AUTHOR’S NOTE: After the 12-year marriage of Keith McCullagh and Nellie Crabb ended in 1927, the two members of what the Cordova Daily Times had once called a “popular young couple” began carving out separate lives. Keith would live another 24 years, Nellie another 58.
When Nellie (Crabb) McCullagh filed for divorce from her husband Keith in 1927, the McCullaghs were living in Seattle. Two years later, she was 40 years old and back in Alaska, accompanied by her 10-year-old daughter June and her 34-year-old, divorcee sister, Carlotta (Crabb) McDade.
Carlotta, after succeeding Nellie as a teacher in Homer, had taught for two years in Unalaska, had married an Alaska Commercial Company employee there and then had gotten quickly divorced.
On Aug. 30, 1929, the trio arrived in Seward and were soon sailing into Prince William Sound, where the sisters had landed teaching gigs in the small copper-mining town of Latouche (which began disbanding after the main mine closed in November 1930).
It was also around this time that Nellie McCullagh began referring to herself by the nickname “Jean.” In fact, when she would die more than five decades later, her obituary would use that nickname, eschewing her birth name of “Nellie” entirely.
By the 1930-31 school year, Jean and June were back in Seldovia — this time living in town, rather than on the nearby islands where the McCullagh family had operated a highly successful fox farm in the early 1920s. June became a student in Seldovia’s public school, while Jean was assigned to teach the upper grades.
The Seldovia Herald lauded Jean’s arrival: “Mrs. McCullagh is well known here…. (She) is a zealous student herself, and every spare hour that comes to her, local friends say, is given over to research work, or studious application to subjects she feels will aid her in her profession.” During the previous summer, she had enrolled in a course at the University of Washington, and she would return to Seattle for more edification the following summer.
By the 1931-32 school year, Jean was the school’s principal, a position she would hold for several years. Also around this time, daughter June departed Alaska to attend school in Tacoma, Washington, where her father was a resident. After returning to Seldovia in 1938 with a teacher’s diploma, she would follow in her mother’s footsteps with a classroom of her own.
In addition to her principalship, Jean McCullagh found other ways to integrate herself into her community. She was, for instance, a charter member of the Seldovia Women’s Club, founded in 1933 to “promote individual effort and friendly cooperation among its members,” “encourage intellectual development and progress,” “render civic improvement to the community” and “promote unity of action in all matters of general concern.”
Then in 1936, Jean McCullagh remarried. Her new husband was Thor Berent Hofstad, the Wrangell-born owner/operator of Seldovia’s light plant. It is unclear whether Jean continued to either teach or act as principal in Seldovia after marrying Thor. The Hofstads stayed in Seldovia until at least late 1944, when they moved to the Seattle area.
In April 1947, they moved again — to Thor’s hometown. Thor, who had been a ship’s pilot for Heinie Berger, opened an appliance store in Wrangell — Hofstad’s Sales & Service — and also became president of the Wrangell Chamber of Commerce. By autumn of either 1948 or 1949, Jean had returned to the classroom, teaching primary grades at Wrangell’s public school. She was nearly 60 years old.
During the 1949-50 school year, she was interviewed about her past and passions. She told a reporter that her favorite pastime was driving an “undernourished Metz,” almost certainly a reference to a roadster produced between about 1908 and 1922 by the Metz Company of Massachusetts. She also enjoyed skating and spending long periods of time in the library.
Her present interests, she said, included reading and various outdoor activities. She disliked swaying boats and prejudices, and she was fond of popcorn and intellectual integrity.
Jean taught in Wrangell through 1951-52 and had agreed to a contract for 1952-53 when her plans changed. Thor had become a partner in a marine towing company headquartered in Ketchikan, and the Hofstads decide to move there.
By late August 1952, however, Jean was back in Wrangell, telling the local newspaper that she had returned “because of the scarcity of living quarters in Ketchikan.” She was welcomed back to the teaching staff at Wrangell, but she stayed for only one semester.
By early January 1953, Thor had located a place for them to live in Ketchikan, so Jean re-resigned from the Wrangell school system and returned to Ketchikan. Whether she taught there and how long the Hofstads remained there is unclear, but eventually Jean and Thor packed up one final time.
They moved to Washington and remained residents of that state for the remainder of their lives. After almost 34 years of marriage to Jean, Thor died in February 1970 and was buried in Shelton, in Mason County.
Jean (nee Nellie Dee Crabb) Hofstad, who had taught off and on in at least four rural Alaska communities over more than 40 years, died while on vacation in Palm Desert, California. Just three weeks shy of her 96th birthday, she was laid to rest next to Thor back in Shelton.
Interestingly, even though it was Keith McCullagh who, as a boy, had once lived with his family in Mason County, it was Jean and Thor, plus Jean’s sisters Carlotta and Ruby (who had formerly lived and worked in Kennecott) and their husbands who all spent their final years and were interred there.
McCullagh’s own fate lay more than a thousand miles away.
The Rest of Keith’s Story
After leaving Alaska behind in 1925, former forest ranger, commercial fisherman and fur farmer Keith McCullagh stayed away for nearly two decades before returning — two final times.
Before those last trips north, however, he made a name for himself in what was then called the village of Palm Springs in California, primarily as the owner of a bicycle rental and repair shop, which he operated out of his home on Palm Canyon Drive starting in about 1935.
To supplement his income, he occasionally offered other services. In December 1936, for instance, he advertised the sale of Christmas trees (silver spruce) — “from the High Sierras — Any Size” — starting as cheap as 50 cents apiece. He also offered “Popcorn for Cocktail Parties,” and he delivered.
When he signed his draft-registration card in 1942, he still appeared youthful at age 60. He was listed as 5-foot-7½ and 163 pounds, with brown hair and eyes and a dark complexion.
But not everything was smooth sailing in the bike repair and rental profession. In July 1945, a fire — believed to have been ignited by defective wiring inside his shop — destroyed the business. He rebuilt it and renamed it the Village Bike Shop, at the same address. Then, for reasons that are unclear, he moved the bike shop to two different Palm Canyon Drive locations, once in 1950 and again in 1951.
One of the advertisements placed by Keith McCullagh in the Palm Springs Limelight-News in 1947 for his bicycle repair and rental business.
This 1931 photograph from the Wrangell Sentinel shows the Wrangell public school where Jean Hofstad (the former Nellie McCullagh) taught during the 1940s.
