by each party. The switchboard was set up in Matti Allen's home, and he was paid $8 per month for his services, with another $8 per month going to the exchange in Virginia. This system remained unchanged for decades.

The beginnings of business as such in Pike had modest proportions, when Joseph and Kreeta Keltamäki began in 1909 to retail goods they bought during the winter in Virginia. Out of this enterprise developed the first store in Pike. Later, in the mid-1930s, the Finns of Pike and Sandy townships got a joint cooperative store, set up on Route 169. Focus was naturally on agricultural lines and was so completely Finnish that whereas all seven of its original board of directors had been born in Finland, all seven of its directors in the 1950s were second or third generation Finnish Americans.

Younger Finnish Americans have participated to some extent in the relatively more recent Finnish organizations in Pike, in the temperance society Rauhan Maja (Peace Shelter) established in 1930, in the Townsend Club. The former purchased the old school for its meeting place, but enthusiasm soon lagged, although nominally it was still in existence and participating in subsequent Finnish relief programs. Support for the Townsend Club was limited and of short duration. And in general, here as elsewhere, purely American organizations have attracted the younger Finns, with the Scouts and the 4-H being the most popular.

Sandy and Florenton

Immediately west of Pike lies Sandy Township, in which the Finns also played their role. The township was not organized until 1916, and its population then cannot have been large, for in 1900 it was 16, in 1910 it was 199, and in 1920 it was 136. Its neighbor, again, was a typically Finnish township, incorporated in 1908 and named Wuori - Finnish for hill, but Hill was rejected as a name because there were already several towns so designated. Here the population was 222 in 1910 and 296 in 1920. The first people to move into the wilderness of Sandy were Matti and Aina Jacobson, while the honor in what was later to be called Florenton fell to a Finn named Siikala. Florenton never developed into any sort of population center, but since it was known originally as a postal address it has expanded as such to embrace a big postal area, a farming area all of which is now named Florenton.

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