THE first settler in this township was Mr. McPherson, who came about a week ahead of a group from Michigan. Then a party of home seekers came out by way of Jamestown, some of whom found claims in the township; about the same time a number of Finnish people came out from Calumet, Michigan, and located in the southern part of what is now Dickey County. 

For several years people from Finland in their migration to America had come to Calumet, and there they found work in the mines. They were not miners but they readily adapted themselves to circumstances and were glad to find work. This very adaptability made these people good settlers of a new country and the general prosperity of the region they settled has shown their worth. An account of the new land that was available appeared in the form of an advertisement in their Finnish newspaper, as the promoters of the Milwaukee railroad were anxious to have the territory of their new extensions developed.

In the fall of 1882 a man named Abram Peldo came out from Calumet to Frederick to look at the new land. Peldo liked the looks of the country around Frederick and went back with a favorable report to the colony in Michigan. A number of his friends and neighbors later came out and selected claims, putting up some kind of shanty to mark their location and hold their land.

In June of 1883, John Martinson came out with the families of John Laho and John Personen as well as his own family. Laho and Personen had come on ahead to get ready for the families. Mr. Martinson reports that he had his hands full. When they transferred from one depot to another in Minneapolis he had such a procession that he says it attracted the attention of the town. Mrs. Martinson has kept the vow she made at that time never to move again, and the family are still living on the homestead to which they came.

Some of the people who came out were not well posted upon conditions and they brought with them stump pullers, axes and logging tools with which to clear their land. They found a land much different from that in their Michigan home and were pleased that they could put their plows into the ground and turn over the soil without having to grub out the stumps. 

When Martinson landed his party in Frederick, Peldo met them and conducted them to his own shanty where they stayed over night. Their bedding was all in the emigrant car with their furniture so they had to put hay on the floor and use their coats for covers. There were sixteen in Martinson's party and it was still the day of the small claim shanty. The next day the families scattered out to their claims and made the best of the circumstances. The car of goods did not come for some time and they had to sleep on hay till it arrived. The Martinson shanty like many of the others was made of rough boards and the roof leaked, but Mrs. Martinson had a big shawl that she used for a cover for the children. She has to put the bed in the middle of the shanty where the water did not drip so much. In the daytime the bed was put outdoors if the weather was dry enough, in order to make room for the family.

When the men came out in advance to look up claims the country for miles out of Frederick was already taken, and they had to go clear over into the south tier of townships in the new county to get land. As they found desirable locations they would get out some lumber and make some improvements. The land was not surveyed except the township lines and they had to do the best they could to locate so as to get the land they wanted as soon as it was surveyed. Mr. Laho says they did not "gang up" during the period of getting located and while waiting for their families. They wanted to be on their land so that there could be no question of their having actually established their residence.

Herman Liimata was a new arrival in this country and did not belong to the Calumet colony.   He had come over from the old country in 1882, and had found work for the winter at New York Mills, Minnesota. He knew some people who had come out to Frederick in 1882 and had written to them to ask if he could get government land and they had written him that there was good opportunity.   It was their letter that had brought him to America.   So in March 1883 he came out to Jamestown by train and took the stage to Ellendale.   His fare was six or seven dollars and he had to stay over night at Grand Rapids.   The next day he went to Ellendale and took the train to Frederick.  On his first night in Frederick he did not reach his friends but stayed at the home of a Finn who had a dugout house about three miles from Frederick. The next day he located his friends and started his search for land.   He spent two weeks looking around and went over most of the south part of the county.     Settlers were coming in every day and he had no time to waste but he would not be hurried.   He did all this traveling around on foot.  He finally located on the southwest of thirty-two, choosing this place because there were two big sloughs on it and he thought a farmer ought to have some hay land as well as cultivated fields.  He thought the country might be too dry, but that the sloughs would have hay in any year.   He had no papers to make out as the land was not surveyed, but he paid $5.00 to have some lumber drawn out for a shanty. 

D. W. Coon of Hudson, Wisconsin, had been out to Dakota in 1882 and had squatted on a piece of land west of where Guelph is now located.  Mads Peterson had been working for him in Wisconsin and Mr. Coon persuaded him to go to Dakota. So about the first of April 1883, Mr. Coon shipped out a car of stock and machinery for his new place. Mads Peterson and his brother came along, but as they had nothing to ship they came by passenger train. They stayed around Ellendale about two weeks, living at a tent boarding house and walking out to look for a location. The Peterson boys could not find a vacant place for a long time. Every quarter of land had a little shanty on it, but finally they found a quarter that had a shanty on it as a blind to hold it for some speculator. They persuaded Tom Hughs to sell them the shanty and let them enter the land. This was the south-east quarter of Section three. The shanty was eight by twelve and they paid $15.00 for it. This was for Mads, and his brother made a somewhat similar bargain for the northeast quarter of that section. 

