Introducing the family: Niilo and Anna Juntunen

My great-great-grandparents were born in the village of Puolanka, in the north central part of Finland. Niilo Juntunen (1860-1934) brought his family over to the US from Russian-controlled Finland in 1882, when his eldest daughter, Anna Liisa (1881-1967), my great-grandmother, was less than a year old. Family tradition said that he came to escape conscription into the Russian army.

Apparently Niilo came over first and then sent for his wife, Anna Moilanen Juntunen (1859-1933), and little Anna Liisa. They settled near Oskar, Michigan, in the midst of the beautiful "Copper Country" in the Keweenaw Peninsula. Eleven daughters were born to Niilo and Anna, ten of whom survived into adulthood. Thus the family surname did not pass to any of their descendants

A quite nice account of Niilo and Anna Juntunen's immigration and life in upper Michigan is contained in an essay, "Journey to America," written by a distant cousin, Valerie Tuomi, as part of a project during her years at Houghton High School, Houghton, Michigan. The only significant error in her account is her assertion that, when the head of a family became a citizen in those years, so did the entire family. This is undoubtedly what Niilo and Anna themselves thought, and it seems to have been passed down the generations to Valerie. In fact, when, as an elderly woman, Anna Liisa applied for social security, she discovered, to her horror, that she had never been an American citizen. (All of her sisters, recall, were born in the US and were thus citizens from birth.) Somewhat implausibly, she feared deportation.

In any event, she died at the ripe old age of eighty-five in 1967 and was buried in Hancock, Michigan, near the final resting place of her husband, Jacob Korpinen, and their son Wesley, who had lost his life in the Pacific during the second World War.



The Juntunen Family, 1905

In the photograph shown above, Anna and Niilo are seated in the centre. Seated to Niilo's left is his son-in-law Jacob, or Jaakko (looking rather like a young Theodore Roosevelt). Anna Liisa stands to the far right of the photo. Three of their children, Jennie, Bill and Esther, are with them, with the latter two on their father's lap. Judging from the apparent ages of the children, Anna Liisa is almost certainly carrying my grandfather, Eino Justus, who was born in December 1905.

Niilo and Anna died more than two decades before my birth, but I recall seeing their daughter (my great-grandmother), Anna Liisa, on at least one occasion -- in either 1963 or '64, by which time she was nearly deaf, suffering from advanced diabetes and living in a nursing home near Detroit.

In July 1988 a huge family reunion was held at Suomi College (now Finlandia University) in Hancock, Michigan, of the descendants of Niilo and Anna. I and my immediate birth family were privileged to attend this event, along with some 300 other relatives.