Emily Longi

Emily Longi was born December 8, 1897 in Kemmerer Wyoming of Finnish ancestry, and grew up in a coal mining town in Carbon County, somewhere south of Rawlins.

Emily married Johan Sigfrid Lofstrom in Astoria Oregon on December 29, 1917 and had two children, Hubert and Sigurd. They lived at 7206 N Interstate Avenue in Portland, just north of Buffalo street, which is now the southwest corner of the Fred Meyer supermarket.

Emily died in the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon on December 22, 1950, implying some mental problems.

Emily and Sig (who died three weeks later) are interred side by side in Rose City Cemetery, Section O, row 53, a bare section of grass without a headstone or marker, between Olson (Lewis and Florence) and Van Sickle (Jakob and Anna). Minnie McIntyre is at the start of the row by the road. A simple double-wide stone marker will cost at least $2445 in January 2020. Note that the location information is recorded in a century-old loose-leaf binder in the cemetery office; if there is a fire, the location is lost

Sig paid for the plots and signed Emily's record in that binder. Nobody signed for Sig. Arrangements were made through "Little Chapel of the Chimes" (430 N. Killingsworth?)

• Finnish American Society of the West in Portland.

• LDS geneology

• Migration Institute of Finland

Hanna Mine #1 Disaster of 1903, killed 96 Finnish immigrant coal miners

• 5 Longi-surnamed miners killed in 1903 Hanna Mine explosion

• another list with town names The 5 Longi surnames are from Yliveteli, which some maps place a few kilometers south of Veteli.

The Union Pacific mines used gouging, digging downwards to get the coal more cheaply. Safer practice involves sinking the main shaft all the way to the bottom of the works, then mining upwards, so that gas collects below the working area. Miners carried "safety lamps" which theoretically reduced risk, but sometimes opened them to light their pipes (!). A second disaster in 1908 killed 59 more. The mine was closed after that.

Emily did not lose her father or brothers to the explosions, but may have lost uncles.

19th century Finnish immigration

Finns were expendable immigrant trash, the northern "white wetbacks" of the early 20th century. They did not face today's racist border paranoia; as northern Europeans, they only had to pass a medical exam for communicable diseases. If they came in through Ellis Island and failed the exam, they were eligible for a stay at the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital until they recovered, or given a free trip back at the steamship company's expense.

My guess is that William and Lizzie did not pass through Ellis Island, but disembarked in Canada, and travelled by rail through Canada and Minnesota to Wyoming, their paper trail intentionally obscured by the Union Pacific company to avoid medical expenses. Wyoming was a territory before 1890, and documentation was minimal. Their first appearance in official documents was the 1900 US census.

Emily's future husband Johan Sigfrid Lofstrom disembarked in Canada in 1911, a generation after her parents arrived. I have his steamship and rail ticket.