Teacher returns After Fifty Years

Teacher returns After Fifty Years
By Edgar Blatchford
The Seward Phoenix Log
Juy 3, 1985

Over half a century ago, a 19 year old Seattle school teacher stepped off the steamer eager to begin her duties at the Territory of Alaska school which served the children of the Jesse Lee Home. The home used to stand on the outskirts of Seward.

“I can’t believe all the changes,” Edith Neese Belcher said as she describer her first visit to Seward in 50 years. On September 20, 1930 she stepped off the steamer “Aleutian” to begin a five year position at the Methodist Mission Orphanage.

She remembers buying milk from Leirer’s Dairy for 25 cents a quart which was ten cents higher than Lower 48 prices. Still, downtown Seward hasn’t changed that much with Urbachs, Brown & Hawkins and Seward Trading Co. remaining family owned and operated businesses. It’s the area north of the lagoon that has changed. New homes, businesses and the small boat harbor and fish processing plant are all new.

Belcher said there used to be some beautiful gardens in the Jesse Lee Home area where they grew spinach, lettuce and other vegetables. The home also supplemented its pantry with wild game and fish which they caught in the streams.

Belcher also remembered the legend of the famous artist, naturalist and author Rockwell Kent who lived out on the of the islands in Resurrection Bay.

Of the over 100 kids of Aleut, Eskimo and Indian heritage, many of them had Scandinavian blood. When diseases and epidemics decimated native populations the Swedes and Norwegians from the Aleutians and Western Alaska brought their motherless children to the home.

She enjoyed her five years here and visited with Martha Peterson, one of her students.

Martha later married one of Edith’s other students, the late Andy Petersen who was an “excellent person, always dependable and trustworthy.” Martha has lived almost her entire life here after her arrival from Northwest Alaska in her early childhood years.

There was no road across the lagoon. Instead, to get out of town, you had to go along Dairy Hill. The road went as far north as Primrose, Mile 18.

Edith’s years in Seward ended when she married a Washington school teacher named Merlin. After living one year in Kodiak they moved to Washington state where she taught school and farmed for 22 years.

Vacationing in Alaska, they plan to drive to Homer where many Jesse Lee boys homesteaded after completing their schooling. They were “good kids” as she reminisced about her wonderful days in Seward 50 years ago.