Immigrant letters, excerpted

Date unknown, likely the 1920s

Written to (or dictated for) Mike Vukainovic by his mother in Plavnice, a village near Bjelovar in northwest Croatia.

And what you write for your and mine enemies I am not calling you home so that you have anything to do [with them] and soil your hands all will get what they deserve but I am calling you so that you can find me alive and for me to put in your hands these callous hands which I keep with hardship and from evil defend so that you can have it and I ask for nothing but I ask you and implore you to do what I told you and think of how it would be if I died ...

March 30, 1907

From August Aalto of Humboldt, Calif., to his friend Hilma Aerila of Laitila, Finland.

My dear friend Hilma, No other sorrow or grief bothers me like my perpetual sorrow over you not writing to me. I am for the whole past year waited for your letter like for the most precious golden treasure, but I have noticed that my wishes have been completely betrayed. But I will never get tired. I will still send this small and cheap letter to you, if not for anything else, then for a memory of my wish to love you. This is direct in all its frankness and I aver this is true. But my destiny ordained that I didn't have the means to stay in my country of birth. I had to leave for a far-away, foreign land to make a living. I think that you will read this letter with a serious mind. If you didn't, my love would not have been left on that side of the Atlantic.

Aug. 26, 1911

From Bert Aalto of Big Falls, Minn., to his friend Hilma Aerila of Laitila, Finland.

Hello Hilma A., First, greetings to you! I come to you in the silence of the summer night, whispering you quietly what my heart is silently reciting. I then draw those things on this paper and send you to bring happy congratulations from this far-away foreign land where you can't hear your mother tongue. I don't really know what to write here. You might think badly of me when I bother you with this cheap and flawed letter. But anyway this must come in front of you as flawed as it is. Please forgive me my love. Oh Hilma, why haven't you responded to my letter! Only you can even despise me! I don't think you do but I still suspect that. Please Hilma be so kind and reply to this letter that I'm sending. Time goes by fast these days. I have moved since I last wrote you. I am now working in a logging site. There aren't many Finns here, except for the six of us. I think this is enough for now because it's so late already, almost 11 p.m. I will write much more another time if you respond. Good bye, feel well, best wishes, Bert.