Peter Buschmann-familien immigrerte til staten Washington i 1891 fra Lurvika i Aure på Nordmøre for å søke muligheter for fiske- og laksepakkingsindustri i sørøst i Alaska. Buschmann-familien bodde opprinnelig i Tacoma, Port Townsend, Fairhaven og senere i Seattle, mens de tilbrakte fiskesesongene i Alaska.

Peter Buschmann er kjent som grunnleggeren av Petersburg, "Little Norway," Alaska ved å bosette 40 dekar land hvor han bygde et sagbruk og hermetikkfabrikk. I 1902 eide og drev Peter Buschmann flere hermetikkvirksomheter under bedriftsnavnene: Quadra Packing Company, Icy Straits Packing Company, Petersburg Packing Company og Chatham Straits Packing Company.

Etter ti år med økonomisk suksess solgte Peter sine Alaska-interesser til Pacific Packing and Navigation Co.. Han ble betalt i aksjer og obligasjoner som ble verdiløse bare et år senere da Pacific Packing and Navigation Co. gikk konkurs. Peter Buschmann, overveldet av økonomiske tap og ansvar for å oppmuntre andre til å investere i sin virksomhet, tok sitt eget liv i 1903, og etterlot kona Petra og barna Christian, August, Elisabeth, Sophie, Solveig, Eigil, Trygve, Ruth og Leif.

Se YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IxFBEXOHCE

Se også film fra NRK/Erik Bye sitt besøk i Petersburg i 1968:

https://tv.nrk.no/program/FOLA68000168

August Peters. Buschmann forteller:

I came over here with my parents from Norway in 1891. After arriving here we became interested in fishing and the salting of fish near Port Townsend, at Scow Bay, for a short period of time. Then we moved to Port Townsend and fished and salted and smoked fish there for a short time.

Then we moved to Bellinghamand and did the same thing there. While we were there we put in the first pile trap that was put in on Lummi Island, that was operated by hand, with a hand windlass on a log float, and we also operated a small floating trap on Lopez Island. That was in 1892.

In 1893 I went to Alaska for the first time with my father and I fished halibut on a halibut schooner in Alaska out of Ketchikan. And later on in the season we fished halibut and salmon, dogfish, and sharks. That fall my father located a cannery site in Mink Bay off of Boca De Quadra Inlet in southeastern Alaska.

In the spring of 1894 I accompanied my father to Alaska again, where he built his first cannery, in 1894 in Mink Bay, operated it through the season and packed about 10,000 cases. We operated there for several years and then my father located a saltery site in Taku Inlet, close to Juneau, Alaska, and operated a saltery there for several years.

We located a trade and manufacturing site at Petersburg in 1896, and commenced construction of a cannery that was first operated in 1898. From there I was transferred to Sitkah [Sitkoh] Bay, to construct a new cannery there at a location now called Chatham, Alaska, it was called at that time, Sitkoh Bay, in 1900.

(Buschmann omits the fact that during the 1899 and 1900 salmon seasons he operated a salmon saltery at Bartlett Cove, in Glacier Bay, where he also constructed a cannery building.)

Peter's son Eigil Buschmann became the general manager of the Northwestern Fisheries Company, who purchased the bankrupt Pacific Packing and Navigation Co.. In 1922, Eigil and his partner Haakon Friele started the Nakat Packing Corporation, a subsidiary of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. To begin operations, Eigil sold his personally owned cannery site at Hidden Inlet to the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co.

Eigil installed a row of generators to provide power to the cannery, secondary to his dream of hydro-generation from a large nearby stream. In 1924, Eigil built the cannery at Waterfall on Meares Passage, on the west coast of Prince of Wales Island and it became the largest cannery in the world of its time. In 1941, 256,000 cases of salmon were processed at the Waterfall cannery alone.

Eigil Buschmann's and Haakon Friele's Nakat Packing Corporation owned and operated six canneries in southeast Alaska with 800 employees, producing on average 250,000-300,000 cases of salmon annually, and 650,000 cases on peak years. Cans were largely distributed to the A & P (Atlantic & Pacific) national grocery store chain. Eigil Buschmann continued as Nakat Packing Corporation's general superintendent for the remainder of his career until retiring in 1954, at age 68.

https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv93322

Rasmus Martinuss. Enge f. 1861 tok over Nerbakken Leira, Tustna. Skjøte i 1895.
Han dreiv forretning med fiskeoppkjøp attåt gardsdrifta, men det gikk dårlig med økonomien og han måtte selge garden. Etter dette reiste han på storsildfiske med Magnus Skjølberg. Dei var på Titranhavet under storstormen 14. oktober 1899, men han kom seg i land med skadet kne og nok penger til amerikabilett.
Han utvandra til Amerika 23. mai 1900, og slo seg ned i Petersburg, Alaska hvor han kjøpte opp jord der han bygde og dreiv 2 kinoer (stumfilm) og gjorde gode penger på dette. Barnebarnet har fortalt at Rasmus var kinomaskinist og tok seg en dram eller to under forestillingen. Det hendte visstnok at  da ny filmrull skulle settes på maskina ble det spilt film baklengs. Det skjedde også at filmvisningen ble avlyst da Rasmus var «drunk».

Se Youtube.com:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jidEq2j5W2k

Utsikt over Petersburg fra vannet, august 1918, av John Nathan Cobb

Petersburg ble opprinnelig innlemmet som en by 2. april 1910. Byen hadde tiltrukket seg stort sett innvandrere av skandinavisk opprinnelse, og ga dermed Petersburg kallenavnet "Lille Norge". På en av bryggene ble Sons of Norway-hallen bygget. Tre andre hermetikkfabrikker ble bygget og de fire har drevet kontinuerlig siden. Med etableringen av hermetikkfabrikken begynte Alaskan Natives, inkludert sjef John Lott, å jobbe der og bo året rundt på stedet.

https://www.apalaska.com/alaskas-little-norway

https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/alaska/alaskas-little-norway-ak/