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and onto his neighbor's land. In 1870 he sold his homestead rights to Antti Lankki and left Minnesota. And Kärjenaho, who had changed his name to Abrahamson, did not remain on his farm, either, but sold it in 1869 to John Marttala (Peterson), who in turn sold it in 1875 to Henry Sakko. Kärjenaho became a real estate agent, buying and selling lands in the region, and helping other pioneers with his team of oxen to plow their new fields. In 1881, after his marriage to Kreeta Johanna Myllykangas, Kärjenaho settled down on a farm in Dassel, but soon after that he bought the farm next to the one which had originally been his in Cokato, and there he lived the rest of his life.

By the end of 1869 there were twelve Finnish families and a few single men living in Cokato, but the following year the number began to grow after Finnish miners at Michigan's "Copper Island" heard about the place. The first of them to come were still able to get homestead lands, and certainly there was also enough land available for purchase, even on the installment plan. In the next five years over fifty families arrived, and then twenty-five families in 1876 alone. 17

The first real population count in Cokato was made in 1879, and at that time there were 95 Finnish families, with a total of 450 persons, of whom some 400 lived on farms. At that time the Finns owned a total of 1,500 acres of cleared land, 56 horses, 126 oxen, 231 cows, and included in their equipment, several reapers and three threshers. 18 This count was made at a time of rapid expansion. The free homestead lands had all been allotted and land prices around Cokato now averaged ten dollars the acre. By 1890 the Finnish population totalled 634, and the biggest Finnish farm, owned by Jacob Ojanperä, had grown to 300 acres, while the more usual holdings were 160, or 80, or 40 acres.

It was a time when there were no fish and game laws, and the Finns fished Cokato lake with nets, and they hunted when they had the time or needed to replenish their larders. When Mathias Abrahamson shot a caribou in the spring of 1867, he first wondered a bit at what strange sort of game he had shot, and then, realizing he could not move the beast alone he went to fetch help from the Ongamo farm, where a cabin was just being built. However, there was no one at the building site - presumably the men had gone to eat - so Abrahamson picked up a sharp stick and scratched his message on the fresh sheathing:

17. Barberg, op. cit.

18. Isak Barberg's statistics of Finns in Cokato, made in 1879. Archives of the Minnesota Finnish American Historical Society.

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