Henry Gust Koski papers

The following questions and responses come from the autobiographies obtained through the Finnish American Family History Project. Each immigrant was asked to provide answers to the listed questions. Most biographies are in English; some are in the immigrant's native language.

0700 Henry Koski. [Autobiography in Finnish. English responses provided by Timo Rippa.] 7pp.

1.Country of origin? Henry Koski was born in Lapua, Finland, in 1883.

2. Occupation in native country? No information.

3. Reason for immigration? No information.

4. Date of immigration? Koski arrived in the U.S. in 1900.

5. Did the author repatriate or remain in the U.S.? In 1906 he returned to Finland to get married and then returned to the U.S. with his wife, Kaisa.

6. State(s) and city(s) of settlement in the U.S.? Koski lived in Hamilton, Montana, and then Bonner, Mullan, and finally Enaville, Idaho.

7. Occupation(s) in the U.S.? Koski farmed and also logged on the timber on his land, selling it to the mining companies.

8. Political affiliations in the U.S.? (also ethnic affiliations?) No information.

9. Labor or occupational affiliations in the U.S.? Koski belonged to the IWW.

10. Information on family life?-nuclear and/or extended family? The biography describes the primitive pioneer life of the Koski family in Idaho at the turn of the century. It was a family of six: the parents and four children, three girls and a boy.

11. Information on courtship or gender roles? The narrator is male-oriented with considerable attention given to colorful (and apocryphal) stories about Finnish men in the mountain mining community. Relatively little attention is paid to women.

12. Information on the wider ethnic community? The biography is rich in depicting the historical milieu of the Finnish-American communities in the Idaho mining areas. There are detailed descriptions of people, events, and everyday life and work, especially logging.

13. Experiences with discrimination or political persecution? No information.

14. Any other outstanding features worthy of notice? Half of this narrative is a biography of Henry Koski written by Koski's son (whose name does not appear anywhere in the narrative), while the other half is the son's (the unnamed writer's) autobiography.

15. Any account of the immigration process, voyage, Ellis Island inspection? There are no references to the process of immigration.