AUTHOR’S NOTE: Presidential Executive Order #148, in January 1899, had set aside 320 acres of land near Russian Orthodox Church property in the village of Kenai for the creation of an agricultural experiment station. The superintendent of this new station, H.P. Nielsen, under the supervision of Sitka’s Prof. C.C. Georgeson, continued to expand his farming operation and adjust to village life.

As 1900 became 1901 in the remote village of Kenai, agricultural experiment station superintendent Hans Peter Nielsen—who hailed from rural Kansas—had not been home since accepting his post in the spring of 1899. He clearly missed the environs in which he had grown up and the mostly white, middle-class citizenry of which he had been a part.

In Kenai, as one of very few white residents, he found hims

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