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MW: Well, first, Earl, I would like to just thank you very much for on short notice coming out here so we can have this interview. It's important.

EH: Well, I had to have a chauffeur, because my chauffeur was busy.

MW: First could you tell us your name and your parents' names as well?

EH: Well, I'm Earl S. Hanson, and my father was Gunnar Hanson and my mother was Ingebjorg Hanson, and they lived in Eagledale.

MW: But they came from?

EH: Norway.

MW: Norway. Did they know each other in Norway?

EH: No, they met in Port Blakely.

MW: They both came to Bainbridge...

EH: My dad came to this country in 1910 and then my mother came in 1914 and she came to Tacoma. And all the neighbors on what is now called New Sweden Avenue, a lot of them were descendants from Norway, and they were born and raised in the same town where my mother was born.

MW: Oh, did she know them before she came over?

EH: Oh, yeah. One of them, well, the descendent of one of them was Elsie Lund who lives down in Madison Apartments, and she is the last one of that group that's living on the island that I know of. Mary Ann Erstad, her mother, was born in, well, I'll say Forvik, Norway, because that's where Mom was born, and she was from there, but Mary Ann lives in, right outside of Chicago.

[Interruption]

MW: So Eagledale, was that mostly Norwegian immigrants when they came?

EH: Yes and no, because there were Swedes and Fins that lived along there.

MW: Oh, you let the Swedes come in? [Laughs]

EH: Oh yeah, I don't know, they might have been there first. And then the Slovenians, they lived down in, what was called the south side, or down by the ferry dock, or the old steamer dock.

MW: At Taylor Avenue?

EH: Yeah, Taylor, and I don't know what the name of the street is now, that goes down to the old Eagledale dock,

MW: That's Taylor isn't it? Isn't that the end of Taylor?

EH: Well, that's where the ferry was.

MW: Oh, I see what you're talking about.

EH: But the mosquito fleet boats, they came in to the Eagledale dock, which is, well, you go by Mirkovich's, there's Mirkovichs on two sides of that road that go down there.

MW: Is that where the marina is?

EH: Yes.

MW: And what did your father and mother do? Your mother was a housewife, you said, and your father?

EH: My dad was a carpenter, a ship's carpenter and also a fisherman. He went to Alaska from 1911, I believe, 'til 1939 or 1940.

MW: Did he have his own boat?

EH: He fished for Libby McNeil and Libby. They furnished the boat for him.

MW: Were there other islanders that went up? Did he go up with...

EH: Oh, yes, the Nesses were up there, and they lived down on Rose Avenue I believe it is, but Marcus Batten, he went up, and then Pete Oness, he was a whaling skipper on the boat called the Akutan.

MW: Did you have brothers and sisters?

EH: I have one brother and two sisters, one sister is living in Silverdale. The other sister is in, outside of Pennsylvania, in Parkesburg, Pennsylvania, and then my kid brother lives in Rochester, New York.

MW: Oh, a long ways away for those two.

EH: Well, the sister married a fellow that went back there and she went with him and never came back. And then my kid brother worked for American Can Company, and when they shut the Seattle plant down, they sent him to Baltimore, Maryland, and then he ran the oldest can plant in the country, and then when they shut that down, then he went to Fairport, New York, onto the newest cannery, can making company.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.