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Obtaining Ollie’s Finns in Newport, New Hampshire

While I admittedly have not have had time to properly read the book yet, Kerrin and I now each have our own copies of The Finns in Newport, New Hampshire. After what has felt like a week of not making a lot of progress, I finally have the major secondary source that all other secondary sources I have found cite to create their own articles about the Finns in New Hampshire.  What Kerrin and I have found they did not like going to Manchester, New Hampshire to do buisness, because other immigrant groups were already in the city.  Instead they liked to do all of their business  in Fitchburg, Massachusetts because it was already home to a Finnish community. Admittedly I have run into this information in other sources but it was interesting skimming through and seeing it in Ollie’s book. I have also have finally learned about where Olli Turpeinen got his information from and what he used for sources.

A lot of the information Olli Turpeinen obtained was from members of the community. He mentions on page iii some of those names, “Thanks are due to Richard Benson for his photographs and knowledge of the Alto family; to Judy Charon for information about the Haverinen and Anderson families…” (p. iii). This means that Ollie interviewed many people to get his information, and that formed the basis for his book. Another place he got his information from a collection of tapes from Wisconsin. I’m very interested to see if Kerrin and I can get these tapes so that we can use them for our own project. One thing I also noticed is that some of the Finns Olli Turpeinen interviewed did not want to discuss some of the negative aspects of their community, as they preferred to keep those matters in house. This means that The Finns of NewportNew Hampshire will only be exploring some of the more positive aspects of the communities rather than the negatives. It is good to know that going into the book, because I will know what to expect.

Turpeinen, Olli. The Finns in Newport, New Hampshire,  United States: United States, 2000. Print.

Contract for Keene State College: Patrick Driscoll and Kerrin McTernan

  • Project Goals
  • This project aims to explore the Finnish Migration and immigration into New Hampshire.
  • The focus will be on towns from Newport, New Hampshire to Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
  • The goal is to explore the individuals who lived in already established communities and how they impacted the towns and farms they lived in/on.

 

  • Another goal is to see if the Finns still live in the towns they first arrived to in the 1880’s, and if their not where did they end up?

 

  • If we find out they went to other towns and communities outside of New Hampshire and Fitchburg, Massachusetts it will not be the focus of our project but we will mention it.

 

  • Tools to be Used.

 

  • Storymap is a tool that we plan to use to map out the communities the Finns lived in. Storymap will also be used to help locate geographically where these Finnish communities were/are on the map.

 

  • We plan on using extensive pages to by town, that way any visitor to the website can see where these families are from.

 

  • Goals for Kerrin and Patrick

 

  • By next Friday on September 29th Kerrin and Patrick plan on having read most of Ollie’s book The Finns in Newport, New Hampshire        

 

  • We also plan to on September 29th visit Newport, New Hampshire to see what we can find in the town, and also to get photos of the town.

 

  •  We plan on adding all of this information to our project website on  October 2nd.

 

  • Schedule of Milestones

 

  • September 21st: Read half of Ollie Turpienen’s book The Finns in Newport, New Hampshire

 

  • September 28th: Finish Ollie Turpienen’s book

 

  •  October 5th: Have the Newport, New Hampshire page on the project website up and running and about half of the information we have on Newport available on the site.

 

  • October 12th: Have the Newport, New Hampshire page completed. Kerrin and Patrick naturally expect more editing to do at this point, but the page will be completed with only minor adjustments at this point.

 

  • October 19th: Start the Fitchburg, Massachusetts page and find sources related to Finnish Immigration and Migration in that community.

 

  • October 26th: Have half the Fitchburg, Massachusetts page completed.

 

  • November 2nd: Have the Fitchburg, Massachusetts page completed.

 

  • November 9th: Create a Storymap page with all the towns we have run into in researching this project. Have about half that completed by this date.

 

  • November 16th: Finish the Storymap page.

 

  • November 23rd: Start to put the final touches on the project website.

 

  • November 30th: Complete the project.

Another Secondary Source: Another Insight

Chandler, Joan. “Newport’s Finnish People.” Accessed September 13, 2017.                                http://www.soonipi.com/TheFinns.html.

This article is a brief history of the Finns in Newport and pulls heavily from The Finns in Newport, NH  a book by Olli Turpeinen. This article covers a history of Finnish immigration into Newport New Hampshire. It explains that the view of some of the townfolk was that, “They were described by others as dour, moody, frugal, humorless; but among themselves they were animated” (p. 1). That having been said the Finns were still successful in having created a community for themselves in Newport, New Hampshire, a community that included sawmills, working in local factories and they owned several public a many more private saunas. Joan’s article even claims that a 1,000 of them were living in Newport by the 1920’s, a huge number for a small town in New Hampshire (p.1). These Finns never left the area, and their descendants still live in the town of Newport.

