Digital Bob Archive

George Kyrage was his name - Councilman George Kyrage in 1904 and 1905 - but he was more often known as George the Greek. He was of Greek descent, although he wasn't born there. He was born in Smyrna, Turkey, in 1855. He learned the trade of cook and was working at it in Constantinople in the early part of 1878 when the U.S.S. Vandalia came into port.

The Vandalia, one of the newer ships of the U.S. Navy, was on duty in the Mediterranean and had a distinguished passenger on board. General Ulysses S. Grant, who had been the 18th President of the United States, spent three months aboard the Vandalia that winter, visiting Italy, Egypt, Greece and Turkey. When the ship reached Constantinople it was in need of a wardroom steward and Kyrage got the job. He remained with the ship and reached Boston, Massachusetts, on January 1, 1879.

At Boston Kyrage transferred to the U.S.S. Wachusett, which soon sailed for the Pacific Coast. In 1881 the Wachusett was ordered to Sitka to relieve the Jamestown and Kyrage got his first glimpses of Alaska. He liked what he saw and after he was discharged in San Francisco the following year, he returned to Sitka. After running a restaurant there, he worked for five years for the Northwest Trading Company at Killisnoo. On May 18, 1887, in St. Michael's Cathedral at Sitka, he married Mrs. Matrona Sullivan who had been born Matrona Romanov at Sitka in 1853. They had no children but adopted a daughter, Clara, who eventually became a graduate nurse in Seattle.

The Kyrages moved to Juneau in 1888 and he was first employed by John Olds at the Occidental Hotel. He then moved to the Central House, run by W.F. Reid. Reid died in 1892 and Kyrage went into business for himself, operating in turn the Central House, the Arctic Hotel and the Juneau Hotel. For a time he managed the Juneau Brewing & Malting Company, then ran the Comet Saloon until 1912.

Kyrage was elected to the City Council in 1904 and served with Mayor George Forrest and Councilmen Henry Shattuck, John Reck, Louis Lund, J.P. Jorgenson and Henry States. He was named chairman of the Police Committee and found himself squarely between those who wanted prosperity through a wide open town, and those who demanded strict enforcement of a recent ordinance prohibiting women loitering in saloons. \"That seat was hotter than any stove I ever cooked on,\" Kyrage said in refusing to run for re-election in 1905.

Mrs. Kyrage died in August, 1908, and was buried at Sitka. In 1912 Kyrage went to Constantinople to settle the estate of a brother. He expected to return soon but the business dragged on and on and he became ill, too ill to travel. The date of his death is not known, but word of it reached Juneau in September, 1917, after the start of World War I.

\"George the Greek\" Kyrage was just one of many men, little remembered today, who served the early governments of Juneau.