Based on Hillsborough County land records, 2025 appears to represent the 130th anniversary of Finnish settlement in New Ipswich. Antti Antilla [1853-1932] bought property circa 1895 and proceeded to farm, living the Finnish-American Dream.
Many Monadnock region Finns descend from those leaving Ostrobothnia, a region in western Finland. And many of the approximately 319,000 immigrants to the U.S. during the late 19th-to-early-20th century came for socio-economic reasons. What we know as modern Finland was, from 1809-1917, an autonomous state within czarist Russia, “hated guardian angel of the Finns.”
The “Ostrobothnian nature” played a role, according to early 20th-century Finnish National Economist O.K. Kilpi [1878-1937]: “… self-confidence, and love of freedom showed forth in very large measure in the temperament of Ostrobothnian people.”
The following anecdotes are condensed/edited from a master’s thesis: FINNS: An Oral History of Finnish-Americans in New Hampshire’s Monadnock Region [1997], published in whole or in part on Facebook pages of New Ipswich Historical Society and Life in New Ipswich and printed in The Finnish-American Reporter.
Many New Ipswich families spoke Finnish at home and their children, often not knowing English, enrolled in the Town’s one- and two-room schoolhouses. Number One School teacher Mae Corthell [1896-1964] (“Mrs. Cowtail” ) forbade speaking Finnish on school grounds. She reprimanded Ralph Kangas, Sr. [1916-1990] on his first day [~1922] for replying in Finnish to a question posed in English. She sent him home. Ralph and other first-generation Finns would come of age during the Great Depression, primed for the rigors of military service and a wartime economy.
The following is from a February 1, 1997, interview of Mildred Somero Henault [1924-2016], daughter of Eino and Sophie Sovari Somero:
“I went to Number One school in New Ipswich. It was funny because our neighbors went to the Highbridge School. And Mr. Thayer [education official] said to my mother, “If your children go out the back door of the house, they attend Highbridge School. If they go out the front, they attend Number One School.”
“I think there were about 12 students in the primary grades and the same number in higher grades. They had a total of 12 schools in New Ipswich, many one-room. We were serious and wanted to learn. I think the mothers, especially among the Finns, were awed by teachers and felt very much beneath them.
“Mrs. Mae Corthell taught grades one through three and Miss Pearl Steele taught grades four through six. Miss Steele made corn chowder in winter. Children who had cows at home would bring a pint of milk to school, and she’d put it all into one pot. First, she’d fry the bacon and then make the chowder. Pearl was a serious teacher. I remember her reading passages of the Bible each morning. She had us listen to Walter Damrosch’s orchestra on the radio and sometimes that’s all the culture we got: classical music once a week. Mrs. Corthell was perhaps one of the first [female] married teachers in the whole state; I liked her.
“My grandparents were Isaac and Liisa Sorvari, who came to America via Boston to Worcester but started looking for a farm in New Hampshire. At that time a lot of Finnish families from Worcester, such as the Laaksos, Kangases, and my grandparents, came to New Ipswich. My grandparents bought a 150-acre farm and 10 or 12 cows, milking morning and night. They had a cream separator and sent milk every day to sell in Boston and delivered milk [locally.]
“My grandfather had a team of workhorses that pulled mowing machines, plows, harrows, and wagons. Every winter he would take them to Bank Village and cut ice blocks and put sawdust on them. On the farm, they had an ice house that kept frozen all summer. My father worked for Fessenden portable sawmill, which moved from place to place; he was gone a week at a time. We had chickens, cows, and hogs so during the Depression we had eggs, milk, and meat.
“Summertime was fun. ‘Worcester girls’ would come to pick blueberries. My grandparents had about 25 acres of blueberry bushes and about 10 girls lived at their farm all summer. We grandchildren would pick between 10-16 crates three times a week to be delivered to Boston. In winter, my grandfather would clean the pastures; it takes a couple of years before blueberry shrubs are established. Depending on market prices, my grandparents got 15-to-17 cents a quart and we children got five-to-10 cents a quart. In late August, blueberries were used for dye because they got wormy and you couldn’t eat them.