While searching for secondary sources, Kerrin and I ran into numerous different small towns in New Hampshire that the Finnish people have lived in. At some point in the project I plan on creating a story map that will show where all these places in New Hampshire are. None of them are that far from one another, but establishing geography is crucial. At the moment it seems like a more or less a north to south route between the towns of Newport, New Hampshire and Fitchburg, Massachusetts, which is just over the state line. The quote in Newport New Hampshire  states that, “While the local Finns felt at home in Newport and had no reason to venture far, they did visit Fitchburg, Massachusetts, which had become the center of Finnish activity in New England” (p. 1). Fitchburg, Massachusetts seems to serve as a southern terminus whereas Newport, New Hampshire was the Northern terminus. So far I have not found any articles to suggest they went elsewhere in New England, and I think to extend the project any further would make it lose focus.

Reading On Secondary Source

At the moment I only have access to one secondary source, as I need to get the rest scanned and sent in an email so I can access them at any time. The source I read was called Impossible Subjects  written by Mae M. Nagai which covers the immigration process from 1924 to 1965. While this book is not specifically about the Finnish it does serve as a resource for immigration history in the 20th century. Nagai discusses how a new closed policy of immigration was formed due to the new quota system, and the Johnson Reed Act of 1924. This new system of closed immigration was so vastly different from the open immigration policy that the United States had prior to the 1920’s, in fact according to Ngai, “Before the 1920’s immigration into the United States was numerically unrestricted…” (p. 18). Finland for example was now only allowed to have 569 people enter the United States in 1929 versus the the 65,721 allowed in from Great Britain and Northern Ireland (p. 28). The U.S was intentionally restricting Finnish migration and immigration to almost zero,  but tens of thousands were still allowed in from Great Britain. This means that the Finns migration into the U.S, and more specifically into New Hampshire, from Finland ended for a period, and provides an end date for my project with Kerrin.

What I plan on using this book for is seeing if a link can be established from the two letters written to and about Jacob Raitto and how immigration policy was forming at that time. The letters were written in 1918 and discusses trying to obtain a bank loan but Mr. Raitto cannot get a bank loan because he is not a naturalized U.S citizen. At the moment it is not clear what happens to Mr. Raitto next however, I will attempt to find out what happened to Mr. Raitto and if there are any further documents about him in the Chesire Historical Society.  This might establish what happened to one of the Finns in the Keene, New Hampshire area, and what happened to the rest of the Finns who  lived and possibly who still lives in the region to this day.

 

 

 

Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Print. 

Primary Sources. The Difficulty of Finding Them.

After extensive searching I have managed to find primary sources on the Finnish of New Hampshire. No amount of internet searching through databases such as JSTOR and Google would produce what I needed. So I walked to the Chesire Historical Society across from my campus to inquire if the had anything on immigration, and more specifically FInnish Immigration. To tell the truth I only expected to find one or two sources, but i got three books and three folders put right in front of me focused on the Finns in the area. As it turns out The Chesire Historical Society is currently working on a project about the Finns in the area right now.

Starting with the first primary source titled Historic New Ipswich by Abbie L Phelps I was initially disappointed in what I found. There was almost nothing about the Finns in the community even though the book was published in 1936 except for one sentence mentioning that the Finns owned a farm that once belonged to a Revolutionary war soldier on page 51. Now what is interesting about that fact is that the writer Phelps was able to successfully name everyone who owned the farm except the Finns who owned it currently and in the past. At first I thought that was weird but I soon got excited when I ran into another primary source involving the genealogy of Newport, New Hampshire. The problem was I couldn’t cite it as a source because it ended in 1878 despite the book being published in 1937. Eventually I managed to find two letters concerning one Jacob Raitto of Troy, New Hampshire. The first letter involved the banker Mr. Robinson saying Raitto’s request was pending for a bank loan. The second letter was Robinson informing Raikko not being able to get a bank loan because he wasn’t a naturalized United States citizen, and that Raikko would not be able to get a bank loan until he became a United States citizen.

So as of right now I know I think a storymap would be in order to put all of these locations in perspective. All of them are nearby each other, but establishing a sense of geography will be necessary to explain where these places are and how they fit into Finnish migration and immigration in New Hampshire.

 

Phelps, Abbie. Historic New Ipswich. Milford: The Cabinet Press, 1936.

Robinson, N, T. Mr. Cl Stuntevent, Treasurer Chesire County Savings Bank, Keene, NH. Letter. Keene. Chesire Historical Society. Print.

Robinson, N, T. Mr. Jacob Raitto, Troy, NH. Letter. Keene. Chesire Historical Society. Print.

Project Proposal

I propose to do a project on the Finnish American community of Newport, New Hampshire. This community is a fascinating one that managed to exist outside of Manchester, New Hampshire, where most immigrants who arrived in New Hampshire were bound. Kerrin McTernan and I both plan on exploring this migrant/immigrant group to the town of Newport.

