John Peratrovich, a Croatian (also referred to as Austrian, Yugoslavian, Dalmatian, and Slavonian) immigrant, was an early settler in Klawock, a village in the Territory of Alaska. He was a skilled net maker who taught netmaking and made nets for the seine fishing industry. He also worked for the canning industry in Klawock and San Francisco including the North Pacific Packing and Trading Co. He married Catherine “Kitty” Snook Skan (later married to Tecumseh Collins) with whom he had four sons: Jack, James, Nick, and Robert J., Sr. who brought development to Klawock as an innovative leader. Robert’s son, Robert J. (Edison), Jr. became a Tlingit chief. John subsequently had 13 more children with Mary Skan and Nellie Skan. Two sons of John and Mary also were prominent -- Frank was a territorial and state Alaska legislator, founder and leader of the Purse Seiners’ Union, mayor of Klawock, and a founder of statehood. Roy was a territorial and state legislator as well as Grand President and Grand President Emeritus of the Alaska Native Brotherhood. He and his wife Elizabeth were leaders in the anti-discrimination movement. Elizabeth’s impassioned speech before the Alaska legislature in 1945 was the final catalyst for the passage of the anti-discrimination bill in Alaska. John and Catherine’s second son was James, father of Stanley. James married Kathryn Jackson (name changed from Sumdum) of Kake. Stanley, born in 1919 and raised in Klawock, attended Wrangell Institute and served in the U.S. Army in World War II in Alaska. He did tourist boat charters, and later, some commercial fishing. Stanley Peratrovich died in 2002. As of 2004 his wife, Evelyn Taber Peratrovich, continued to reside on Bainbridge Island WA.