FINNS: An Oral History - "Two Norwegian Seals"

Becoming Americans - Mildred (Somero) Kuusisto Interview

FINNS: An Oral History of Finnish-Americans in New Hampshire’s Monadnock Region

Excerpted from FINNS: An Oral History... by Patricia Kangas Ktistes, 1997, all rights reserved.

Becoming Americans - Mildred (Somero) Kuusisto

Mildred (Somero) Kuusisto  

I’m going to translate “Leander’s Trip to America,” the story of how my grandfather Leander  Somero emigrated. Leander dictated this story to one of his sons. Leander and my grandmother  Amanda Siltala established the Somero family in New Ipswich in 1904. And although this is only one  family’s story, it is typical of what happened to many of the Finnish people thronging to America:  

Asias and Anna Juhaninpoika (Johnson) Somero were the parents of Michael,  Leander, and Opas Somero. The boys worked for their father on a farm in Ylivieska,  Finland. Their father lost much of his estate because he had co-signed a loan for a  friend who didn’t make the payments. So the barn was empty, the cattle gone, and the  sons couldn’t work for their father anymore Times were oppressive under the rule of  Czar Nicholas.  

Leander and Amanda Siltala were married in 1881; Leander and his brothers joined a  group going to Ishpeming, Michigan, through Calumet. Amanda had just given birth  to her first child so she waited in Finland until Leander could send for her. And so the  three brothers, one wife, and one child went. The ticket cost $18. Immigrants went to  find jobs in copper mines, lumber mills, or farms. The travelers left Ylivieska in June  of 1882 and stopped in Liverpool, England, for about three weeks while they waited  for a boat to America. The boat was quite small, the beds uncomfortable, the food not  what they were used to. They were often sick, but they survived although there were  some who didn’t.  

On July 1, they arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, where shipping agents tried to coax  them to work there for $2 a day each. But they said, “No, let’s keep going to  Ishpeming as long as that’s what we planned. By the time they reached Champion,  Michigan, to transfer to a train going to Calumet, the wife who had come along had  lost her ticket stub. Leander said, “Take mine. You go on. I’ll wait until someone  comes to get me.”  

The station was in an isolated area. The stationmaster only came to the station when a  train was expected. Then he left right after transfers were made. Leander was thinking  he could stay overnight at the station. But the stationmaster would not let him. He told  Leander, who must have looked pretty messy waiting there: “Out.”  

Leander was alone and scared. He could not speak any English and had no money. He  had heard there were colored people in America who killed whites. But he had seen  which way the train went toward Calumet, so he started walking in that direction.  Soon Leander met a black man along the tracks, so he went to the other side, but the  black man didn’t do anything to hurt him. That made Leander feel better.  

A terrible storm came up and Leander found a hollow tree split open, so he went  inside it until the storm blew over. He walked some more and came to a town and saw  lights. He found a Finnish-speaking man who gave him food, kept him overnight,  bought him a ticket, and put him on the next train. The trains moved once a day,  coming and going. Leander finally got to Calumet, but work was hard to find. People  told him that if he walked to the next town, he could get a job in the building trades.  He went there, but the foreman said, “Out. No work.” 

But Leander would not leave. He went and sat on the company’s tool shed and  watched the others work for hours. Finally the foreman put a shovel in his hand and  said, “Okay. Go to work” and showed him where to dig. Leander said, “Now I am  finally in America!” Somehow he got a tent and lived in it for the rest of the summer  but by October the weather got so cold he had to leave. He walked back to Calumet  and found work at a lumber business. He found his brothers and many other Finns. It  took him two years to establish a household and save enough to buy Amanda’s ticket.    

Amanda left Ylivieska on August 8, 1884, and arrived in America September 16.  Their children would be John, Michael, Jennie, Leonard, Edward, Matti, Albert,  William, Eino, Annie, Nick, Alina, and Lydia. After John, all the children were born in  Michigan except Lydia, who was born in New Ipswich, New Hampshire.  

There was a lot of tragedy in the mines in Michigan then; men were injured and killed all the  time. So Amanda told Leander she wanted to go somewhere else with their growing sons. A man from  Fitchburg, Massachusetts, came scouting to the Calumet area and told the people there in Finnish,  “Come with me. I’ve got a good farm for you. Cheap.” Farms in New England were emptying out  because of the western movements of Yankees. You know, ‘Go West, Young Man.’  

Leander left his family and came by train to see a farm with hundreds of acres on  Locke Road in New Ipswich. He bought the farm for $1,600 and got the loan through  Mr. Walter Thayer [a private banker.] The deed shows Mr. Thayer’s signature and an  ‘X’ to mark Leander’s and Amanda’s approval. Leander and Amanda came with seven  of their children because the older ones didn’t want to come right away.  

The family arrived at the Greenville train depot on July 4, 1904. It took many years to  pay off the mortgage. Leander died in 1924 and Amanda in 1925. Leander’s brothers  stayed in Michigan. They sent for their widowed mother from Finland and she  remarried in Michigan but the family lost contact with her. Leander’s brother Michael  and his wife had many children but of them only Fred and William moved to New  Ipswich. The family also lost contact with Opas.  

Amanda’s first remark when she stepped off the train in Greenville, New Hampshire, was,  “Tänne vuoren rotkoon sinä toit minut!” [Into these mountain crevices you brought me!] and also in  Finnish, “What an awful place!” But back then, although the women bawled the men out, the men  were the bosses. You went where your husband said. And the women said, “Amen,” even if they were  mad. Now Amanda and Leander’s farm on Locke Road is in the fifth generation of the Somero family.  

My stepmother was born in this country, but she had the idea that she would preserve the  Finnish language forever and a day. She wouldn’t let us talk English at all at home. In Detroit, the Italians had their section; the Jewish had theirs; the Finnish had theirs. And there was a lot of  prejudice. My stepmother would say, “Se on semmonen Pollakki,” [Those Poles!] and, in Finnish,  “Those Italians with their black eyes and hooked noses!”  

 It was a hard time because it was becoming another society. More blending. We had to learn  that old attitude was out. When we got out to work in the world, we had to change these ideas fast. We  learned to copy the Jews and Italians in order to pick up English. I heard an old Italian man hollering  to his dog, “Come here, you son o’magummana!” and I learned that. Finns usually like Jewish  bakeries, but my stepmother was such a stickler, she would only go to the Finnish bakery and Finnish  butcher and the Finnish this and the Finnish that.  

She told me to go to the Finnish butcher for kaksi Norjan silakka. You were well off if you  could get two for a quarter and could feed a whole family by putting these in a chowder with potatoes.  I must have been around 10 years old. I went marching down the street thinking, “Kaksi Norjan  silakka. I’m not saying that! I’m going to say, ‘Two Norwegian…’ Let’s see, silakka. That must  translate into ‘seals.’” So I said to the butcher, “My mother wants two Norwegian seals.” He said,  “You’d better go home and ask your mother again what she wants.” So I pranced the block back home  and said, “He doesn’t know what you want.” She said, “You say it in Finnish! Kaksi Norjan silakka!” I  went back and shouted to the butcher, “TWO NORWEGIAN SEALS!” So he said, “Okay, little girl,  I’ll take you along the barrels.” Everything was in barrels. Fish. Sugar. I pointed to one and said,  “Those are what she wants.” He said, “Those are herrings.” So I ran home and threw them on the  counter. I didn’t tell my stepmother how I got them because she would have pulled my hair.

[Next - Earl Somero and Patricia (Barney) Hoard]