Fannie and Jesse Lee Featured

Fannie and Jesse Lee Featured
Seward Phoenix Log
January 21, 1982

Frances Kerns of Seward was featured in and August 22 “Weekender” article in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. The article tells about Kerns and Jesse Lee Home, the orphanage that brought her to Seward.

Kerns, better known as “Fannie” locally, came to Seward in 1926 along with 18 other girls who had previously lived in Unalaska, the first home of Jesse Lee. Fannie had come to Unalaska from Point Hope in 1922 after the death of her mother.
The article tells a lot of the history of Jesse Lee Home, and tells of Fannie’s early days here.

Fannie was born and raised at Point Hope. Her mother was Eskimo, but her father Polynesian-from Tahiti she believes. At any rate, he was kidnapped by sailors on a whaling ship and when they traveled from the South Seas to Alaska to ply the trade of whaling, they brough her father along. He ad only been 12 years old when he was shanghaied.

At Point Hope he was known as Thomas George and Fannies says she cannot pronounce his Polynesian name, no matter how hard she tries.

Her father died in a harpooning accident and was taken 27 miles into open water and buried at sea as he had requested.
Fannie lived with her mother until she was 17 after her three sisters – Elizabeth, Nellie and Betty – all died in flu or diptheria epidemics.

When Fannie’s mother because ill, she wrote to one of her husband’s whaling companions, who saw to it Fannie was sent to school. That is how she came to Jesse Lee – first in Unalaska, then in Seward.

As the News-Miner article relates, all the children at Jesse Lee were taught a trade. Fannie was taught to cook and sew, which is what most girls were taught to do in those days. She is still good at both, although she doesn’t see as well as she did when she was younger, and this slows her down her sewing some.

Fannie has lots of memories of Jesse Lee Home and wishes it could be restored-perhaps by one of the Native Associations since it was primarily native children that lived there.

Fannie remains active in local organizations. She belongs to the American Legion Auxiliary, and Rebekahs and is active in both. Right now she is just completing a vest that will be raffled off by the Rebekah Lodge.

The dark green corduroy vest lined with flowered beige cotton is decorated with a white sailboat on blue waves: all the handiwork of Frances Kerns, reknown for a deft hand with a needle and thread. “It’s the kind of sailboat my father had in Point Hope. We girls helped make the sale. We’d travel as far as Kotzebue and Nome in the summer,” she recalled. Kerns has donated this vcst to the Rebekah’s to be raffled off February 14, with proceeds to the Ambulance Corps. She recently made a similar vest, in blue with a polar bear on the back, for Chugach Natives president Edgar Blatchford. “He said, ‘Fannie, It’s so pretty I don’t want to take it off,” smiled Kerns.

LOG NOTE

Bob Richey Sr won the Alaska Vest that was made by Fannie Kerns and araffled off Feb 14. By the Seward Rebekah Lodge.
Lodge members would like t that Fannie Kerns for donating the vest, AVTEC for tickets as their donation to the Seward Volunteer Ambulance Corps, McMullen’s for displaying the vest and selling tickets, and to all who purchased tickets helping make the project a success.

$241 was netted from the raffle, and the Rebekah’s added $9 to this to donate $250 to the ambulance corps in memory of Rebekah Jean Trotter.