Nikolay Yakovlevich Rosenberg

Nikolay Yakovlevich Rosenberg (1807–1857) was a Jewish Russian naval officer assigned as chief manager of the Russian-American Company, effectively Governor of Russian America, from 1850 to 1853. Mount Rosenberg, a 3,050-foot peak on Baranof Island, was named for him.

A number of Jewish traders and furriers worked for the Russian-American Company, as well as Jews who had been exiled to Siberia by the Tsar. German Jewish settlers were important to development of Sitka and other Alaska settlements.

Rosenberg was a Russian naval officer when he was appointed in 1850 as chief manager of the Russian-American Company and effectively Governor of Russian America. During his three years of overseeing company operations from New Archangel, Rosenberg "proved especially inept at maintaining good relationships with the Tlingits."

His leadership so antagonised the Sitka Tlingit that a skirmish took place outside the settlement. Rosenberg later earned the enmity of the Stikine River-based Tlingit for failure to warn them of the hostile intentions of a Sitka band of Tlingit. Rosenberg was replaced by Aleksandr Ilich Rudakov in 1853. He did not complete what was by then a standard 5-year term as governor. Serving from 1850 to 1853, Rosenberg was the first chief manager of the Russian-American Company since Semyon Yanovsky to be replaced before the end of his term.

• Rosenberg is portrayed as a character in Ivan Doig's historical novel The Sea Runners (2013), which begins in Russian America in 1853.

• Ivan Doig, The Sea Runners, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013

• Mount Rosenberg, a 3,050-foot peak on Baranof Island, was named in 1935 for Governor Rosenberg

• [https://books.google.com/books?id=0y48AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA816&lpg=PA816&dq=Nikolay+Yakovlevich+Rosenberg&source=bl&ots=AUwrjdb43f&sig=kBFXr9x-tbzRJpqMHr9Pgf_kOjk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihlrj7wYvQAhVFPiYKHQG9DSsQ6AEIRDAI#v=onepage&q=Nikolay%20Yakovlevich%20Rosenberg&f=false Donald J. Orth, Dictionary of Alaska Place Names], US Geological Survey, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949/1967, p. 816