 1880. Base The Dr . Sttka THEN AND NOW - World-famous 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge was contracted by the government to photograph Alaska, and arrived in Sitka in August, 1868. His photographs are juxtaposed with mod ern views of the same sites. Above this Russian American Company barracks building was converted into housing for more than 100 Sitkans when Muy bridge photographed it. Below, the same location today. Coincidentally, the Shee Atika building has a roof similar in shape to the hipped roof seen on the old barracks building. (Muybridge photographs from Univ. of California, Bancroft Library)
Newspaper Details
Daily Sitka Sentinel
Sitka, Alaska, US
Tue, Oct 17, 2017
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
Rene A.
USA 28 Jun 2026
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