nickname, "Stump Hall." The association responsible for it went by the name of Young Peoples Educational Society, but when membership dwindled here in the years following World War II, the Finns deeded their hall to the township in 1953.

During the World War II years, there was a Finnish relief committee in Cedar Valley, formed at a meeting held at John Johnson's home in January 1940. The committee's secretary, Frank O. Luoma, was able to report at the end of August that over $400 had been collected (this in a community with 270 Finnish residents). The committee was reactivated in 1945. Later still, there has been a chapter of the MFAHS here.

The first undertaking with profit implications in the community was the mill that Jacob Harry built around 1895, with millstones, as of old, doing the grinding, because he had grown tired of carrying his grain `all over the country' to have it ground. In addition to grinding his own grain, he ground his neighbors', until 1916, when Constant Luoma bought a mill, powered with a gasoline motor. Today, one of Harry's millstones is in William Räihälä's museum, to remind a younger generation of an earlier Finnish businessman.

The first town meeting in Cedar Valley Township was held in February 1910, and at that the time the entire slate of officials elected were Finns: William Gustafson, secretary; Andrew Juola, treasurer; Peter Seppälä, supervisor; Constant Luoma, collector of taxes; John Helman, justice of the peace; Jacob Luoma and Jalmer Perkkio, constables; and Oscar Aho, supervisor of roads. The Finns remained in office exclusively until 1918, when one non-Finn, a German, was voted in as constable, thanks to the votes of Germans who had moved into the township. At that same time, the Finnish constable elected was Andrew Hill, while John Helman was re-elected justice of the peace, Mike Siermala became secretary and William Tuominen supervisor. Since that time, others than Finns have won more and more offices, but the number of Finns involved through the years has remained high.

Toivola

Early in the pioneering days of Cedar Valley, the Finns had begun to hear of a splendid valley which could be reached by paddling some 30 miles up the St. Louis River, past two stretches of angry rapids: at that time one young Finn, Matti Rahko, aged 20, had been the first to make that trip, and his tales of the valley he had discovered made other Finns eager to see it for

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