ABSTRACT
Rosa Maria (Maija) was born in 1900 in Rauma, an old port town on the west coast of Finland. Her father owned a small stonecutting business. Her mother was from a big farming family. Maija had an older sister and a younger brother. She always considered her father a nice and gentle man; almost too good, and her mother she considered tough, with a sharp tongue and penetrating eye. The family lost all their money when the father’s business partner disappeared with it: Maija’s mother started washing clothes for others, Maija herself worked in a grocery store and her sister emigrated to New York in search of work. Her father died in 1918, at the end of the Finnish civil war. Maija paid her own way through school, and she and her mother supported her brother in getting an education and a proper profession. Maija also bought him a violin so that he could play music: music was something she enjoyed throughout her life.
