THE HUMBOLD STORY: Three Generations of a Coeur Freshwater Pioneer Family – Grocers, Sportsmen and Soldiers | Outpost of the Lost Coast

Alexander Kerr’s family first came to Humboldt in the 1880s and established the Freshwater Store in 1894. Harold Kerr, a second-generation son, served in World War I, and a third-generation son, Gerald, served in World War II. All three generations operated the Freshwater Store from 1894 to 1967. This is the story of the Kerr family, their military service and service to the community through the Freshwater Store.

Born in France in 1854, Alexander Kerr later emigrated to Nova Scotia, where he met and married Nellie Harrigan. The newly married couple arrived in Humboldt County in 1880. Alexander Kerr took a job as a mule skinner and horse carrier for the Alexander Brizard Company, transporting domestic goods and merchandise from the headquarters of the A. Brizard store in Arcata to various Brizard stores located in the gold and silver mining communities of the east.

Brizard then appointed Alexander Kerr as manager of the Brizard store in New River (Old Denny) in Trinity County, where Kerr also became postmaster. From 1883 to 1896, Alexander Kerr was general manager of three separate Brizard stores located on New River: in Francis; in Ker (named after Alexander Ker); and White Rock. By the 1890s, Alexander Kerr was ready to start his own business, and in 1894 he and Nellie Kerr purchased the Freshwater Store from the McGeorge family. (A daughter, Miss Edith McGeorge, was an English teacher and vice-principal of Eureka High School for thirty-odd years until 1936.)

The Freshwater Store was located in present-day Freshwater City, seven miles east of Eureka on the Kneeland/Freshwater Road, near Freshwater Creek. The Freshwater Store served a large area surrounded by the timber plantations of the Excelsior Lumber Company and the Pacific Lumber Company. The Coeur Freshwater store could be reached by train, mule, horse and wagon.

According to Hazel Mullin’s (Earl Mullin’s wife) 1892 memoir on file at the Humboldt County Historical Society, there were seven saloons in the Freshwater community during those years. She writes: “The white building next door was another saloon; there were seven in the city.”

Alexander and Nellie Kerr had four children: a daughter, Marie (Lambert); son Harold; daughter, Lena (Bowers); and a son, Ernest.

Harold Kerr, born in 1895, served in the US Army during World War I in 1917-1918, guarding the port of Vladivostok, an open seaport in Siberia, Russia on the Sea of ​​Japan, for the Allies.

After his discharge from the Army in 1919, Harold returned to Humboldt County and married Helen French of Eureka. Helen’s father, William (Bill) French, was a police officer for the city of Eureka, serving as a traffic officer in the 1920s and 30s.

In 1920, Harold and Helen Coeur operated the Freshwater Store. Alexander Coeur died the following year.

Harold and Helen French Kehr had two children: Gerald A. Kerr and Virginia Kerr. Daughter Virginia married Francis Cook of Petrolia and settled on the Cook Ranch where she raised three sons.

Gerald “Jerry” Kerr, born in 1921, attended Garfield Grammar School in Freshwater and graduated from Eureka High School in 1940. As a lumberjack in Eureka, Jerry was involved in four sports: football, basketball, baseball and track. On the track, he was the Humboldt County track champion in 1939 and 1940 in the quarter mile and second in the half mile. In football, as a sophomore linebacker in 1937, he was the backup behind greats Don Durdan and Len Longholm as the Loggers won the Northern California championship, defeating San Jose 14-7. In the fall of 1938 and 1939, he was a midfielder. In basketball, Jerry was the starting point guard for two years. In baseball, he was a pitcher and outfielder for coach Les Muniem.

In the fall of 1940, Jerry entered Humboldt State College to major in communications. His academic goal was to become a radio announcer. In the second year of HSC, the events of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 plunged America into World War II. In January 1942, Jerry hitchhiked to San Francisco with the intention of becoming an Army Air Corps pilot. However, outside the Ferry Building on Market Street, the army line was long. While waiting in the Army line, Jerry noticed a shorter line with a large “Fly Navy” sign.

Soon he was in the military, then passed physical and mental tests. He passed and was advised: “We will contact you.” He returned to Humboldt, and in February 1942 a contact was made. Jerry traveled by rail and bus to Bishop, California for the first of several flight training programs. He completed ground school with flight mechanics and transferred to the pre-flight course at St Mary’s Moraga campus for three months (no flying).

At Livermore, he completed eighty hours of initial flight training in a two-seat open-cockpit Boeing Stearman. His instructor was Lieutenant James Cady of Humboldt County. Cady’s father was tender about the Trinidad Lighthouse. Cady was an athlete at HSC and later coached and taught at Arcata High School.

