Anna Ahonen Narrator Lynn Laitala Interviewer December 9, 1975 LL
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Anna Ahonen Narrator Lynn Laitala Interviewer December 9, 1975 LL: Lynn Laitala AA: Anna Ahonen LL: Approximately when did your mother's parents come to the United States? AA: In approximately 1870, because my mother was born in 1866, and assuming that grandmother was about twenty-two... She came to America when she was a very young girl, to Michigan with her family. So it would be earlier than 1870, maybe between 1860 and 1865. LL: And her family went to Michigan first? AA: Yes, that's where lot of the Finns came directly and that's where the Bachman family had settled. LL: Where did your... Let's see, your father... Your grandfather and your grandmother came to this country separately? AA: Yes. LL: And they met probably in Michigan? AA: They met in Michigan. I believe they did meet in Michigan. There were three of the Iljana brothers that came to America. LL: That's your grandfather? AA: Yes. And they separated. One went to San Francisco and got developed a fishing industry. And another one was out west and went to Alaska. And my grandfather settled in South Dakota in about 1880. LL: What were living conditions like where they settled? AA: They settled in South Dakota. The nearest town was Frederick. The larger town was Aberdeen. It was bare prairie without any wood or timber. They built a sod hut, first a one-room sod hut and the second sod hut by the time my mother was born had two rooms and a little lean- to for animals. My mother did boast of the fact that their sod hut had little windows with four panes. Most of the sod huts in that area still had oil paper for windows even during the winter blizzards. Later on they had storm windows, and I know this because my mother one winter laid 1 cotton batting between the storm window and the interior window in our Winton home to cut off the draft, and she said this is what we used to do in my first home in Dakota. They laid batting and then the batting was decorated with designs of different colored yarns. And that was one of the very small decorative things that were in the sod hut which was whitewashed white in the inside so that it was stark white. LL: What crops did they raise then? AA: They raised grains and mostly wheat. LL: Any cattle? AA: Yes, they raised a lot of cattle later on. Both for beef and for milk cows. In fact, my mother was a cowgirl who herded the cattle on the prairie. LL: And they prospered and built larger homes? AA: They prospered. They built a very, very nice frame home, with barns and a grainery. My grandfather was a very skilled blacksmith. And people from all around the country would come to him to have repairs and have articles made in his blacksmith shop LL: Were they in the midst of a Finnish community? AA: It was a Finnish settlement entirely. All the neighbors were Finnish. The community church was a Finnish Baptist church. LL: Your grandparents were Baptists? AA: Baptists. Very, very, very... practically fanatical Baptists. Some of the stories my mother would tell me about her mother indicated this. For example, she was given a pinafore with a ruffle on the shoulder and her mother would not permit her to wear it because that was the devil perched on her shoulder, which was vanity. And no cosmetics. They had very, very straight hair and plain clothes and heavy shoes. LL: And their politics were as conservative as well? AA: Yes. They were always Republican. My mother was a Republican up to the time of President Roosevelt's election. LL: When was your mother born? AA: My mother was born in 1888. LL: How many siblings did she have? 2 AA: She was the third child. The first two children were brothers... were her... were boys, her older brothers. She was the first girl. Then the fourth child was a girl, Aunt Hilda. The fifth child was about four years younger than my mother, Ida, who died during the cholera epidemic when another girl, Aunt Anna, my aunt Anna, was born. And Ida was buried while my grandmother was in childbirth and the neighbors took charge of the dead body and the funeral. And there's one little story about my mother's doll. Would you like to hear of that? LL: Sure. AA: One of the uncles that - or one of the brothers - who had come to America at the same time my grandfather did had struck gold in Alaska and was very wealthy, and at a visit to his brother, my grandfather, had brought Amanda, who was the oldest girl at that time, a big doll that was the size of a two-year-old child. When the child, Ida, died, the neighbors used the clothing on this doll to dress Ida and buried her on the prairie, which very much disturbed my mother, who rejected the doll then without clothes. And also she went out on the prairie and buried the doll, which was never found. LL: That's sad. AA: Also my mother recalled that she had been a sickly child. More so than the other, or the little girl who had died from cholera. And one of the neighbors had said, in my mother's hearing, "It's too bad Amanda, who's so sickly, didn't die instead of Ida." And she remembered this all her life. LL: What kind of school did your mother attend? AA: My mother's schooling began first in various homes until a little schoolhouse was built. It was a one-room schoolhouse, typical one, with a potbellied stove and one teacher for all the grades. She had to walk a distance of about five miles to this school, which was conducted only during the winter months because all the children were needed in the spring for field work and in the fall for harvesting. So a school year was probably only about five months. And she once said she felt that the years she did attend had been an equivalent to about five years of schooling, although it was at that time considered an eighth grade education. LL: Did her parents encourage her education or were they indifferent to it? AA: I don't know. I don't think they were indifferent to it. And I don't think there was an opportunity for more education where she lived in the country. But when she did move to the town of Frederick to do domestic work, she somehow pursued something that was considered in our terms today practical nursing. LL: When did she move into Frederick? How old was she when she started domestic work? AA: She must have been about seventeen years old. Because the family that she worked for Pollacks, had a girl her age who was away at school, probably in Aberdeen. 3 LL: Before you told me something interesting about her attitude towards the girl away at school. AA: Yes. She often told stories about Kitty Pollack. Kitty Pollack seemed to have been a very charming, pretty girl. And the fact that she was going away to school and then would come home for holidays or something very special... and preparations were made. I imagine a kind of celebration was held. Because in my mother's memories, Kitty Pollack's goings and comings from school were a very impressive thing. And the fact that she was able to go away to school was something that she admired or respected certainly very much. LL: That's when she decided that her daughters should be educated? AA: It seems to me that all our lives she instilled in us a value or a desire for higher education. And I think it probably originated from her admiration for Kitty Pollack. LL: Then she returned home from domestic work, back to work on her parents farm? AA: Well, when she... 1 think she did the domestic work in the winter months. And especially during harvest time she was back in the country cooking, first probably assisting and then cooking in the cook wagons that followed the threshers from farm to farm during harvesting. LL: How did she meet your father? AA: My father, who had come to the Iron Range from Finland... LL: The Iron Range of Minnesota? AA: Yes, the Iron Range in Minnesota, Ely, in fact, was interested in labor organization and was following threshing crews then trying to organize unions. And at this particular time he was working on the Iljana farm where he met my mother in the cookhouse. LL: When had he come to the United States? AA: He must have come to the United States before 1900. Five brothers came to avoid the draft. LL: The Czar's army, the Russian army? AA: The Russian army. I think a couple of the older ones came first and sent for the younger brothers, and three of the brothers took up farming in Minnesota. And my father, after marrying my mother, settled in Winton and they established a boarding house, probably on my mother's reputation as a good cook. LL: What was your father's name? AA: Matt Aho, but because there were so many Aho's, the name was changed to Matt Ahonen. LL: What were his... As a labor organizer his labor politics were pretty far left? 4 AA: Yes, they were.