On May 27th, 1935, the North Star was approaching Seward with a load of horses and cattle bound for the Matanuska Colony, as well as the last few families from the Michigan and Wisconsin contingent who had been quarantined in Seattle.
SHIP WITH LIVESTOCK IN TONIGHT, Anchorage Times, May 27th 1935
The Larsh family was one of several colonist families delayed by illness in Seattle, who came up on the North Star. Emil Larsh, 24, and Gertrude, 20, already had two children, and Gertrude was seven months pregnant when she became sick with mumps on the train from Michigan. Their daughter Beverly Larsh Hayes, age 4 in 1935, shared the family’s story of the voyage:
“After loading the beautiful, all-wooden steam ship, the men were told to go below deck, while the women and children were put in the state rooms.
After departing, a heck of a storm came up. The water and the sky became one. The ship rose up and thundered down, pitching and rolling. Emil and another fellow, along with part of the kitchen crew did not become sea sick, so they tended to the horses and cattle which were being brought up for the colonists. They had to throw the animals overboard as they died, including some newborn calves.
When the storm quit, they saw whales and dolphins where a Canadian river reached the coast. Their trip through the inside passage took ten days.* When they arrived at Seward at midnight, everyone was relieved, and they went into the town to learn how to walk again.”
Excerpt from “Matanuska Colony – Sixty Years: The Colonists and Their Legacy” (1995) by Brigitte Lively.
Photo of the North Star from the official ARRC photo album, Mary Nan Gamble collection, Alaska State Library.
*Newspaper reports indicate six days, but it probably felt like ten.
One reluctant passenger had done her best to avoid sailing on the North Star altogether. From an AP report appearing in the Milwaukee Journal Thursday, May 23rd, 1935.
“A Couple of Balking Colonists,” Hewitt’s photo from the PMHA Bailey collection. Unknown if this might be Fanny the mare on another sit-down strike, in downtown Palmer sometime later in 1935 or ’36 after construction of the dormitory.
ARRC photos
70 cows and 69 horses from the North Star arrived in Palmer on May 29th.