Keweenaw County
Keweenaw County

Author: Jennifer Billock

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2014-05-12

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 1439645132

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Although the largest Michigan county with land and water combined, Keweenaw County is also the most sparsely populatedat least during the vicious winters. The population blooms in the summertime when seasonal residents come in droves to enjoy their little slice of heaven. The county was formed in 1861 as an offshoot of Houghton County and now encompasses the top half of the Keweenaw Peninsula, where Michigans Upper Peninsula juts north into Lake Superior. Throughout the 1800s, the area was at the center of the copper mining boom, spurring construction of Fort Wilkins in Copper Harbor. The military outpost served to keep order among miners and the areas native inhabitants, the Ojibwa. Moving through time, Keweenaw County would also serve as a hub for the maritime, fishing, and lumbering industries before becoming the resort community it is today.

Strangers and Sojourners
Strangers and Sojourners

Author: Arthur W. Thurner

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 9780814323960

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Arthur Thurner tells of the enormous struggle of the diverse immigrants who built and sustained energetic towns and communities, creating a lively civilization in what was essentially a forest wilderness. Their story is one of incredible economic success and grim tragedy in which mine workers daily risked their lives. By highlighting the roles women, African Americans, and Native Americans played in the growth of the Keweenaw community, Thurner details a neglected and ignored past. The history of Keweenaw Peninsula for the past one hundred and fifty years reflects contemporary American culture--a multicultural, pluralistic, democratic welfare state still undergoing evolution. Strangers and Sojourners, with its integration of social and economic history, for the first time tells the complete story of the people from the Keweenaw Peninsula's Baraga, Houghton, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon counties.

Finns of Michigan's Upper Peninsula
Finns of Michigan's Upper Peninsula

Author: The Finnish American Heritage Center

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 146712978X

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"On Midsummer Eve, 1865, more than 30 Finnish and Sami immigrants disembarked from a Great Lakes ship to a place called Hancock, Michigan. At the time, Hancock consisted of nothing more than a small cluster of humble buildings, but it was here, on the outskirts of mid-19th-century civilization, that Finnish settlement in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (UP) took root. Much to the surprise of these new Americans, Midsummer was not a religious holiday marked by feasts in celebration of the season's prolonged sunlight. Rather, the newcomers were immediately hastened into the bowels of the earth to extract copper in pursuit of the American Dream. In short order, hardworking Finnish immigrants became reputable miners, lumberjacks, farmers, maids, and commercial fishermen. A century and a half later, the UP boasts the largest Finnish population outside of the motherland and sustains the determined spirit the Finns call sisu--an influence that remains palpable in all 15 UP counties."--

Community in Conflict
Community in Conflict

Author: Gary Kaunonen

Publisher: MSU Press

Published: 2013-07-01

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 1628950382

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A mirror of great changes that were occurring on the national labor rights scene, the 1913–14 Michigan Copper Strike was a time of unprecedented social upheaval in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. With organized labor taking an aggressive stance against the excesses of unfettered capitalism, the stage was set for a major struggle between labor and management. The Michigan Copper Strike received national attention and garnered the support of luminaries in organized labor like Mother Jones, John Mitchell, Clarence Darrow, and Charles Moyer. The hope of victory was overshadowed, however, by violent incidents like the shooting of striking workers and their family members, and the bitterness of a community divided. No other event came to symbolize or memorialize the strike more than the Italian Hall tragedy, in which dozens of workers and working-class children died. In Community in Conflict, the efforts of working people to gain a voice on the job and in their community through their unions, and the efforts of employers to crush those unions, take center stage. Previously untapped historical sources such as labor spy reports, union newspapers, coded messages, and artifacts shine new light on this epic, and ultimately tragic, period in American labor history.