He had only a sixth grade education, yet his biological collections are prized by museums and scientists. He lived a humble, unadorned lifestyle, yet the art he saved from oblivion is now among the treasures of the Smithsonian Institution and the Louvre.
His descendents say his contributions weren't limited to art or science, but included a practical way of dealing with the real world.
"I remain in awe of my grandfather's inclination to study and observe the natural world," said his granddaughter, Margie Brown. "But I am also very much aware that he was at his core an entrepreneur as well. He was not afraid to tackle new business ventures. Adams Hollis Twitchell was a businessman."
Though Twitchell died shortly before she was born, his insistence that his children excel in school, learn to use their minds and make something of themselves became a family legacy.
"I always knew that going to college and succeeding was what was expected of me," said Brown, today the president and chief executive officer of Cook Inlet Region, Inc., one of the biggest corporations in Alaska.
"I consider my ability to hold this position a direct result of my grandfather's commitment to education."
PRECIOUS NOTES
On a sunny February day, Brown and her older sister, June McAtee, vice president of land and shareholder services for the Calista Corp., looked over old photos and revisited family stories.
"A.H." -- his descendents refer to the patriarch by his initials -- was born in the hamlet of Jamaica, Vt., in 1872. He joined the Klondike stampede and worked as a "human mule," carrying supplies over Chilkoot Pass. He followed the strikes from Cassiar, Yukon, to Nome before switching his efforts to fur trading.
With two partners, he brought the first paddle-wheeler upriver to Bethel and started a store. He also married Qecik, also known as Elena or Irena, a Yup'ik from around present day Kasigluk, just west of Bethel. Some of her family members took the Twitchell name, which remains widespread in the area. They had six children who lived to adulthood.
Twitchell later moved to Flat, where he ran a reindeer herd, then to Takotna, where he raised vegetables commercially and sold goods to miners in camps along the Iditarod trail system.
Outside Alaska, the academic world came to count on him as a resource. "He corresponded with a lot of people, including (anthropologist) Edward Nelson," said McAtee. "He was very well-written."
He collected flora and fauna -- including a sampling of mosquitoes for the Smithsonian. His name remains known particularly among birders.
He also bartered for Yup'ik dance masks. Rifles were the most coveted trade item. One of his masks recently sold in New York for $2.5 million, a record price for any Native North American artwork.
Some who read of the sale on the Daily News website left comments suggesting the mask had been acquired illicitly. (Some famous Native art, like Seattle's famous Pioneer Square totem, were acknowledged to have been stolen in the past, and efforts to repatriate pieces now held by museums are ongoing.) But some of Alaska's best contemporary mask-makers were quick to quash such allegations and to point out that, had he not purchased the masks when he did, they likely would have been lost forever.
The pieces that Twitchell collected tend to have a better paper trail and a clearer provenance than most artifacts from old Alaska. He carefully documented everything he could learn about them, with detailed notes intended for the scrutiny of experts. After a full week at one "annual medicine dance," he informed a contact in New York, "I have written 23 pages describing it which I will send to you later."
Though several people collected Yup'ik masks at the time, none recorded the original names and stories associated with the masks the way Twitchell did. Today his field notes are considered a gold mine of data, as important as the masks themselves.
DRIVE TO LEARN
Qecik died and the Twitchell children were sent to the Jesuit mission at Holy Cross on the Yukon. The only high schools, however, were in the larger towns. Twitchell trapped beaver and sold pelts to cover expenses. The students worked for their keep in the homes where they boarded.
"If his children showed potential, he would do all he could to support them," said McAtee. "His letters are full of encouragement and advice about dealing with the world."
When son Benjamin Franklin Twitchell encountered discrimination in Fairbanks, his father urged him to dismiss it.
"A.H. wrote to Dad telling him not to use prejudice as an excuse," said McAtee. "'Don't blame your failures on the attitudes of others. You will always be judged by your accomplishments.'"
Benjamin excelled and enrolled in the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, the forerunner of the University of Alaska. He went on to earn a degree in education from the University of Washington in Seattle. He then returned to Alaska where he taught in village schools before leaving the profession to help his father take care of the Takotna general store.
He married Berntina Kvamme, a Saami whose family had come to Alaska from Lapland to help herd reindeer. They raised five children, including Brown and McAtee, in Takotna until the territorial school closed in the late 1950s.
