The Rautiainen Family

Anna (“Annie”) Gustava Rautiainen, the wife of Jakob (“Jack”) Herman Smeds, and Maria (“Mary”) Rautiainen, the wife of Vilhelm (“Billy”) Smeds, were sisters. This page is devoted to the subject of the immediate family they sprang from, and includes some basic information about their parents, grandparents, and prior generations.

First of all, the family name is rendered differently in Finnish depending on the era due to changing attitudes among the powers-that-be within Finnish society as to what spellings should prevail. Three primary variations are Rautiainen, Rautiaisen, and Rautio.

Annie and Mary’s father was Josef Rautiainen (22 December 1859 - 23 June 1932). He had the nickname Juuso, which he often used. He was a son of Thomas Rautiainen (1802-1866) and his second wife Greta Sofia Pikkaraisen (1817-1899). Thomas’s earlier wife, the mother of the rest of his many children, was Maria Rusasen (1815-1853). Thomas was a son of Pehr Rautio and Karin Määttä, both of whom had been born in 1769 in Kuhmo, a district along the eastern edge of Finland, which is to say, along the border with Russia. (Prior to 1937, Kuhmo was known by its former name, Kuhmoniemi.) At some point in their youth, they moved slightly west into the district of Kajaani. Certainly that was where they were by the time they became spouses and settled down to raise their children. A significant portion of the Rautiainen family continued to treat this area as their stomping ground, but Thomas went even farther west and established himself in Oulu Province, the part of coastal Finland that lies along the northern reaches of the Gulf of Bothnia, where that body of water terminates in a sort of hook shape. (See the map at left.) You could say he came downriver, because his childhood home was along the Oulu River, and he came to the place where that same waterway meets the sea.

Juuso may not have felt much of a connection to his paternal heritage. His father was fifty-seven years his senior (actually almost fifty-eight), and he died when Juuso was only six years old. To make matters worse, Juuso did not have a chance to bond with his half-siblings. Those closest to him in age had all died in infancy or early childhood, before Juuso had even come along. The survivors were so much older they were all gone from the house by the time Juuso was two or three years old, and probably had departed even before that. Juuso’s mother survived until he was thirty-nine years old, so at least he had that stability in his life, but clearly he must have learned to fend for himself earlier than most people have to. This fatherless upbringing may account for him being remembered by his daughters as a strict man. That said, he was not unaffectionate. Plain evidence of that is the letter he wrote to Mary in 1927. His words are warm and unguarded.

Moreover, many references make it clear that Juuso took his responsibilities as a breadwinner and role model seriously, and was highly regarded in his community. This was no small achievement. Northern Finland was a tough place to make a go of it during the latter decades of the Nineteenth Century and early decades of the Twentieth. The economy was bad, typhoid fever and tuberculosis ravaged household after household, and the country was a vassal state of Tsarist Russia. Juuso completed a stretch as a soldier -- luckily managing to do so during a period of peace -- and then began a long career in criminal justice, at various times serving as a sheriff/constable, prosecutor, and circuit judge. The jobs not only tended to require him to travel quite a bit in the course of day or a month or a season, but prompted a number of relocations of the entire household. At first, they were based in the city of Oulu, but also spent intervals in Raahe and Tyrnävä before managing to stay put for a substantial period in Vihanti, a town to the south of Oulu. He was also an owner of a farm during his thirties and early forties, though given his other responsibilities, he needed the assistance of tenant laborers to maintain it. Opportunities did not always come along when needed, though, and with so many kids, it was almost inevitable that Juuso would sometimes be left scrambling. For example, in the early 1900s in the wake of his first wife’s death, he lost the farm to foreclosure. (Juuso is shown at right in his police uniform.)

Annie and Mary’s mother was Maria Henriikka Perttunen (5 April 1863 - 9 August 1900). The first name appears in several records with the alternate spelling of Marja, and for the sake of convenience, she will be referred to as Marja for the rest of this essay so as to distinguish her from her daughter Maria Rautiainen Smeds. Marja’s parents’ identities remained a mystery for many decades. You would think Annie and Mary would have known, but when asked by younger family members in their old age who their maternal grandparents were, they did not know. They did not seem to be evading the question. They simply did not have the information. One of the occasions when this subject came up was in 1978 -- three years after Annie’s death. Mary was asked about her life and family-history background by teenaged great-granddaughter Kristin Krehbiel, whose assignment in high school was to tape-record an interview with an elderly relative, preferably a direct ancestor. The recording still exists. On it, Mary stated flat out that she did not know the names of her mother’s parents.

