History of the Finns in Michigan

536 Pages·2001·58.98 MB·English

by  Armas K E Holmio

Dr. Armas K. E. Holmio, archivist,
Suomi College.
Ellen M. Ryynanen
Wayne State University Press Detroit Translated by
GREAT LAKES BOOKS
A complete listing of the books in this series
can be found online at http://wsupress.wayne.edu
PHILIP P. MASON, Editor
Department of History, Wayne State University
DR. CHARLES K. HYDE, Associate Editor
Department of History, Wayne State University
Copyright © 2001 by Finlandia University,
Hancock, Michigan. All rights are reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
14 13 12 11 10 10 9 8 7 6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Holmio, Armas Kustaa Ensio, 1897—
History of the Finns in Michigan / by Armas K.E. Holmio ; translated
by Ellen M. Ryynanen.
p. cm.—(Great Lakes books)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8143-2974-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
TSBN-10: 0-8143-2974-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Finnish Americans—Michigan—History. I. Title. II. Series.
F575.F5 H65 2001
977.4'00494541—dc21 00-051330
Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are provided courtesy of the
Finnish American Historical Archives, Finlandia University,
Hancock, Michigan.
Published with the generous assistance of the Finlandia Foundation Trust
ISBN 978-0-8143-2790-6 (cl)
ISBN 978-0-8143-2974-0 (pb)
eISBN 978-0-8143-4000-4
Contents
Foreword by A. William Hoglund 7
1 The Origin of the Finns 17
2 Early Emigration from Finland 3 2
3 More Recent Emigration from Finland 48
4 Tfre Firs* Finn in Michigan 72
5 The Copper Country 16
6 Gogebic County 127
7 Marquette, Dickinson, and Iron Counties 133
8 The Eastern Counties of the Upper Peninsula 144
9 Lower Michigan 162
10 Churches 111
11 Zfte Z?£re and Decline of the Temperance Movement 219
12 77;e JfoVe and Decline of the Labor Movement 273
13 The Knights and Ladies ofKaleva 3 04
14 The Cooperative Movement 329
15 Cultural and Educational Achievements 3 66
16 Tfte Swedish Finns in Michigan 405
17 Finland and the Finns of Michigan 413
18 From What Parishes Did They Come? 441
Notes 451
Index 485

Foreword
After World War II Armas K. E. Holmio and other Finnish
Americans began to explore their immigrant past. The immigrant gen-
eration was fast disappearing along with its organizations and news-
papers. During the heyday of immigrant life before the war, few
individuals had the resources or the time to preserve systematically evi-
dence of the Finnish experience. Because the present demanded much
from them in coping with the vicissitudes of living in a new land, it left
immigrants little time to think how the future might view them. Within
the two decades after the war, however, Holmio and others made a
frantic effort to salvage the evidence needed to prepare historical ac-
counts of their past.
In 1945 Suomi College in Hancock, Michigan (renamed Fin-
landia University in July 2000), renewed its erstwhile work of collecting
Finnish American historical materials on the occasion of its fiftieth an-
niversary. The collecting had started in 1932, but the Great Depression
stalled the work. The Suomi Synod, or Finnish American Evangelical
Lutheran Church, which operated the college and its seminary, lacked
resources to continue it. Soon after the war's end, however, the college
reconsidered the matter and began to plan the establishment of the
Finnish American Historical Archives.
Professor John I. Kolehmainen of Heidelberg College (Ohio)
spent 1945-1946 at the college and assisted the planners of the archives.
Kolehmainen, the leading American scholar of Finnish immigration,
also surveyed the materials held by the college and prepared a biblio-
graphical guide of immigrant publications. In 1947 the college pub-
lished his guide under the title The Finns in America.1 In 1950 the
Finnish American Historical Archives finally acquired its own room,
which was tended on a part-time basis by a college librarian.
Armas Holmio came on the scene in 1946 just after Koleh-
mainen completed his stay in Hancock. The college had invited him
to become professor of history, particularly church history. Assuming
8 Foreword
responsibility as archivist of the Finnish American Historical Archives
in 1954, Holmio also later served as a seminary dean. Born in Finland
in 1897, he had studied at the Theological Department of the Univer-
sity of Helsinki and was ordained in 1921. Before coming to the United
States in 1926, he began his professional career as literature director of
the Finnish Missionary Society from 1921 to 1929 and then served as
Finnish seamen's pastor in San Francisco from 1930 to 1933, and as
pastor of Finnish congregations in Boston and Cape Cod, Massachu-
setts, from 1933 to 1943. During World War II he served the U.S.
Army as a chaplain and worked also with its military intelligence
branch. In addition, in 1940 he received a doctorate in theology from
Boston University, writing a dissertation that was published as The Lu-
theran Reformation and the Jews: The Birth of the Protestant Jewish Mis-
sions.2 Holmio died in 1977.
When Holmio arrived in America in the mid-1920s, the influx
of immigrants from Finland had peaked. In 1920 the number of foreign-
born Finns in the United States reached its highest level at 149,824.
Thereafter their numbers declined as U.S. immigration policies, the
Great Depression, and other factors slowed the influx to an infinitesi-
mal level. By 1940 the immigrant generation numbered 117,210, and
in 1950, 95,506; ten years later it was only 67,395, or less than half the
total in 1920.
Although the immigrant generation managed to maintain its
community activities—such as churches, labor halls, and newspapers—
at a high level until the 1940s, it could no longer do so after World War
II. Their community life lost much of its vitality because of declining
numbers. U.S.-born Finnish Americans did not always embrace the
cultural activities of their parents, and during the war they began dis-
persing from immigrant centers to seek work elsewhere. Finns reduced
the level of their institutional life: labor halls were closed; the Pdivalehti
was the first of several major newspapers to suspend operations; the
Suomi Synod merged in 1962 with the Lutheran Church in America;
and the Central Cooperative Wholesale combined in 1963 with a non-
Finnish organization. The immigrant era was fast closing.
Even before the immigrant era had reached its plateau, how-
ever, Finnish Americans were occasionally exploring their past. They
did so not so much to preserve a golden age as to mark milestones in
their lives. Their history began in the 1860s with the arrival of the
earliest immigrants from the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland. Immi-
grant numbers peaked between 1899 and the eve of World War I partly
because of political unrest and the lack of land and jobs in Finland.
After the war Finland achieved independence and underwent a bitter