"Mom wouldn't let her children be sent away," said Brown. "And she also wanted to see more of the world. She'd never been out of Alaska."
The family eventually settled in Eugene, Ore. Benjamin went back to school and received a master's degree in education. He resumed teaching in Oakridge, southeast of Eugene. There his children attended high school, taking advanced placement courses.
"There were no half-hearted efforts," said McAtee. "We were expected to take the most challenging classes from the start."
McAtee was her class valedictorian, Brown was the salutatorian for her class. Both attended the University of Oregon in Eugene on scholarships.
With a new degree in biology, Brown headed back to Alaska to find work. Here she ran into a different kind of discrimination.
"New hires had to spend time in the field, and they wouldn't send women out in the field with men," she said. That rule would later be overturned, but in the meantime she needed a job. She found one with CIRI. For the next 20 years she worked in land and resources selection. After a period of retirement, she came back as CEO six years ago.
"I never had a day of work as a biologist," she said.
MONUMENTAL ART
Brown rediscovered her family connection to fine art some years ago in New York. She had a little free time between meetings and saw mention of George Heye's National Museum of the American Indian in a guide book.
"I took a taxi there and told the curator, 'I don't have much time. Just show me the Alaska stuff,' " she said.
The curator took her to a gallery where, behind glass, floor to ceiling and wall to wall, were ancient Yup'ik masks of exquisite quality. Stunned by what she saw, Brown muttered that her grandfather had once collected such masks. What was his name, asked the curator. When she said "Twitchell," his eyes grew wide.
"The Twitchell Collection?"
The curator spread his arms and announced, "This -- this is the Twitchell Collection."
It was as if she had suddenly come face to face with the grandfather she had never met. She immediately wanted the masks to be seen back in Alaska. But such things did not leave museums, she was told.
In time, however, the Smithsonian absorbed the National Museum of the American Indian. The new director, Richard West, was receptive when Brown and Patricia Wolf, then director of the Anchorage Museum, approached him with the idea of displaying the institution's Yup'ik mask collection in Alaska.
The resulting "Agayuliyararput" exhibit, a ground-breaking collaboration between museum officials and elders, was seen in several locations around the state and outside Alaska between 1996 and 1999.
McAtee, who had taken a job with Calista Corp., the Yukon-Kuskokwim ANCSA corporation, traveled with Brown for early meetings with Native elders concerning the proposed exhibit. (The sisters are shareholders in different corporations because of where they were living at the time of enrollment.)
"At first we were worried that there might be some animosity," Brown said.
She was showing a photograph of one mask that Twitchell had purchased and reading his account of the story that accompanied it when Toksook Bay elder Paul John spoke up.
"I have heard this story," John said, looking at the photo. "But I have never seen the face."
Twitchell's field notes had preserved a long-lost connection.
"The elders seemed grateful that some of these things had survived," Brown said.
The art world is also grateful. Surrealist painter and sculptor Enrico Donati was one of many contemporary artists who found inspiration in Yup'ik masks.
He was among the avant-garde elites who snapped up the pieces that George Heye was forced to sell at the end of the Great Depression.
Donati died in 2008 and two masks that had hung in his rooms for decades were prepared for auction.
In January, the masks were presented for sale at New York's prestigious Winter Antiques Show.
Donald Ellis, a Canadian gallery owner who specializes in Native American work, described the "Donati Studio Mask," originally acquired by Twitchell, as "an artistic masterpiece of monumental importance."
The buyers agreed. It sold for $2.5 million, a record price for any piece of North American Native art.
ENDURING BENEFITS
What might the old Yankee peddler who sold potatoes for gold dust and swapped ammo for art think of it all? And what would he think of his heirs?
"My best guess is that he first would be pleased with how his son and daughter-in-law succeeded in raising their children," said Brown.
"As for me and my brothers and sisters, I believe my grandfather would be equally pleased by our chosen fields of work. His love for the natural world lives on in us, with many degrees in the sciences between us."
All five of Benjamin and Berntina's children work in some aspect of management.
"I like to think he would understand how much I enjoy the business world that surrounds me and would take pride in our shared view of the importance of business in the grand scheme of things," said Brown
McAtee concurred. She was a baby when A.H. died in September of 1949, a month before Margie was born. None of Benjamin's children knew their grandfather, but all have felt his presence.
"A.H. and Dad were two like minds," McAtee said. "They had a very close relationship. We all got the benefit from that."
Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.
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