Mandellöf, W. Williamson, K. G. Rissanen, P. Vuori and A. Vasunta. Eloheimo, as has been mentioned, was previously head of the Fenno-American Church, and Williamson also had his own church body for a while. Serving in Ohio at the time the National Church was founded, it appeared to him that this church was unlikely to materialize, so he considered the moment opportune to establish his own. Receiving the support of several congregations, he established in 1900 what was called the Evangelical Lutheran Free Peoples' Church and became its first chairman. Pastors of this short-lived body included several who were known in Minnesota: J. Huuskonen, E. V. Niemi and J. Rankila. When Williamson realized that the National Church did materialize contrary to his expectations, he proposed that the two bodies merge, under the stipulation that the National Church include the word `Free' in its name. Although this stipulation was rejected, the two churches did join in 1902, and the FinnishAmerican church continued to develop under three major bodies: the Suomi Synod, the National Church and the Apostolic Lutheran Church. In addition to these three main lines, however, many smaller groups continued their independent existence.

The Methodists: One of the oldest groups outside the big three has been that of the Methodists. The first significant development here came in the late 1880s, when John H. Michaelson joined this movement, already widespread in America. Michaelson went on to preach in New York Mills, Duluth and Moose Lake, and in 1891 the first Finnish Methodist congregation in Minnesota was established in Carlton County. At the turn of the century a Methodist pastor, Gust A. Hiden, arrived from Finland to continue the work, and he was followed two years later by another arrival from Finland, Hjalmar Saari. While Hiden took over the original parish, Saari established a new chain of parishes in the Hibbing and Duluth areas before his return to Finland in 1906. At the same time Pastor Matti Lehtonen, whose name has been mentioned several times in these pages, began the parishes in the mining region, in which region Hjalmar Ketonen, coming from Finland in 1909, continued to labor. By 1911 there were 9 Methodist churches among the Finns in Minnesota, with a membership somewhere between 500 and 800 - a small figure compared to the 4,000,000 Methodists in the United States at that time. After World War I the Finnish membership rose to about 1,000 but then began a gradual decline. Although the Finns even had a religious literature in their own language,

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