Matt Tusa and family from Ely and August Kurkela and family from Eveleth and Henry Naapila and his son George. Also, Paul Waltonen and family, and John Sandi and Henry Sandi, all from Virginia. These constituted the first population of Cherry.

A few Swedes arrived, but they all left again, with the exception of a man named Olson, who took a Finnish wife. Later, still more Finns came: Gust Tamminen, Matt Helberg, Eli Kätkä, Sakri Nikkari, Gabriel Mattson, Andrew Mattson, John Hallila, John Rasula, Matt Koivula, V. Latvala, and many others.

To the Finns, the settlement here known as Alavus got its name from the fact that its first settlers, who arrived there in 1898, came from Alavus, in Finland. The village called Mäkinen got its name from John Mäkinen who, together with John Kovaniemi, kept a store and post office there from 1905 on.

Due to the fact that here the settlement of Finns has been so widely scattered, organized activities among them did not play as important a role as elsewhere. However, organizations did exist. The earliest of their congregations, for example, is the Alavus Lutheran church, affiliated with the Suomi Synod, established in 1906 at a meeting at Matt Pohjola's home, with 21 initial members. That same year the church bought an acre of land from M. Pajala for a cemetery. Services were held in private homes by the Reverend Kaarlo Salovaara until a church was built in 1912. In the new church, P. Waltonen served as organist and was also Sunday school teacher, together with M. Hautala and E. Hendrickson. A sewing circle was also started then, and later came other auxiliary groups: Dorcas Daughters, Luther League, and a youth group. Originally, the church was a part of the extensive Eveleth-Virginia parish, but after 1922, when new alignments were made, it was tended by clergy from Eveleth. Finally, in 1943, it was separated from Eveleth and joined Mt. Iron. This preceded by one year the dedication of a new church : fire had destroyed the original church in 1926, and a few years later the parish was able to buy a schoolhouse in Wolf, which they remodelled.

There has also been a small Suomi Synod congregation in St. Louis River, although there was also a group there which belonged to the National church. In Corbin, also, there was a National church congregation.

A temperance society was begun with 19 members in Alavus in 1914, the Valon Aura (Plow of Light). It joined the Brotherhood and fervently hoped it could `plow, plant and till a soil favorable to the ideals of temperance,' and for two decades the

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