Jerry was sent to Cuddihy Field in Corpus Christi, Texas for flight school training, including night and formation flying. In Kingsville, Texas, he received advanced training in flying target shooting, dive bombing, and navigation. He was commissioned as a US Naval Aviator and was assigned to the Naval Air Station in Opalocka, Florida for Navy training on the Brewster Buffalo. Considerable time was spent on the landing of field aircraft carriers. From Opa Locka, he was sent to Chicago to make his first aircraft carrier landing on Lake Michigan. The Navy had two converted ferries “Sable” and “Wolverine”. All Navy pilots who go to sea duty will make six carrier landings on one of these ships.

After a short leave home in Freshwater, Jerry was assigned to Naval Air Station San Diego. In July 1943 he volunteered for Alameda to join the VF II “Sundowners” fighter squadron, which had just returned from the Guadalcanal campaign. Here he flew the Navy’s newest and most popular fighter, the Grumman Hellcat. The Grumman Hellcat had six .50-caliber machine guns in the wings, eight five-inch rockets under the wings, and could carry a bomb weighing up to one thousand pounds.

In Alameda, Jerry was close enough to fly home on weekends. “We had a good skipper,” Jerry recalls, “and we could fly the plane within a 300-mile radius. At the time, our local airport in McKinleyville was a small Naval Air Station under Alameda, so I could fly home.” On the way to McKinleyville Airfield, Jerry announced his arrival by flying over Freshwater, looping and flipping over his hometown. “If the Navy saw this,” Jerry recalls, “they would put me on the ground and put me on the end of the brush!”

Jerry’s fighter squadron consisted of forty-five pilots and they were joined by thirty-five dive bomber pilots and thirty torpedo bomber pilots. The three squadrons proceeded to Hawaii and met the newly built aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-12) in Holland, New Guinea. Their vessel was named after an earlier Hornet (CV-8) that was sunk in the Battle of Guadalcanal in the fall of 1942.

Hornet proceeded to invade the Philippine Islands, supporting General Douglas MacArthur. Jerry’s fighter squadron supported the invasions of Okinawa, Leyte Gulf, Manila Bay, Luzon, Lingayen Gulf, and Mindanao. They also carried out strikes on mainland China and Indochina.

As a Grumman Hellcat pilot, Jerry Kerr recalls that the Grumman aircraft had better armament and pilot protection during combat than the Japanese Mitsubishi Zero. It successfully shot down several Japanese Zeros and supported US ground forces during the invasion of the islands.

In January 1945, the USS Hornet, under the command of Third Fleet Commander Admiral William “Bull” Gelsey, proceeded to the South China Sea, searching for Japanese ships and hiding along the coast of Indochina. Jerry recalls that he and his air group sank five Japanese oil tankers, one destroyer, and one escort destroyer off Cam Ranh Bay on the coast of Indochina. Jerry Kerr, Second Lieutenant, was discharged from the Navy in December 1945.

After the war, Jerry returned to Humboldt State College, graduating in 1948 with a degree in communications. In 1948-1952, he was an announcer and newscaster on radio KIEM, Shosta and E-Street, Yuryka.

Then in 1952, Jerry became the third generation Kerr to own and operate the Freshwater Store. Of course, as the son of a family grocer, he had worked in a store before, but not very successfully. As Jerry recalls:

When I was high school age, I worked for my dad for a bit. I was a peddler. My dad had a pickup truck to deliver groceries to ranches around Freshwater. Well, I had a problem with those pickups. I broke one, then another. I was demoted to shelf storage. My dad took a rather dim view of it all.

But these problems were put behind him and Jerry ran the store successfully until 1967 when he sold the Freshwater Store. The long Ker family institute is finally over. The shop building, now closed, still stands next to Garfield School on Freshwater Road.

In 1965, Jerry became a licensed stockbroker in Eureka and retired from Lehman Brothers in 1988. Jerry and wife Dorothy (Rezzonico) had three children: Connie Lee; Jeff; and Marsha Kerr. Dottie died in 1988 after a successful career at the College of the Redwoods. Jerry and his second wife, Georganne (Lenz), now live near Baywood Golf Course in Bayside, where they enjoy socializing and golfing.

For seventy-three years, the Kerr family operated the Freshwater Store, a small business but second only to the famous A. Brizard Company as a “family grocer” in longevity. Thanks to the service of three generations of Kyors as storekeepers, athletes and soldiers, they left a legacy. The Ker family deserves our regards.

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ed. note from 2024: A year after this article was published, Gerry Kerr died at the age of 93. The Freshwater Store building is still there. He seems to be in good shape.

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The above story is from the Spring 2014 issue Historian of Humboldtmagazine in Humboldt Historical Society. Printed here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization dedicated to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive new numbers throughout the year Historian of Humboldt at this link.