Near Grand Rapids, Michigan, lived the McGinnis family. The boys had heard of the government land to be had, so T. H. McGinnis and his brother Patrick and a neighbor, James Foley, came out together to look for homesteads. Seventeen dollars in railroad fare brought them to James-town, a new town with a single street along the railroad. They stayed a few days in town, then took the stage to the south. The stage was a three-seated spring wagon leaving Jamestown at nine o'clock. The passengers stopped for lunch on the way and reached Grand Rapids for the night. At this place was a store and a hotel, both new. The next day leaving at 6:30 they had dinner at the "Half-way House" and reached Ellendale that afternoon. The next morning they hired a one armed-man named Chose, a locator, to show them where there was land to be had. They got places close together near to a township that had been surveyed. They hired a team in Ellendale to haul out some lumber and built some "dry goods boxes" for shanties, six feet square with no floors and no furniture. They hired a man to plow a few furrows around their buildings, and after a few days in Ellendale, took a train to Milbank where they worked at threshing a few days and then went back to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the winter.

Travel in these early days was rather strenuous. Mr. Liimata wanted to get a team of horses which he owned at New York Mills. He crossed the James river at Eaton on a boat and then with a map and compass he set out like a sea captain for his port, taking his provisions with him. Peter Wittelainen, one of his friends near Frederick, was with him on this trip.  There were no landmarks to go by except the big sand hills east of Oakes, and from the top of these they could see one claim shanty on the road they wished to go. They reached it by noon and ate their lunch. They were bothered by sloughs but reached a little empty shanty near Milnor that night. There was only tri-weekly service on that railroad so instead of waiting an extra day they set out down the track, made Wahpeton that day on foot, and got a train from there the next day.  The return trip took them five days with the team and wagon as they had to go down to Columbia to get across the James.

These claim shanties were primitive affairs. Liimata's was built of 500 feet of lumber, a shanty eight feet square. The Peterson shanty was 8 by 12. A few settlers used a dug-out, some built up an outside wall of sod around their wooden shanty, making it warm and windproof. Liimata built a new sod house to give him more room than his first shack. He made it 12 by 22 feet inside, hauled the sods from the plowing on a stone-boat and laid up the walls two sods wide, putting pieces on crosswise to tie them together, in this way making a wall two feet thick. It had a pitched roof with rough lumber and tar paper and then sod over that.  This house was plastered on the walls on the inside and ceiled up on the roof, making a neat and warm house.

Not many of the shanties were well furnished. Liimata's had a board along the wall for a table and some grocery boxes for seats. The bed was a pile of hay on the floor. The McGinnis boys had bunks built along the walls, a home-made table and a few dishes, and boxes passed for chairs. The others could hardly boast anything better for a time. The food variety was sometimes limited. Potatoes had been introduced into Finland by the re-turning soldiers after the Thirty Years War so the Finnish people knew that vegetable. Their gardens produced well, and beets, turnips and potatoes were used. They didn't know much about squash and pumpkin and didn't care for them. There was always flour to be had at the stores and the settlers traded their wheat for flour, first at Columbia, then at nearer towns as they were established. There was considerable "batching" by men who had no families with them at first.  

In the McGinnis neighborhood four men lived together in one house in the winter of 1883-1884. T. H. McGinnis was the cook and he reports that the fare was bread which he made himself from "Snow Drift" flour, salt pork, potatoes, coffee and butter. He did not learn to make pastry. He bought two barrels of salt pork for $28.00 and managed to fare pretty well. When Mr. Liimata was living alone he reports that his own food consisted of bread, butter, and milk which he bought from a neighbor woman, and some few supplies which he bought from the store in Frederick. He did not make pancakes as the Yankee bachelors did, as that was an article of food with which his people were not familiar. Mr.  Martinson used to get some fish with a net in the early years. He is not sure it was perfectly legal but says few people knew what the laws were in those days. He also did some hunting but got nothing except some jack rabbits.

The Finnish people had learned to burn hay for fuel after they came to America. The "Homesteader's Stove" was a sheet iron affair that had to be taken outdoors to remove the ashes. It had one lid on top but could give out considerable heat as well as do the cooking. The McGinnis boys bought a hard coal base burner the first winter but it was no good and they traded it for another which with the cook stove kept the shanty warm. The Martinson's would sit up late at night and then get up early in the morning to warm the house by the time the children were up. Some of the settlers built a bin for the hay near the stove so they could pull it off without getting so much on the floor. They preferred hay to straw as it could be twisted into a rope with less litter.

The Finnish people wanted their children to learn to read. The schools were far apart and the terms short, the children did not know the language and were timid with the teachers. They learned readily when they got acquainted with the ways and the language of the people. The people had their chores to do and there were church services at Savo, but most families had to find their own entertainment and amusement as best they could.  In some parts of the township there were parties and sports and it was not too far for some to go to Ellendale or other towns.

