ANNA ELIZABETH BYSTEDT MATTHEWSON, “Betty”, daughter of Nels and Anna JOHNSON Bystedt, was born in Valdez, Alaska on October 11, 1913. Her father, from Stockholm, Sweden, had first arrived in Alaska in 1904 aboard a whaling ship. He eventually moved to Valdez where he met and married Anna Johnson, also from Sweden. Their daughter, Anna was born soon after.
The family operated a small dairy farm in Valdez, but, when Anna was about three years old, they moved to Eagle River, Alaska, where her father took a job with the Alaskan Engineering Commission as a section foreman, and her mother cooked for the section crew. In 1922, when Anna was 9 years old, the family moved to Anchorage, where they lived on 4th Avenue and B Street. Her father worked a quartz claim on Bird Creek and her mother operated a laundry out of their home.
Elizabeth married Rudolf Shirnberg and they had one son Robert Raymond Shirnberg, born in Anchorage in 1933. The family was living in Seldovia at the time of the 1940 US Census, and Rudolf was a fisherman and Betty was a slimer in a cannery. Their son Robert was 6 years old.
Betty later married Earl Henry Matthewson. They first lived on the Bystedt family homestead in Bird Creek. In the 1920’s, Betty’s father had homesteaded and expanded a cabin that had been used by the Alaska railroad as a work camp in 1916, during the construction of the railroad between Anchorage and Seward, and later became the Bird House Bar.
In 1960 they moved to Seldovia where they homesteaded a small piece of land two miles outside town. Once they built their cabin, they became full-time residents of Seldovia.
In 1973 they took their first trip abroad to visit Anna’s family homelands in Sweden.
She died in Seldovia on December 20, 1975 and is buried in the Seldovia City Cemetery in Plot #264.