In the early 1870s, George Tsaroff, a 14-year-old boy from Unalaska, traveled thousands of miles from the Aleutians to the Lower 48 with an explorer. It’s a story that hasn’t really been told until now.
Peter Martin, an assistant professor in cultural and historical geography at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, came across Tsaroff’s story while going through the papers of famous explorer William Healey Dall in the Smithsonian’s archives.
According to Martin’s research, Tsaroff met Dall while the explorer was conducting geographical survey work in the Aleutians after the U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. Dall asked Tsaroff to join his expedition surveying the region.
When Dall returned to San Francisco, Tsaroff was still with him, and Dall obtained legal guardianship over the boy. Tsaroff later got an education in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and worked as a museum guide at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He died of tuberculosis at 22.
Martin was in Unalaska in the first week of July to share what he found and to invite the community, especially Unangax̂ residents, to help shape how Tsaroff's story gets told.
For this episode of Island Interviews, KUCB's Sofia Stuart-Rasi sat down with Martin at the KUCB studio a day ahead of his presentation at the Unalaska Public Library on July 7.
Anyone with insight or possible connections to Tsaroff's descendants can reach Martin through his website, peterrmartin.com.
