EINAR NILSEN was the youngest of seven children born in Christiana, Norway to Axel and Indiane HENRIKKE Nilsen. Little is known about his early life, but in 1920 he and his brother Eivind were living in Wild Horse, Colorado with their oldest brother Adolph Norman Nilson and his family. (Adolph had immigrated to the US in 1902 and was already living in Colorado when he became a naturalized citizen in 1910. His last name was misspelled in his immigration papers as “Nilson” and he never officially changed it. Eivand and Einer became citizens in 1914. ) Adolph and Eivind were listed as store merchants and Einer was a mason. Adolph was the manager of the Wild Horse Lumber & Supply as early as 1911.
Adolph’s family moved to Alaska in 1925 and made their home in Portlock on the tip of the Kenai Peninsula. The family invested in a seafood enterprise, the fruits of which are still operating today. The company, Port Chatham Smoked Seafood, was named for Port Chatham Bay outside Portlock. The family business expanded to Seattle’s Ballard area in 1950. It started out as a small company and grew by word-of-mouth because of the quality of the smoked salmon and the care and the love the family put into the business. Adolph’s sons skippered Port Chatham Packing’s 89-foot cannery tender, Chatham, for many years on Cook Inlet before they began producing Portlock smoked salmon in Ballard. They sold the business in the 1980s, and it now belongs to Trident Seafoods (?).
Einer Nilsen, Adolph’s brother, came to Portlock to work in the family business and in 1937 he took a fall that eventually led to his death. He is buried in the Seldovia City Cemetery in Plot #143.