The question stuck with Mary after the interview, and she wrote to her nephew Raimo Puukka in Tampere, Finland to see if he could track down the information. Raimo put together a sheaf of information about the Rautiainen family, but came up against a brick wall concerning Marja Perttunen and her origin. Raimo’s own grandmother was Juuso’s second wife. The family in Finland had ended up with ample information about her, but nothing about Marja other than the simplest facts such as her name, date of birth, and date of death. The trail went cold. Nothing more turned up during the rest of Mary’s long lifetime, and that’s how it remained for another twenty years. But finally, the story emerged. In the late 2010s, DNA comparisons made it possible to conclude that Marja was a sister of Johan Isak Perttunen (1860-1944), a man from Oulu, Finland who, in the 1920s, moved to Minnesota, specifically to the so-called Mesabi Range, one of the regions of the northern portion of the state famous for its iron-ore mining operations. There he became known as John Perttu.

John and his wife Roosa Hakkala were in their early sixties when they came to America. Chances are they would have remained content to stay in Finland for good, but as in the case of Jack and Billy’s father Herman Smeds, that decision would have meant being deprived of the company of the children and grandchildren. Four of the couple’s five known children, Roosa, Victor, Arvid, and Walter, had headed off in the first ten years of the Twentieth Century as they became old enough to fledge their wings, leaving only Hulda, the second-eldest of John and Roosa’s offspring. But when Hulda and her husband Emil Niemi (aka Ojaniemi) decided in 1922 or 1923 that they would join the rest, John and Roosa came along. Perhaps the cultural setting reassured John and Roosa. The main family base of operations was Wuori Township in St. Louis County. This particular locale, well north of Duluth, was so stocked with Finns that the 1920 census enumeration of the township shows no one of any other background except a lone twentysomething female schoolteacher from Ohio, and even she is shown as a lodger in the household of a Finnish-immigrant family. John and Roosa would have been “among their own kind” despite having said farewell to their country of origin.

The DNA matches proved John and Marja were siblings. The precise dates of birth were known for both of them. Thanks to database search engines available as of the early 2020s, it was a straightforward matter to look for a Perttunen household in or near Oulu in the 1860s and/or early 1870s with a son and daughter of the right names with those precise birthdates. Finnish Lutheran parish registers are astounding in the detail they provide. Full names of husband and wife, with date of marriage. Full names of every child in order, with birthdates and christening dates. Death dates, often the exact one, but at least the year, usually accompanied by burial dates. In 2021, the relevant entries were found. They reveal this:

John and Marja were two of five children born to Johan Johansson Perttunen and Anna Stina Laurila, who wed 5 August 1855 and settled in a home in Oulu Parish, and probably in the community of Oulu itself. Their children consisted of Johanna, born in 1857, Johan Isak, born in 1860, Marja Henriikka, born in 1863, Anna Elisabeth, born in 1865, and Emilia Katharina, born in 1868. In 1869, the story turns grim with the death of ten-month-old Emilia. In 1870, Anna Stina died. A year and a half later, on Christmas Day no less, Johanna perished, followed not long after -- perhaps only a number of weeks after -- by her father.

There are no further entries in that particular register, a clear sign the three surviving children did not stay together and in the home they had known. There is no indication they were taken in as foster children by relatives. Instead, they appear to have become wards of the state. What became of Anna Elisabeth, who turned seven the year she became an orphan, is unknown. It seems quite possible she died later in childhood. The story of Johan (John) can be reconstructed. Only twelve when his father died, John was too young to keep his sisters with him. In his teens, perhaps even as early as thirteen, he ended up in Ikaalinen, near Tampere. There he would come of age, and it was in Ikaalinen that he wed Roosa Hakkala 27 November 1881. The couple stayed put in the community until the move to Minnesota. Ikaalinen is hundreds of miles from Oulu. If John and Marja hadn’t already lost touch with one another, the geographic separation would have ensured they would proceed to live separate lives. John might never have known what family Marja was placed with, and she might well have never been informed of his particulars. It wasn’t as though they had much chance to bump into each other on the street in Oulu. As far as can be determined, Annie and Mary Rautiainen never knew of their uncle’s existence, much less his presence in the United States, and they never met or were aware of their Minnesota-based first cousins.

