At the end of a long and winding gravel road in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a copper miner from Finland settled on a rugged patch of land in 1896 and started a farm that’s preserved today as the Hanka Homestead Museum.

Herman Hanka immigrated from the province of Lapland to work in the Keweenaw mines. A black powder blasting charge in the underground workings went off prematurely and left him partially disabled and completely deaf.

He could no longer work in the mines, so he became a “stump farmer.” He acquired 40 acres of cutover land in the Finnish settlement of Askel and established the Hanka homestead.

Hanka came early to Askel, involuntarily because of his injuries. He was joined a few years later by Finns who were blacklisted from the mines after they spearheaded an unsuccessful strike against the copper barons of the Keweenaw.

Askel, in Baraga County between L’Anse and Houghton, Michigan, became one of the most concentrated Finnish-speaking areas in the U.S. after the strike. The land was rough, rocky and covered with stumps from the logging days, but the Finns were a tough lot and they built a flourishing community based on the values they brought from the Old Country.

Finland was controlled by Russia throughout the 19th century. What started as a relatively benign regime turned repressive in the late 1800s, when Russia tried to force its language and military service on the Finns.

The Finns pushed back with passive resistance and civil disobedience. They refused to show up for the draft after the Russians passed the Conscription Act of 1901. They launch a massive general strike in 1905 that completely shut down the country and forced the Czar to restore Finnish autonomy through the Eduskunta, the first parliament in the world where women had the full right to vote and run for office. After some more push and pull with the Russians, democracy was fully secured under a new Finnish constitution.

So the Finns who came to the Copper Country knew all about organizing, resisting injustice and cooperating for the common good. Naturally, they had a leadership role in the 1913-14 “Big Strike,” which was aimed in part at gaining union recognition for the mining workforce.

The copper companies called in private guards and the state militia to protect scab workers, and the strike dragged on as the union strike funds were depleted. Then, there was the Christmas Eve, 1913, panic during a children’s party at the Italian Hall in Calumet. Seventy-three people died in a rush down a steep stairway after someone, unknown to this day, falsely shouted “fire!”

The hearts, and the pocketbooks, of the strikers where exhausted, and the mining companies won a complete victory. Disheartened and blacklisted Finnish miners turned to farming and tried to rebuild their lives.

Hanka’s farm was established by this time, and demonstrated to the newcomers that they could make a living, hardscrabble perhaps, but independent of the mine bosses. When the defeated miners arrived after 1914, Hanka was a respected elder, a founding member of the Pelkie Finnish Co-operative Store and a active member of the local Lutheran church.

Today, the Hanka homestead is a lovingly curated historic site built on stoic Finnish tenacity (“sisu”) and cultural pride. It’s a eight-building, 40 acre outdoor/open-door museum that transports visitors back more than a century, to a time when the farm was a successful family dairy operation.

The homestead was abandoned and in rough shape when Alan Pape found it in 1979. Fortunately, he was an experienced preservationist who had managed restoration efforts at Old World Wisconsin. He recognized that the homestead was a unique example of Upper Peninsula Finnish farm life and culture. He bought the property and organized Superior Restorations Inc., a non-profit group dedicated to the site's survival. He had the skills, experience and dedication to ensure that the farm was restored with authentic building methods and furnishings.

Today, the site is owned and operated by the Hanka Homestead Museum Auxiliary, a dedicated group of local volunteers and historians. It’s open a few days a week from Memorial Day weekend to early October (check ahead!).

Research for this post supported by Google Gemini Pro.