HARRY ALFRED LEONHARDT was born in Leipzeig, Germany on November 2, 1881. He immigrated to the US in 1905 and became a naturalized US citizen in Alaska in 1924. He appears in Seldovia Alaska census records for 1920, 1930 and On August 31, 1931 he received a patent for 71 acres of land on the east shore of Bear Cove in Kachemak Bay. He and two partners, Charles Patterson and JENNY ROMANOFF, started a fox farm there.
Elsa Pedersen wrote a book “Kachemak Bay Years” a memoir of her life with her husband Ted Pedersen on a homestead at Bear Cove where they were Harry’s neighbors. She said “ When we arrived (in 1944) Harry Leonhardt was in his mid-60s with luxuriant white hair, craggy, ruddy, weather-seamed features and an enormous bulbous nose that dominated his face. He was always neat and fastidious. He spoke with a heavy German accent although he had left his homeland nearly 50 years earlier… He walked with a rolling gait that at first I thought was a leftover of his years at sea. Later I learned he suffered from extremely painful frostbitten feet.
Harry and Jenny homesteaded at Port Axel in Bear Cove at the head of Kachemak Bay. They lived in a log house that had been built at the turn of the century as part of the Alaska Colonization and Development Company. “That project included plans to build a sawmill, mine coal from the bluffs of the Homer side of the bay and catch and salt salmon and herring and capitalize on the discovery of oil on the west side of Cook Inlet. The company sent a work party of three Finn men who spent two years at the Cove and built several log houses. They also cut a wide right-of way for a road or a tramway that was still visible in 1944… After the senior promotor died in 1905, the Port Axel project gradually failed. Harry, Jenny and their fox farmer partner “Paddy” Patterson, took over the place.
Harry’s frostbite story was also recounted by Elsa Pedersen: “Years earlier, before they owned the Nell, Harry had set out for Seldovia at the end of autumn in the large packing skiff powered with an outboard motor, to pick up the winter’s supply of groceries. He arrived in town without incident, loaded the next morning and was bound for home by noon. A light southwest breeze helped him on his way. For the first hour all went well. He was approaching McDonald Spit and Yukon Spit and Yukon Island when the engine sputtered. He made adjustments and it ran a few more minutes, then quit altogether. He could see the breeze was pushing him across the mouth of Kachemak Bay and up Cook Inlet. He couldn’t row; the skiff was too heavily laden and the oars were buried under the load. Drifting past Homer Spit he yelled and waived, but no one saw him. He knew that if he drifted to the middle of the Inlet he was doomed. The skiff would swamp, or if by some fluke he made it to the west side of the Inlet there was no place he could take shelter, and he would die on the beach. At dusk he saw an obstruction ahead. He recognized the Bluff Point fish trap, now only a row of bare poles stuck in the water, the wire fencing and connecting planks removed for the winter. He managed to maneuver himself to the outermost pole and tied the skiff fast with the painter. He didn’t trust the skiff. It might break loose or swamp at any time. He crawled up the fish trap pole as high as he could and lashed himself as firmly as possible. At the fox farm, Jenny and Paddy worried when Harry didn’t return on schedule. They had no way of communicating with town. When he didn’t show up by nightfall of the day he was expected. Paddy prepared to go to town with their second skiff and outboard motor. He traveled near the beaches, hoping Harry had been forced ashore and was waiting to be rescued. When he reached town and reported Harry missing, the fishermen went into action. Most of the fishing boats were hauled up for the winter, but the few still afloat took off at once in search of Harry Leonhardt. They hunted until dark, failed and set out again the following daylight. Harry hung on the trap pole two nights and two days. The skiff had drifted away the first night. Although his body remained dry, at every high tide his feet hung in the water. When the water ebbed, his wet feet frosted until he could no longer feel them. The boat that found him didn’t see him at first, tied as he was like a bundle of rags to the trap pole. The fishermen made fast to an inside pole and Harry heard them talking on deck. His tongue was so swollen with thirst he couldn’t cry out. Finally he made some weak sounds that attracted their attention. He was tough and survived the ordeal, but his frosted, brine-soaked feet never healed. Every winter they swelled and the toes split open, and he was lame for the rest of his life.
Harry married LILLIAN HOLM on February 6, 1939 in Seldovia. Their marriage application listed him as having never been married and her as having been married and divorced twice before. According to Elsa Pedersen “Lillian had been a secretary in the San Francisco Bay Area offices when she met and married an Alaskan. She and her husband moved to Anchorage but did not enjoy the then war-crowded town. They moved to a salmon set-net location, then bought an abandoned fox farm near the head of Kachemak Bay, at Battle Creek, several miles from Bear Cove. They spent a winter there, then Lillian took refuge at Bear Cove. She divorced her husband, he left the area, and she married Harry Leonhardt.” They lived at his home in Bear Cove for a year or so, but they were also remodeling a home in Seldovia. She and Jennie were very different personalities and the locals were more comfortable with Jenny’s gusto and her occasional profanity, her hearty hospitality and the way she ordered Harry and Paddy around. They found Lillian more cool and distant.
Harry and Lillian lived in Seldovia where he died on December 16, 1949. He is buried in the Seldovia City Cemetery, Plot #100. Again quoting Elsa Pedersen: “Harry Leonhardt had continued to insist that cigarettes wouldn’t hurt him as long as he rolled his own. He died in Seldovia one morning in a coughing fit, over his first cup of coffee and a cigarette.”
Records for Lillie’s life other than with Harry are sketchy, but she was probably Lillian E. Holm, daughter of Gustav and Margaret Holm, born in San Francisco, California, who in 1920 married Arthur Chesney in Oakland, California, and they divorced and she remarried the person Elsa describes as Lillian’s husband before Harry. After Harry’s death, Lillian married Quinter Fry on October 15, 1952 in Diller, Nebraska. She died in Diller on March 20, 1956 and is buried there.