Early Finns in Duluth: Charles Kauppi, father Matthew Kauppi and brother Matthew

time but sandbanks over which one made one's way as best one could to reach Superior Street. At that time Duluth was but a small, insignificant town, and houses were built at random, where outcroppings of rock and brush permitted, and the houses were surrounded by simple wooden fences.

The water problem was an acute one in those early days. All the household water had to be carried up from the lake, and for

4 some houses that meant a considerable distance. It was not long before water carts appeared, ready to sell water for a consideration. In this business the city seems to remember best one "Water August," as he was called. There were several Swedish Finns living by this time on Grass Island and on Garfield Avenue and "Water August", whose real name was August Signer (or Siggner) was one of them. He had originally been a bartender, but later on he had an ox-drawn cart from which he sold water at five cents the pail. Later still he acquired a horse to pull his cart, and he had a real tap on the water barrel for drawing the precious water.

Uusi Kotimaa reported on 19 November, 1881 that "the Finns have ten houses full of boarders. Ten couples have gotten married during the summer, and more weddings are expected." Keeping a boardinghouse in those days was profitable, for Finnish boarders were easily satisfied. The rooms were almost always filled with men, and inside doors were removed altogether so that in the winter heat from the one coal stove could circulate freely through all the rooms. Some houses, of course, had no heat at all. A few houses were piped for illuminating gas, but most of the time the systems were out of order, so that oil lamps generally supplied light. In time, of course, electricity came, but it was impossible to ever install central heating into those old houses.

211