Freisting Peterson Wedding 1915

top row, left to right:

Maria Justina Freistinki (Mary Peterson) 6 April 1892 to January 1973
Iisak Freistinki (Frank Freisting) 4 July 1884 to 15 May 1922
Hilda Sofia Ingeborg Pettersson (Hilda Peterson) 2 January 1888 to 28 December 1961

middle row, left to right:

Karl August Teodor Pettersson (Ted Peterson) 1 January 1889 to 6 December 1952
Samuel Freistinki (Sam Freisting) 18 March 1887 to 4 May 1955
Senja Pauline Freisting (Sennie Miller) 22 July 1914 to 18 March 1993

bottom row, left to right:

Vieno Sylvia Freisting (Vieno Kangas) 15 June 1910 to 17 February 1989
Viola Irene Freisting (Irene Koskinen) 28 March 1913 to 4 September 1989



Mary Peterson was born on the Freistinki farm, located midway between Luopajärvi and Jalasjärvi in the Waasa province of Finland, at the time a duchy of the Russian Empire. She was the youngest child of Samuel Freistinki and Amalia Koskela. She left Finland at the age of 16 in 1908 for Port Arthur, Ontario, where her sister Susanna (Sanni) lived with her husband Emil Puranen. Mary moved to Mullan, Idaho in 1914, living with her brother Frank and his wife Hilda. Mary married Ted Peterson, a brother of Mary’s sister-in-law Hilda on 22 March, 1915.


Frank Freisting was also born on the Freistinki farm. He left Finland for “Amerika” in 1902, when he was 18 years old. Finland was going through a period of Russification at the time. The Finnish army had been dissolved by the Tsar of Russia, and Finnish males were subject to being drafted into the Russian army. Frank settled in Mullan, Idaho, where he worked as a silver miner. Among his fellow employees was Johan August Peterson, father of Hilda and Ted Peterson. It was probably through that relationship that Hilda and Frank were married on 7 August 1909. Developing silicosis in the mines, Frank turned to bootlegging. He eventually died from tubercular meningitis exacerbated by the silicosis.


Hilda Peterson was born in Reposaari, Finland, an island off the east coast of Ostrobothnia. Reposaari at that time was home to the largest sawmill in Finland. The extended Hoglund / Pettersson family migrated from Pedersore, Finland at the beginning of the 1880s, giving up sharecropping on farms. Hilda’s father Johan August did not remain long in Reposaari, heading for “Amerika” before the turn of the century. Hilda was only 15 herself when she left Finland for Aberdeen, Washington in 1903 where she found work as a servant, before ending up in Mullan married to Frank. The Big Burn, a massive forest fire which devastated parts of four states and two Canadian provinces led to Hilda, Frank and their young daughter Vieno to temporarily relocate to Aberdeen, where Hilda and Frank ran the North Pole Saloon in the infamous restricted district along the banks of the Wishkah River.


Ted Peterson was also born in Reposaari, leaving Finland in 1905 when he was 16. He initially settled in the Grays Harbor area of Washington, working as a stevedore, a mill worker and a bushworker. The Aberdeen area was beset by labor unrest in 1912, as the I.W.W. recruited unskilled workers, mostly foreign born, with Finns among the largest number of recruits. Actions by police and armed vigilantes organized by mill owners drove many of the foreigners out of the area. Among those leaving were Ted along with his brother Vern, his sister Hilda and Hilda’s husband Frank. All relocated to Mullan, where Ted and Vern found jobs in the silver mines, while Hilda and Frank bought a farm on Boulder Creek.


Sam Freisting left the Freistinki farm in 1905 when he was 17 years old, eventually heading to Lac DuBonnet in Manitoba, Canada. From there, he moved to Oregon, where he lived until some issues surrounding a manslaughter case prompted him to move to Tarmola in Ontario, Canada, near where his sister Sanni and her husband Emil lived. Sam married Emma Pitkänen on April Fool’s Day in 1914. Sam and Emma worked on their landgrant farm, with Sam also employed as a bushworker. As in the Grays Harbor area, there was also labor troubles among the bushworkers in Western Ontario. Two union representatives were murdered as they tried organizing the workers. This event may have radicalized Sam. A few years later Sam took Emma and their sons Toivo and Tauno to Karelia in the Soviet Union, where the Communists were attempting to create a Finnish soviet republic.


Sennie was born to Hilda and Frank Freisting in Mullan, Idaho. She was not yet one year old when this picture was taken, and she was only seven years old when her father died. Sennie’s mother remarried in 1926 to Philemon Kangas when Sennie was twelve years old.


Vieno was also born in Mullan to Hilda and Frank, but within two months of her birth, Vieno’s family was forced out of Northern Idaho by the Big Burn. The family returned to Mullan a few years later. As a young girl Vieno was a bit of a radical. At the age of nine she wrote several articles for Tovaritar, the Finnish language women’s socialist newspaper.


Irene was born to Hilda and Frank Freisting after their return to Mullan from Aberdeen. Both Irene and her sister Sennie were relatively young when widowed, and they spent most of their later years living together.