Family Information:
Matti Mattinpoika Kylmänen was my great grandfather. He was born on the Kylmänen farm in Säräisniemi. There are two farms with this name in the area, but the families are not related. The parish records were destroyed by a fire so that I do not have accurate information about my great grandfather's ancestors.
Matti Kylmänen was a skilled tailor(räätäli), so he had no difficulty in finding employement. He left the Kylmänen farm and moved to the Tornio River Valley and settled in Arpela where he married my great grandmother Maria Johanna Heikintytär Ylinenpää. The earliest records I have of the Ylinenpää family show that they lived in the Tornio River Valley, most of the time in Arpela.
My grandfather Johan Erlanti Kylmänen came to the US about 1891 when he was 16. He said he crossed the Tornio River at night and sailed from sweden to England and then on to the US. He said the reason he left Finland was to avoid the Russian draft. He came to the Black Hills in South Dakota because his cousin Aukusti Harri was operating a business there. Aukusti supplied timber for the stopes in the Homestake Mine. My grandfather went to work for his cousin hauling timber out of the forests to Lead, South Dakota. After a few years he bought his own horses and went into business for himself. He continued to buy teams of horses and eventually he had several men working for him. After he married he also bought a farm in Roubaix, South Dakota.
My grandfather changed his name to Johan Erland Kylmälä. He said he made this change because he left Finland and he thought the ending -lä reflected this. His cousin had already changed his name to August Johnson. Later on Johan's children changed their names to Kymala.
The following list contains the names of my relatives who are related to me through my great grandfater Matti Kylmänen.
Kymala, Kylmäla, Kylmänen as well as: Alaraatikka, Alatalo, Aula, Esko, Harri, Hyvärinen, Iisakka, Isometsä, Jauhola, Junto, Korkemaa, Kaarakka, Kanno, Karjalainen, Karppinen, Kokkonen, Leinonen, Leukumavaara, Lindberg, Moisanen, Mäkimaa, Pohtila, Poutanen, Pyy, Rantamaa, Rautio, Sadinmaa, Savikuja, Seppänen, Slunga, Suopajärvi, Tolppi, Ylimäinen, Ylinenpää.
My great grandfather Johan Henrik Josefasson Ågren was born in Lappfjärd, Finland. His family originated in this Swedish speaking area of Western Finland. He married Maria Sofia Thomasdotter Ojala. The Ojala family also originated in this same region. At one time Johan owned the farm Tjöck and later the farm named Krokbäck. My grandmoter Maria Josefina Ågren was born in Tjöck. Some of her brothers were born on the Krokbäck farm.
My grandmother Maria came to the US about 1892 when she was 16 years old. She first went to St. Louis as a maid. Later she moved to Leadville, Colorado where she worked as a maid in a Finnish Boarding house. While she was in Leadville she got lead poisoning and lost all of her hair. She wrote to a friend in South Dakota and asked if she could come there to recouperate. Her friend invited her to visit. My grandmother went to her friend's house which was in Strawberry Canyon in the Northern Black Hills. When she recovered her health, my grandmother took a job as a maid at a Finnish Boarding House in Strawberry Canyon. My grandfather stopped to eat at this boarding house on his way hauling logs from the forest to the Homestake mine in Lead. The two met and were married in Lead, South Dakota in 1902.
Three of my grandmother's brothers also left Finland.They each took different last names. The oldest was Emil Krokbäck. He came to Port Arthur now called Thunder Bay. He married my great aunt Anna Dagmar Nordlund. The Nordlunds came from Karvia. Many of the male ancestors were church cantors. This family can be traced back to its original founder whose last name was von Printz. Von Printz was an officer in the Swedish army who distinguised himself in the 100 years war a
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