group had been recruited, made up of 242 adults and a great number of children. 4

These first arrivals were compelled to live in miserable lodgings in the oldest part of town, and the morale of some suffered accordingly. "The city's oldest court records reveal several black marks from the time of the earliest arrival of the Finns," Ilmonen wrote; "Johan Socklund (John Norlund? ), whose bellicose temperament earned him the nickname of 'Hallin-Janne,' was arrested on suspicion of murder, and while awaiting trial he committed suicide in his cell. Kassu Koj ala (also known as Isotalo) and Samuli Heikkilä were both in the Duluth jail in the winter of 1872-73, serving time for brawling. In general, however, the Duluth Finns were decent, industrious folk." It must be added that not all of the men cited above by Ilmonen belong to the permanent settlers in Duluth, and also that some of them had committed their crimes elsewhere.

The first Swedish-speaking Finn is believed to have come to Duluth in 1880. His name, according to the WPA study, was Alfred Johnson, and Kokkola, Finland, was his birthplace. The name of Hanna Hynell also belongs among the first in this category.

Incidentally, the first Finns did not arrive at Superior, across the river from Duluth, on any permanent basis until the year 1889, according to Kolehmainen and Hill.

In Duluth, the Finns who first arrived settled down in that part of town subsequently known as the West End, where they had several boardinghouses, and a little later they began to settle down in the worst part of town, along St. Croix Avenue, which became an extension of First Avenue East in 1912, when the name was changed to South First Avenue East. The Finns themselves, however, called their street "the Point" when they did not call it "Rat Avenue" for the innumerable rats infesting the backyard outhouses along Lake Superior. The houses on the south side of the street were constructed on fill hauled to the site, and they were without cellars. The street itself, before it was hardtopped, was of hard-packed gravel and clay, and in rainy weather it was dotted with big puddles. On beautiful summer evenings, however, the Finns lived practically in the street, calling out from their doorsteps to passing friends, running out to see if their cows were still grazing along the shore meadows, and sometimes leading the cows down the street to greener pasture. Garfield Avenue and a few cross streets were actually not streets at all at the

4. Rural Michigan. 1229. pp 165-169

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