Some of the men had to go out to find work. Some went back to Michigan and Minnesota, and Mr. Martinson went to the Black Hills in the winter of 1888-89 and worked in the mines. He went to Hecla from which place he took the train. He stayed there a year and saved $700.00 He had $1500.00 when he came out from Calumet, but his brother had to be helped and he had expenses and losses, so it soon went. While he was away Matt Hanhela looked after the place for him, and Mrs. Martinson and the children took care of the household. Mr. Peterson used to take his team of horses and do breaking for other settlers or haul out lumber, anything that would make a dollar to help out. The first year a few had some land in crops, but a hailstorm destroyed much of it. The raw prairie was hard to break, although some of the settlers did their breaking with a single team of two horses. A good pair of oxen could draw a breaking plow anywhere.  The McGinnis brothers had a pair of oxen, worth probably $200.00 that they drove with lines and harnessed with single yokes instead of the double yokes usually used. Mr. Liimata used an extra ox which he harnessed and drove along side of the other two. Breaking cost $3.00 an acre, back setting in the fall was $1.50 to $2.00. On the first crop, which was put in late the Petersons got nine bushels to the acre. As they paid $1.25 for the seed and sold their little crop at 80 cents a bushel they got little more than their seed the first year. The McGinnis brothers got about a twenty bushel crop. The first threshing in the south part of the township was done by a little horse power machine. A steam rig operated in the northern part and that kind of threshing became quite the rule.

Many of the settlers had difficulty in finding a water supply. John Laho had excellent luck and plenty of water. A neighbor dug several times without getting a supply. Later on the artesian wells gave an abundance. Now and then a prairie fire caused a scare but this township was not visited by a serious fire.

The bathing arrangement is unique among the Finns.   When building a new set of buildings it was usual to build the bath house first, a separate building. It was usually of wood construction as that was the material with which they were familiar in their old home country. Their habit of cleanliness is one that might well be emulated and copied by other people, and the custom of bathing which was brought here still seems to persist.  The principle of the bathing system is to provide a steam vapor from water thrown on hot stones in a tight room where the vapor would accumulate and start a sweat on the bather. The sweat was rubbed off by brushes or branches of bushes which are cut and kept for use in winter or when they are not available during a growing season. After the steam bath and sweat and rub down the bather washed himself down in water of a fair temperature and then took a cold sousing for a reaction.

The Finns are Lutherans and have several country churches along the state line. There is one south of Port Emma Township in South Dakota which was built in the early days. Before they built this church they used to meet in the houses. The charter members of this church were;

William Wattula, John Korpua, Mat Buro, Scara Wantly, Henry Wattaja, Jerry Erickson, Pete Johnson, Simon Waulo, Lars Mollanen. Henry Wattaja was the leader, and this church is known as "the river county church" to distinguish it from the prairie congregations. There is another Finnish church south of Savo in South Dakota, in which the religious tenets are slightly different but scarcely enough to make any material difference. These churches with the one at Savo look after the spiritual welfare of the Finns in this region.

The best known church is that at Savo, a name brought over from Fin-land by the early comers. Mr. Hanhela owned a homestead but did not have any horses or oxen with which to do breaking, so he offered to donate ten acres of land for a church if they would break fifty acres for him. The neighbors organized a "bee" and about forty men with teams of horses or oxen put in a day and did the breaking. They raised the money for building by subscriptions. They had been holding services in the homes of their members for about two years, and when they built a church they became incorporated under the laws of Dakota. The charter members and the board were: Charley Daniels, Chairman, Aug. Duomas, Secretary, Henry Nickela, Treasurer, N. P. Starkki, Salmon West, William Isaacson, John Martinson, Peter Weitelainen, Abram Peldo, and William Gabrielson, the minister. The labor of erecting the church was donated by the members, and so good a job was done that the original shingles put on in 1885 are (1925) still on the roof. N. P. Starkki was elected a trustee and soon afterward the minister, and has continued for about forty years to be the leader of the flock. The cemetery was also started in 1885 by the burial of Mrs.  Hanhela and her infant child as the first interment. This church and the community house at Savo have been outstanding landmarks through all the later years.

The early times were strenuous, but the settlers made the best of circumstances and stayed to see their township prosper. The only village within the township was Silverleaf. This was mainly a flag station until 1914 when a depot was established and agent installed. Several buildings were put up soon after that and the place became a lively little town.  The only railroad in the township is the Great Northern, but with the town of Guelph so near the corner of the township there are two stations convenient to the northern part of the township, and it is only a short drive to Hecla, Frederick or Ellendale. When the township was first organized it was a part of Weston, a township that included the congressional township to the north. Later it was divided and the name of Ada given the southern part. It now has its school district with a good organization, and while there was once a settler's family on every quarter of open land there is now about one family to a section.

This township furnished a Representative in the State Legislature in the person of John E. Skoglund. At present Ada is one of the most thickly populated townships of the county. A few of the families there may be named: John Skoglund, Ed. McGinnis, Mads Peterson, Will Wallace, Wm. Poykko, K. Hagen, Emil Liamatta, the Hogana brothers, T. H.  McGinnis, M. Verlan, Joe Burkhardt, John Saari, and the Waites, they are making it what it is today-one of the best townships in the county.

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