As of this point in time I do not know if that community has migrated to other places in the United States, to another country, or if they returned to their homeland of Finland, or if it still remains. What I do know is that they arrived in the 1880’s, and they arrived there because Manchester already had its immigrants. What I want to find out is why the Finnish left their homeland, where they went, and then I want to focus in on the town of Newport. From there I plan on exploring what the Finnish did in the town of Newport, such as the jobs they had, and what living conditions were like in Newport at the time. These migrants were able to successfully acquire jobs in Newport such as factory jobs, and jobs working on road construction. The Finns were able to get jobs in Newport, what is not clear as of this point in time is how they were treated, what living conditions were like, and what their daily life was like. I’m also curious to know if they are still there, or did they leave the region in search of new opportunities, or if they went back home to Finland or possibly to another country. Did the Finns become citizens of the United States, or were they just migrants who contributed to the building of Newport? This project does not aim to judge the Finns but to explore what their role was to the town of Newport in its entirety. I plan on pulling as much as I can from the Keene State archives and the Cheshire historical society of Keene, New Hampshire. A trip to Newport would also be warranted to see if the town as any resources Kerrin and I can use, or just to see what the town looks like today.

A Visit to Keene State’s Archives

A visit to the Keene State College archives revealed a lot about different migrant and immigrant groups that came to New Hampshire that I had no idea even existed in New Hampshire. These groups that I was personally unaware of were the Finnish, Vietnamese and the Lebanese migrant and immigrant groups. The groups that I was aware of are the Scots-Irish, Irish, French Canadian, German, and the Hispanic communities. It was an eye opener on what groups have lived in New Hampshire that I never even heard of. On this initial visit to the archives none of the books focused on Keene, New Hampshire, but rather on Manchester, New Hampshire’s largest city. However there was one noticeable exception to that, and that was the Finnish community of Newport, New Hampshire.

A book called The Finns in Newport, NH by Olli Turpeinen discusses the Finnish community that formed in Newport. The Finns did not settle in New Hampshire largest city of Manchester, despite it being the center of New Hampshire immigration. This was because of other ethnic groups such as the Irish and French Canadians already living in the city. They moved to Newport in the 1880’s because of the various job opportunities that were closed off to them. Finns went to Newport for employment in a town that was willing to hire them. The community continued to grow into the twentieth century, and immigration and migration continued throughout New Hampshire.

Manchester, New Hampshire was the top immigration destination for many arriving in the state. As stated earlier numerous migrant and immigrant groups made their home in Manchester. Another group that was fascinating was the Lebanese community. This group arrived in the early 20th century, and managed to open several small businesses according to Thaddeus M. Piotrowski’s The Lebanese Community of Manchester. At the moment I don’t know much more about this community but, I’m interested in doing a project either on the Lebanese in Manchester or the Finns in Newport. It was interesting to explore the archives as I truly discovered communities I did not know existed.  All information came from the books The Finns in Newport, NH Olli Turpeinen and Thaddeus M. Piotrowski’s The Lebanese Community of Manchester.

 

The United States: A Nation of Migrants

While reading the works of Adam Goodman, Donna Gabaccia, and Gary Gerstle, I noticed that there is a consensus among the authors. That consensus is that to only use the terms immigrant and immigration, is to exclude anyone who was not a White European that became a U.S citizen. This means that Asians, African Americans, Latin Americans, and Native Americans are all excluded from the historiography of the United States and immigration. What’s also excluded is that many people who went to the U.S were in fact not immigrants, but were actually migrants. These migrants would only live in the U.S for a period of their lives and then return from there homeland or go elsewhere to another country. For example,  Gabaccia claims that for Italian migrants, “Rates of return from the United States were high… Estimated at 49 percent 1905-1920… return rates from the United States rose sharply thereafter. Between 1920 and 1945, returners soared to 83 percent of new arrivals in the United States, while return rates from Europe and South America instead dropped” (1131). Framing it this context,  I have come to realize that a lot of people left the United States during this time period.

While it is obvious that some migrants left the United States to return home, it is the scale of people that left the United States that is surprising, mostly because it is not taught in high school. Naturally this is only one statistic for the Italian migrants and does not include internal migration inside the U.S, nor does it factor in other ethnicities that migrated to and from the U.S.  All that this statistic means is that, “It helps us see the United States for what it is: a nation of migrants, rather than a nation of immigrants” (Goodman 9).  From what I gather, none of this is meant to not include the European immigrants, but rather to add in all of the migrants that have visited and lived in the United States. I think this will be useful for all of us going into our projects because it helps us re-frame the discussion of our projects under migrants and not as immigrants. To use the term migrant over immigrant includes everyone who was visited to the U.S and not just White Europeans.

Adam Goodman, “Nation of Migrants, Historians of Migration,” Journal of American Ethnic History, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer 2015): 7-16.

Donna Gabaccia, “‘Is Everywhere No Where?’ Nomads, Nations, and the Immigrant Paradigm of American History,” Journal of American History, Vol. 86, No. 3 (December 1999): 1115-34.

Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (2nd ed., Princeton University Press, 2017).

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