Given the bountiful resources of the internet, perhaps in time more strands of the greater family saga will be filled in. Already it is easy to confirm that Anna Stina Laurila Perttunen (which by the way is sometimes pronounced Berttunen) was a daughter of Esaias Laurila and Valborg Laurila. The latter’s maiden name was the same as her married name. Esaias was a son of Johan Laurila and Britha Tolonen, while Valborg was a daughter of Zachris Laurila and Caisa Simonsdotter. While Esaias and Valborg were both natives of Oulu, the last name Laurila might well be a “village name,” as in, the place where the family members were from. The village is even farther north up the coast from Oulu, within Lapland depending on how generously one draws the boundaries of that non-nation-specific region. This suggests Johan, Britha, Zachris, and Caisa, whether just one of them or all four of them, may have possessed some Sámi heritage. That would be an interesting subject to explore given how “off the beaten track” Sámi heritage is compared to other ethnic backgrounds found among us American melting-pot mongrels.

Marja was possibly already in her twenties when she and Juuso Rautiainen became a couple. How they might have met is not known, though one obvious thing they had in common was the loss of at least one parent when they were all too young. It’s also not clear precisely when they met. In the 1978 interview, as on many other occasions, Mary Rautiainen Smeds stated that her mother gave birth twelve times, but that four of the babies died at birth. This has been difficult to confirm through documentation, but if it isn’t correct in every particular, it is in the ballpark. The scenario that best fits the tale is that Annie was not the firstborn child, as would otherwise seem to be the case. Instead, she must have been preceded by one, and more likely two, siblings who didn’t make it. Then somewhere among the others, in one of the just-barely-wide-enough gaps among the various other births, another baby was lost. We do have a name for at least one of these children -- Maria. The name was used again when “our” Maria, the future Mary Smeds, was born in 1893. The fourth of the four lost babies was the twelfth and last of the brood, a male infant whose birth in 1900 was lethal not only for him, but for his mother as well.

That leaves the eight kids who lived past infancy. Seven of those made it to adulthood. They are, in order of birth, Anna Gustava, Hilja Ester, Juuso Mikael, Sofia Karolina, Maria (“the” Maria), Kaarle Leonard, and Jaakko Johannes Rautiainen. As they became Americanized, Annie and Mary would sometimes refer to their five surviving full siblings by Americanized names, as Esther, Joey, Sophia (or Sophie), Charley, and Jack -- even though four of those five lived out their lives in Finland and never personally used those names.

The other child was Saara. Mary would speak of her, but never happened to mention whether she was Mary’s senior or her junior. Saara did not die at birth, but did die some time in childhood.

In 1901, Josef Rautiainen married Ida Johanuha Hyvarinen (1874-1925), with whom he had seven more children. The seven, in order of birth, were Vilho Nikodemus, Toivo, Impi Matilda, Sulo, Urho Ahti, Lauri Juuso, and Liisa Vappu Rautiainen.

This is by far the best surviving photograph of many of the core members of the family of Josef “Juuso” Rautiainen. It is virtually certain to have been taken in 1905. By that point, Annie had emigrated and was a resident of San Francisco. The family back in Finland had recently posed for this group shot. Juuso wanted Annie to have the image as a keepsake and as a chance to see how everyone was looking a couple of years after she had last been with them. Juuso had the photo printed in the form of a postcard. It is still preserved in the family memorabilia. Unfortunately, Juuso did not put a date on the message he wrote on the back. Furthermore, the postcard was tucked into an outer envelope so there is no postmark on it to show when it was mailed. The adults shown are Juuso with second wife Ida. The baby in Ida’s lap is Toivo -- meaning “hope” in Finnish -- who according to Juuso’s note had already passed away. Annie therefore never had the chance to meet that particular half-sibling. The little boy on the table top is Juuso and Ida’s firstborn, Vilho. The very grown-up looking young lady in back is Hilja Ester, with teenaged Juuso Mikael next to her. Sofia is on the far right. Mary is on the far left. Kaarle and Jaako are sitting in front, semi-wrapped around each other.

