Finns in Minnesota

Lake Superior’s North Shore

82  people oF minnesota Range—less than five percent of the entire Finland-born population. The largest numbers lived in Eveleth (97), Hibbing (93), Chisholm (74), Virginia (49), and Crosby (41). Twothirds of the employed males (155 of 248) were engaged in some facet of mining: eighty-three in mine-related construction and transportation, fifty-four as miners,and seventeen as supervisors and engineers. (Edward Smith,a Finland Swede,was St.Louis County’s mine inspector from 1917 to 1941.) The ninety-four men who engaged in non-mining employment included forty laborers; twenty-four carpenters; sixteen working in other skilled trades; eight merchants, supervisors, and professionals ; and six transportation workers.Later,after many of Eveleth’s Finland Swedes moved out of mining into house construction,theyreportedlyformed“amonopolyonbuilding work in the city.” Just thirteen Iron Range females were employed as servants or cooks in 1920.135 Lake Superior’s North Shore Finland Swedes outnumbered Finns in most of the diminutive North Shore settlements that extended from French River toward the Canadian border. By 1920, the French River area (Duluth Township) was populated by twentyseven Finland Swedes, while another seven resided a few miles to the northeast in Knife River.Farther northeast was the Lake County enclave of Larsmont,the only North Shore settlementwheretheimmigrantFinlandSwedes(18,with50 American-born children) outnumbered Norwegians (12) and Swedes (8). Shortly after arriving in 1909, the Finland FinlandSwedesHerman andJohanna Shjal,who immigratedto MilleLacsCounty’sBogusBrook Township duringtheearly1890s, movedto a tenacre truck farminnortheastern Duluth in 1913.The Shjalstransportedtheirhand-washedvegetables to a Duluth market in a 1913ModelTFord,which was alsoused to pulla plowand cultivator. Despite thefarm’s demanding physicalwork, theShjals still refusedpublic assistance wheneach was seventysixin 1941, theyear thephoto was taken. the Finland swedes  83 SwedespetitionedtohavetheirsettlementnamedLarsmo— the home community in Finland for several of them; however ,whenDuluthandIronRangeRailroadofficialsinsisted on Larsmont, the residents“had to take it the railroad way.” Another forty-four Finland Swedes were situated between Two Harbors and Larsmont, Two Harbors itself was home to thirty-seven,and twenty-five resided farther northeast in SilverCreekTownship.Overall,158FinlandSwedeslivedbetween French River and Silver Creek in 1920.136 Almost all Finland Swede males in Two Harbors were railroad or dock workers. The small settlements and rural areas where most North Shore Finland Swedes resided, however,included lumberjacks who worked for the AlgerSmith Lumber Company and smaller logging firms and others who pursued fishing, farming, and a few public and private service jobs. At one time as many as fifty North Shore Finland Swedes, including several families, spent their summers on Tobin Harbor fishing camps, located at Architect Anton Werner Lignell Undoubtedly the first Finland-born professional architect to practice in Minnesota was Anton Werner Lignell (1867–1954), who emigrated from the ÅlandIslandstoButte,Montana,in1888.Arrivingin Duluth in 1903, Lignell established a brief architectural partnership with Frederick German, a collaborationthatresultedindesignsforseveralofDuluth ’s revival-style buildings, including the Glen Avon Churchandlargeresidencesintheeasternmansion district. Lignell also designed two Minnesota courthouses , both now listed in the National Register of Historic Places: Cook County (with Clyde Kelly) in 1911–12, and the original (now privately owned) RoseauCountycourthouse(withRobertLoebeck)in 1913–14. Lignell designed the Duluth Steam Bath Company building in 1921 and continued to practice until the late 1930s; he later moved to Hawaii, dyingthereattheageofeighty-seven.xiv This 1910eclectic mission-style house, shown here in 2011, was designed by AntonWerner LignellforSwedish immigrantand miningtechnologyentrepreneurGust Carlsonand his wife,Hannah.It is one ofthefinesthomesin themansion districtofEast Duluth. 84  people oF minnesota the northeastern end of Lake Superior ’s Isle Royale. Art Mattson, a second-generation Finland Swede, was the only commercial fisherman who retained his camp after Isle Royale National Park was established in 1940; until his death in 1982, Mattson fished and assisted Tobin Harbor’s “summer people.” Although not a commercial fisherman , his son Louis still holds a special-use permit to the Mattson camp.137 An additional thirty-one Finland Swedes (and twelve Finns) also lived in Minnesota’s northeastern-most county, Cook. Most of these Finland Swedes resided inland from the North Shore, between Grand Marais and Hovland, where they engaged in subsistence homesteading and also worked as part-time loggers and fishermen. The twenty Finland Swedes in the Colville area, as well as the six residing close to Hovland,“cooperated both out of necessity and friendship”with their Norwegian and Swedish neighbors in developing community institutions and maintaining roads and bridges.138 Among the first Colville homesteaders were John (Jacobson) Jackson and his wife...