With the beginning of commercial copper mining in the Lake Superior copper district in 1844, the first ethnic groups to arrive were composed of, predominantly, the Cornish, Irish and Germans. Largely this was due to the two first company agents to begin mining. Colonel Charles H. Gratiot grew up in the Missouri and Wisconsin Lead Mining Districts. De Garmo Jones, one of the three trustees of the Lake Superior Copper Company that operated on the Eagle River in the Keweenaw Point district, recruited Gratiot to oversee the mining and development of the mine there. Gratiot, in turn, recruited a dozen or so Cornish immigrant miners from the Mineral Point, Wisconsin area, and they were the first Cornish miners recorded in the Lake Superior mining region.

At the same time, John Hays, the agent at the newly organized Pittsburgh and Boston Mining Company, as well as a Quaker, brought with him to Copper Harbor in June, 1844, about a dozen German immigrant coal miners from either Pennsylvania or Ohio. An interesting side note to this is when the Copper Harbor works were stopped, and Edward Jennings was appointed the mining captain and agent at the Cliff Mine, the employment of Germans was stopped and Jennings hired only Cornishmen. This is not to say, however, that Germans were locked out of mining in the copper region; far from it.

In addition to Cornish miners, historical evidence suggests that the Lake Superior Copper Company (referred to most often as “the Boston Mine,” also hired Irish immigrant workers. The Boston Company and the Pittsburg Company were not the only ones to organize in the 1840s; they were just the first two. Others quickly organized and the demand for experienced hard-rock, deep-shaft miners rapidly increased.

When the Cornish, Irish and Germans arrived, they encountered the French, who had been in the region since the 1620s, when explorer Etienne Brule had first reached Sault Ste. Marie at the eastern end of Lake Superior.

These ethnicities each brought with them as much of their native cultures as was possible in the Northern frontier wilderness. This, of course, included their religions.

The Cornish were, as a group, Methodists. Priding themselves on their singing ability, they continued their centuries-old tradition of caroling through the mining locations at Christmas time. The vast majority of the Irish were catholic, of the Roman Rite. Formal and steeped in more than 1,800 years of tradition, as well as Tradition, the Irish tended to confine their social singing to hymns sung during the Mass. The Germans, depending on from what region they had migrated, were a mix of both Catholic and Protestant, as well as incredibly different cultures.

As stated by the MTU Archives and Copper Country Historical Collection’s website, Interior Ellis Island, “German Protestants from Prussia were very different from German Catholics from Bavaria. With such regional diversity among German immigrants, it is difficult to construct a common history of German Americans.”

While there were other ethnic groups, these were, again, the predominant European ethnicities in the region. This would begin to change during the American Civil War.

Like every other metal mine in the Lake Superior Mining Region, by 1864, the Quincy Mining Company, in the Portage Lake Mining District, was struggling with production at a time when copper was commanding record-high prices due to the war. The struggle was a result of a region-wide labor shortage. The Quincy management came up with a potential solution to the problem.

Armas Holmio was a Finnish immigrant, pastor of the Lutheran Church of America, and a professor of history at Suomi College and Theological Seminary. In his book, History of the Finns in Michigan, he wrote that Quincy Mine office worker, Christian Taftes, who spoke Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish fluently and had emigrated from the Tornio Valley, was sent by the company to Norway (in the spring of 1864), where he contracted workers at the English-owned Kaafjord and Alten mines. Holmio went on to state that in the summer of that year, over 100 of Taftes’ contract workers arrived in Hancock. Predominantly Norwegians from Kaafjord and Alten mines, there were also a few Finns and Swedes, though sadly, their names are not known.

“On May 17, 1865,” wrote Holmio, “a sailing ship from Trondheim, Norway departed with 30 more kvaenar (Norwegian-Finns) destined for Quincy Mine. Landing in Quebec, a lake steamer brought the all-male workforce into port at Hancock on the eve of Juhanipaiva, St. John’s Day, a Finnish holiday on June 24th.”

Through correspondence, he further wrote, those workers introduced to friends and family in Norway, Sweden and Finland the possibilities for relocating in Michigan and in Minnesota.

To the north, Calumet and Red Jacket were being established just as the Finns and the Scandinavians were arriving in the region in larger numbers. Finns settled in large enough numbers along Pine Street that they began calling the street Mäntykatu, after a street in Kotka, Finland. Residents of Red Jacket, however, derisively called it “Shoe-pack Avenue,” Hancock’s Tezcucco Street became referred to as “Shoe-pack Alley” for the high concentration of Finnish immigrants along that street. Shoe-pack referred to a type of winter boot worn by the Finns at the time.

The Finnish immigrants did not confine themselves to mining locations or villages. In early May, 1875, three Finns, Jacob Ojanpera, Oskar Eljasson, Deric Garnell (signing his name Oscar Eliassen) and Sakari Hendrickson had purchased 510 acres of wooded forestland in Hancock Township, and built their homes about a quarter-mile from the mouth of Schlotz Creek, in what is now Stanton Township. They purchased the property to start a business for wood harvesting for firewood, logs, and railroad ties for the mining companies. The little forest products company was the beginning of Oskar, which would come to support a logging business, charcoal production, a brick company and then a farming community.

While Finns continued to swell the mining region, despite their numbers, they would have a contentious time of it in their new home.

The Interior Ellis island stated that Finnish immigrants often felt the sting of discrimination on a level greater than their European-immigrant neighbors. Many mine managers found the Finns to be resistant to integration and slow to learn English.

Local society in general harbored suspicions about the Finns, the politics of some of them, and their unfamiliar customs. A settler from 1887 stated, “the old settlers looked down upon them with the same sort of aversion as the west coast people do on the heathen Chinee.” But ethnic discrimination did not end with such statements of ignorant fear. As if it were not bad enough by 1880, the Finns of the first large immigration wave would come to pay for the radicalized Finns who arrived just a few years later.

Graham Jaehnig has a BA of Social Science/History from Michigan Technological University, and an MA in English/Creative Nonfiction Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. He is internationally known for his writing on Cornish immigration to the United States mining districts.