A year after Ida’s death, on 11 December 1926, Juuso married third wife Maria (30 May 1862 - 27 May 1929), the former wife of Juho Knuutila, only to be left a widower again a mere two-and-a-half years later. Not one to live as a single man for long, Juuso soon wed fourth and final wife Alma Sofia. For the first time, Juuso became a stepfather, because Alma possessed a son from a previous marriage. The couple only had a short while together before Juuso passed away.

Of these many Rautiainen children, only Anna, Maria, and Kaarle (nicknamed Kalle in Finland) came to the United States. Kaarle came in approximately 1913, chronologically later than his sisters but at seventeen years of age, just as early in terms of personal experience. He became known as Charles Rautio and as Charley Rautio, though a few records, such as the 1930 census, still have the last name as Rautiainen. He stayed with one sister or the other quite a bit during his first three to four years in the country, but in later years was seldom seen in Reedley. He left for the Pacific Northwest in 1917, perhaps drawn by the presence of so many Finns. He may have found it a challenge to speak English, judging by the way he almost always lived and worked in places where he had other Finns around him. While in the region, he met Anna A. Kauppi (aka Anna North), another Finnish immigrant almost precisely his age, who had come to the United States in the summer of 1917 aboard the S.S. United States, and had made her way to Spokane, WA by no later than 1919. She was from Alahärmä, a small village just twenty-five miles southeast of the Smeds estate at Soklot. The pair were wed in early 1920, or about then. They went on to have three children: Irma (1921-2006), Sylvia (1922-1991), and Norman (1924-1975). Charley got into mining while in the Pacific Northwest. At first it was coal mining, but after stops back in Reedley (where Sylvia was born) and Colorado, he became a copper miner in Pinal County, AZ. He passed away in the second half of the 1930s. Annie finished raising the kids in Carlsbad, NM, where she managed a boarding house full of Finnish miners. In the early 1940s she moved to Montana, where she wed Edward Salo in 1942. They do not appear to have remained spouses more than a few years. Annie’s story past the mid-1940s, when she was still in Montana, has so far been impossible to fill in. The paper trail of the three kids is visible, though. Sylvia and Norman had no offspring. Irma was the mother of three children, who as of 2021 are all still alive. They and their descendants are based in, variously, New Mexico and western Texas.

As for those siblings of Annie and Mary who remained in Finland, only a small number -- including Juuso Mikael -- continued to live in the Oulu region. Finland’s economy changed rapidly in the first half of the Twentieth Century. In the prior century, the most prosperous region of the nation had been the western coast, in Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia, the area the Smedses were from. Those good times had depended upon a vibrant shipbuilding industry, and the tar upon which those wooden vessels depended. The era of steamships had risen, and Finland had lost its privileged position. For Juuso’s grown children, the best job and career opportunities tended to be in the central, southern, or even eastern parts of Finland, and so the family scattered. Sofia ended up in the extreme southeast. Urho finished his life in Joensuu. Impi became based in Tampere. Vilho and Liisa settled in Liminka.

Juuso Rautiainen only saw his California grandchildren face to face once in his life. In the winter of 1920-21, just after the holiday season was over, he left Ida behind at home in Vihanti with the kids and made his way to America. The last stop in Europe was Liverpool, where he boarded the liner Carmania for the journey across the Atlantic. The passenger manifest of that voyage is part of the vast database of Ellis Island records and shows that Juuso reached New York 24 January 1921. He crossed the continent by train. He stayed in Reedley until after Easter. Despite experiencing for himself the mildness of a California winter and the spring beauty of the fruit trees in blossom, he made his way home for good. However, he stayed long enough to assure himself that his offspring and their offspring were doing well. While he was there he constructed a rocking chair for his daughter Maria. She kept it in her living room for the rest of her life and was still rocking in it when past the age of one hundred years old. The photograph below was taken during Juuso’s visit and shows the patriarch with all of his American family members.

Left to right in back: Charley Rautio, Billy Smeds, Sylvia Smeds, Jack Smeds, and Lillian Smeds. Left to right in front: Annie Rautio holding newborn Irma Rautio, Marie Smeds, Juuso Rautiainen, Alfred Smeds, Annie Smeds, Lawrence Smeds, and Roy Smeds.

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