Mrs. Michael Lorenz
Editor's note: Not many white women spent much time in the lower Yukon in the 1800s. Mrs. Riedelle, wife of Capt. Fred Riedelle, an Alaska Commercial Co. agent, lived at St. Michael from 1871 to 1872. Mrs. James Bean was the second white woman in the region. She was followed a few years later by Mrs. Michael Lorenz.Michael (Moise) Lorenz, a commissary agent for the Alaska Commercial Co. and manager at St. Michael after Francois Mercier resigned, was a Russian Jew from Odessa on the Black Sea. On a trip to the east coast of the United States in 1880, he met and married Mrs. Lorenz, a native of Bound Pound, Maine, and brought her to St. Michael in June.
A visitor to the post described the Lorenz home, located inside the stockade, as having a handsomely furnished parlor, with walls covered with Morris paper, and carpet and chairs in keeping with that style. Pots of blooming roses, camellias and other flowers lined the windows. Mrs. Lorenz kept two canaries. the house also had a small but well-selected library. Behind the house, Mrs. Lorenz had a small kitchen garden where she raised radishes, lettuce and turnips. Mrs. Lorenz was described as cultivated, intelligent and of exceptional beauty. In 1882, she boarded the steamship Yukon for a trip up the Yukon as far as its junction with the White River and also a short side trip up the Tanana River. After spending the year of 1883 away, the Lorenzes returned to St. Michael and stayed until Mr. Lorenz's illness forced them to leave in 1886. They returned to the Lower 48 where Michael Lorenz died a few months later.