The following account is courtesy of Martha Kauttu, from an audio tape she recorded in 1999. Marcie, a daughter of Eli and Hilda Ahola, relates the story of the immigration to America: “I was so privileged to hear him [Eli] tell me when he was at our house, of the time that he came to America.  He sat there and told me this one morning, that he  . . . was coming on the ship.  And the ship was going to be sinking.  They knew that because . . . the rats left the ship and when that happens—something’s going to happen.  And while he was there, he had a chance to think about his life, while he was there in the ship.  “So he and a friend of his took one of the life rafts and began to row, and they were rowing, and as the moon came out, they would sit still, they would quit rowing.  And as the clouds faded the moon, then they would row.  And they got to a place in Florida—where from there they came to San Francisco.  From there, he worked on the railroad from San Francisco to Portland . . .  His English wasn’t the best, he had only learned things as—the sailors talked rough language—he learned to use sailor language.  “But now, he’s in Portland . . . and he was standing on the street corner in Portland, and wondering:  Where are the Christian people . . .  the Finnish people—that he could talk with them . . .  He was lonely. . . .  He didn’t know where to go, he didn’t know a soul . . . “A man stepped up to him and began talking Finn to him . . . and he turned around and looked, and he asked this man:  ‘I’m wondering . . .  where are there some Finnish people?’  And this man began to talk, he began to talk Finn to him [told him about Hockinson].  “So, he went across the river . . . and he went to Hockinson and he went to the Cooks  . . . and he told them what this man had told him, and from that began a friendship between them, he began to go to church with them.  And then the Cooks told him about a girl in Siikajoki, Finland.  There’s a young girl in Finland that he could marry, that he could begin to write to.  And he began to write to mother, Hilda Rantala, and from that the relationship grew into conversation by letter. “And then he began to build out there.  He began to build this house . . . and he sent Mother money to come to [America] and she left her mother and dad . . .   so this is where it began.” © Martha Kauttu.