What did it take to be among Alaska’s first pioneers? Who were the colonists rushing north in 1867 after the United States purchased Russia’s interest in Alaska?
The first white settler girl born inside the muddy wooden fortress of American Sitka was named Josephine Rudolph — Josie, as she is remembered by her descendants today. Her parents were not the “hardy Nordic pioneers” praised by politicians of that era. They were immigrants to the New World, German Jews who had come to the outermost frontier to find economic opportunity and escape the oppressive antisemitism of Bavaria.
Josie Rudolph’s remarkable life story, set in an era of worldwide migration, colonial ambition and the taking of the coastal forests from the Tlingit kwáans, is a new and different take on the familiar tale of modern Alaska’s birth.
Today’s sensibilities may judge harshly the collision of cultures in 19th-century Sitka. The consequences of that time echo down to our own. But Josie Rudolph’s story is a reminder, as well, that history’s many twists and turns are not all deplorable.
Because 69 years later, when Alaska’s first pioneer daughter was an elderly Jewish widow trapped in Nazi Germany, her one hope for escape turned out to be the circumstances of her birth in the coastal rainforest of the Sheet’ká Kwáan.
— Tom Kizzia
Part 1: Birthplace
A few years ago, while visiting my old hometown in New Jersey, I had dinner with some high school classmates. Danny’s wife was excited to hear that I live in Alaska.
“My great-grandmother was born in Alaska,” Amy Weiss said.
I smiled and wondered how far back in Alaska’s history a great-grandmother would take you.
“She was the first white American girl born in Sitka after Russia sold Alaska,” Amy said.
My eyes grew wide. I tried to mask my skepticism. Family stories handed down through generations sometimes get exaggerated. But Amy wasn’t done.
“Because she was born on U.S. soil, she was able to get an American passport many years later and escape the Holocaust.”