Pauline Winchester Inman

Pauline Winchester Inman was born March 24, 1904 in Chicago, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Benjamin and Pearl Gunn Winchester. A 1926 graduate of Smith College, she taught at Rye Country Day School and was head of the Chapin Middle School in New York City. She studied wood engraving at the Art Students League, Parsons School of Design, and Columbia University. Her works are in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. She illustrated The Down East Reader, How To Know American Antiques, and Antiques Guide to Decorative Arts.

Inman's interest in her family genealogy led her to contact a distant cousin in Portland, Oregon, Frances Knapp Morgan. They began corresponding in 1958 and continued until Morgan's death in 1965. In 1959 Morgan re-discovered her notes and manuscripts about the Tlingit Indians, collected during her residence in Sitka, Alaska from 1890-1893. The papers had been missing for almost 70 years. Inman and Morgan collaborated on a manuscript based on these notes. The manuscript was rejected for publication, as were several other revisions with varying titles, because, among other reasons, the subject was determined to be "too unfamiliar to have appeal for the great general public." Pauline Winchester Inman died January 16, 1990 in Newtown, Connecticut.

Frances Knapp Morgan

Frances Knapp was born October 5, 1869, in the college town of Middlebury, Vermont. Her father was in the printing business and later became editor of the Middlebury Register. Before his gubernatorial appointment in Sitka, Alaska, he also became a lawyer. Her mother, Martha Severance Knapp was a painter with a strong interest in landscapes. She had two brothers, George and Edwin, and a sister, Mary.

In 1890, upon graduation from Wellesley College, Frances "Fanny" Knapp joined her family in Sitka, Alaska, to act as secretary to her father, Judge Lyman E. Knapp, who had been appointed third territorial governor of Alaska. It was during her three years in Sitka that she observed the culture of the Tlingit Indians and collected tribal tales told by their elders. In 1893, she moved with her family to Seattle where she wrote her book, The Thlinkets of Southeastern Alaska, depicting the culture and customs of the Tlingits. Her intention was to publish a companion volume, Tales of the Sitka Indians, containing the collection of Tlingit tribal tales, but her notes and the manuscript were lost during the move to Seattle.

In 1901, Frances Knapp married Everett R. Morgan. The couple lived, at various times, in Seattle, the Cascades, and Portland, Oregon. Everett Morgan died in 1946, one year after Morgan lost her eyesight at age 76. She wrote about her blindness in an article titled "Sight and Insight" concluding, "We, who are without physical sight, live, for the most part, in the realm of thought." It was this realization that led Frances Knapp Morgan to write her autobiography, Out of the Mist.

In 1959, when Morgan was 90, a new highway required the condemnation of her property in Portland. She supervised the moving of her house and, during this relocation, discovered her notes on the Tlingit Indians collected during her residence in Sitka from 1890-1893. Frances Knapp Morgan sent the newly-recovered notes and manuscripts to her cousin, Pauline Winchester Inman, for revision and publication. Rather than editing the tales as a companion volume, Inman collaborated with Frances Knapp Morgan to incorporate the published work, The Thlinkets of Southeastern Alaska, and the unpublished manuscript, Tales of the Sitka Indians, into one volume, a new, enlarged version titled Bluejay Fly with Me. The manuscript was rejected by several publishers.

Frances Knapp Morgan's rekindled interest in Alaska led to her donation of Martha Severance Knapp's paintings of Sitka and Wrangell, to the Alaska State Museum in Juneau in 1959, Alaska's year of statehood. In 1964, on her ninety-fifth birthday, Governor William A. Egan of Alaska awarded Morgan life membership in the Alaskan Order of the Walrus. Frances Knapp Morgan died on May 12, 1965 in Portland, Oregon.