Johan Hampus Furuhjelm

Johan Hampus Furuhjelm with his wife Anna, taken in Dresden in 1859

Furuhjelm family coat of arms

Johan Hampus Furuhjelm ( Russian Иван Васильевич Фуругельм (Iwan Wassiljewitsch Furugelm)) (born March 11, 1821 in Helsingfors / now Helsinki; † September 21, 1909 on Gut Honkola / near Urjala ) was a Russian admiral of Finnish descent. He held several governor posts within the Russian Empire.

On the ship I. Imperator Nikolai ( Emperor Nicholas I ) came Furuhjelm on 23 April 1851 by the naval base Kronstadt in St Petersburg to Novo-Arkhangelsk . At first he managed this port, but then traveled to California , Hawaii and China as part of the business of the Russian-American Company . On June 21, 1854 he was appointed governor of the island of Sakhalin , but did not take up this post because of the Anglo-French threat, but only held the post of commander of the port of Aian on the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. On February 25, 1858, Furuhjelm was appointed governor of Russian America. During his regular five-year tenure, he promoted shipbuilding and improved relations with the Indians . On March 17, 1864, he handed over his office to Dmitri Petrovich Maksutov and returned to the Russian Empire .

On February 25, 1871, he was appointed commander in chief of all Russian ports in the Pacific . He contributed greatly to the development of Vladivostok and Primorskaya Oblast (Russian Far East), built port facilities for the ships of the Siberian Navy and had lighthouses built.

From 1874 to 1876 Furuhjelm was the mayor of Taganrog , where he founded the first public library . The Russian writer and playwright Anton Chekhov was a frequent visitor to this library.

Furuhjelm died in 1909 at the age of 88, 15 years after the death of his wife Anna, on his Honkola estate, 5 km northwest of Urjala, Finland.

After Furuhjelm, a small (2.5 × 1.5 km) island (Furugelm Island) in the Peter-the-Great Bay near today's border with North Korea, a cape (Furugelm Kap) on the island of Sakhalin, Mount Furuhjelm named on the east side of Baranof Island and a street (Furuhelm Street) in Sitka (Alaska).

literature

• Pierce, Richard A. , Alaska's Russian Governors: Johan Hampus Furuhjelm , in: Alaska Journal 2, No. 4, 1972, pp. 21-24.
• Pierce, Richard A., Builders of Alaska, The Russian Governors 1818-1867 , Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1986.
• Black, Lydia T. and Pierce, Richard A., Russian America and the Finns , in: Terra (Los Angeles) 29, Nos. 2-3 (Winter / Spring), 1990/1991, pp. 18-29.
• Christensen, Annie Constance (Ed.), Letters from the Governor's Wife: a View of Russian Alaska 1859 - 1862 , Aarhus University Press, 2005. [The editor is the great-granddaughter of Johan Hampus Furuhjelm]