In 1867, Sam Jerisich, Peter Goldsmith, and John Farrague were fishing in Puget Sound when bad weather led them to seek shelter in Gig Harbor, where they decided to settle as the first three white residents of the harbor, alongside Native American people living in a village at the head of the bay. Sam, born in Kotor, Montenegro, in 1833, had been a sailor who rounded Cape Horn three times before reaching Vancouver Island, Canada, where he met and married Anna Willits, believed to have been a member of the Penelakut tribe of Thetis Island, British Columbia. Sam brought Anna and her infant daughter, Caroline, to Gig Harbor, where the family first lived in a one-room cabin of split cedar boards on the east side of the bay amid dense forest and underbrush. Sam cleared land for a garden, while Anna shot bear and deer, dressed meat for food, and picked and dried berries, and together they made fishing nets by hand. Sam built a smoke house and a rendering plant, then rowed dogfish oil and smoked fish to Steilacoom to sell, beginning the commercial fishing industry in Gig Harbor. The family later built a larger home on the west side of the bay, Sam and Anna had eight children, and their descendants continue to engage in commercial fishing from Gig Harbor.