Looking Back

George Byron Gordon met Suzanne Rognon Bernardi (later Jeffery) in 1905 while in Alaska for the Penn Museum. Bernardi was a teacher from Indiana, who taught at the U.S. Government School in Kingegan, Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, from 1901 to ca. 1906. Kingegan is the westernmost settlement in North America, an Inuit whaling village only 55 miles from Russia. Bernardi collected a number of artifacts for the Museum, and also sent Gordon about 100 photographs depicting her students and other Inuit of Kingegan. In a Bernardi photograph album at the University of Washington Libraries, she labeled this same image with the caption: “Teacher’s pets.”

–Alessandro Pezzati, Senior Archivist