“During haying season it was our job to trample hay in the wagon. My grandfather used to make hay in the back fields. My grandmother would say,“Would you bring this herikka to Pa?” Herikka is a mixture of water and milk. The Finns said milk does not take the thirst away yet water alone does not satisfy, but the mixture does both. Sometime after the war, when farmers were told they had to have stainless steel vats, farming suddenly became very expensive. Their old milk cans were made out of tin, but evidently that wasn’t good enough.”
The Hurricane of 1938 devastated the region’s Depression-era economy. However, it presaged a transition from slower-paced, small-town life to the geopolitical firestorm of World War II. Nature had felled millions of board feet of local lumber, eventually needed to build military barracks, warehouses, etc. Cloth produced by textile mills helped produce armed-forces uniforms, etc. After the war, a booming economy would fuel New Ipswich’s Finnish-American construction entrepreneurship, creating a multiplier effect regionally and beyond.
The following is from a May 31, 1996, interview of Marion Pakkala Kangas [1925-2016], daughter of immigrants Andrew [Antti] and Ida Aho Pakkala:
“Here’s what happened with this society of ours in New Ipswich. The war did more to change our town than anything I can think of. We lived in our community, you married the girl next door, and you settled next door, and you had your children, and they in turn married the girl next door and took over Pa’s house or farm or whatever it was. And we didn’t venture far.
“Here we were, these country people, shipped off to foreign lands. I once thought to get to Fitchburg was a really big adventure. And then to leave home with my little box of clothes. My parents were very Victorian. Many’s the night I cried because I couldn’t stay out with my friends. And yet when it came to that time, I find it very strange they were willing to let me go. I think my mother was smarter than she was given credit for. What was there for my future—work in the mill like everybody else?
“During the war with the men gone, women took over jobs men held. Industry found this wonderful labor force. They worked hard, they worked diligently, and you didn’t have to pay them much. They did darn good work and didn’t complain and this was our step into the New World. Men came home anxious to settle down and have a family. But women were going to school and weren’t just doing menial jobs.
“Before my future husband, Harvey, went into the service, he played basketball in Fitchburg and on Sundays they would have games. Afterward, we’d eat hamburgers. And on one of these days, December 7, 1941, a newsboy came around talking about Pearl Harbor. It was a week and a half after that Harvey was in the Army Eighth. I was right out of school when I went to work as a secretary at Lovell General Hospital, Fort Devens. If people saw how many young men were coming home wounded, it would have upset them. So we worked at night, admitting patients, bringing in their records.”
The following is from an April 18, 1996, interview of Toivo M. Kangas [1922-2000], son of immigrants John and Sanna Kero Kangas. A Merchant Mariner, Toivo visited at least four continents. His ship arrived in Le Havre as Patton’s Army liberated Europe, so he hitched a ride to Paris on the Red Ball Express.
“When I enlisted, coming from the Finnish culture held me back because I was afraid to do this and afraid to do that. New Ipswich was such a closed society.“Don’t do this, don’t go here, this is sinful, don’t go there.” It was dead as a doornail. Only farming and work at Walker’s shop making wooden handles. Servicemen expected to get their old jobs back after the war. I got about a dollar an hour at the store but didn’t stay because the economy was very good. They started to make automobiles and trucks and textiles and 1,001 other things to convert to peacetime. There were a lot less Finns farming. They moved to Washington State and Oregon for economic opportunities in lumber and shipbuilding. People also moved to California by the thousands and the Finns were right there with them.”
Patricia Kangas Ktistes, a New Ipswich native, resides in Rockport, Mass. She has an MALS degree in cultural studies and nonfiction writing from Dartmouth College. The above interviews are from her 1997 thesis, FINNS: An Oral History of Finnish-Americans in New Hampshire’s Monadnock Region.