Ala-Honkajoki Militia Soldiers

Originally published on the Ala-Honkajoki village committee website (Kankaanpää parish) and later in the village history book, 2000.

The Pori County Infantry Regiment (hereafter the Pori Regiment or PJR) transferred to the allotment system in 1694, and the system was abolished under the peace terms of the Finnish War in 1809.

The first full muster roll of the Pori Regiment survives from 1728, including the names of the farms maintaining each allotment, so we take that as our starting point. The men from the Kankaanpää area, as part of the old Ikaalinen parish, appear in the Kyrö (Hämeenkyrö) Company. That company had two allotments maintained partly by the farms of Ala-Honkajoki, allotments 37–38 (translated):

37. Bukenuskårpi, the crown farm of Matti Heikinpoika, military assessed value 1/3 mantle; from Samminmaja, Lauri Yrjönpoika’s farm 1/3; Matti Laurinpoika’s farm 1/3; from Kortteisto (Kårdjsto), Erkki Ombi’s farm 1/6. Soldier Juho Paavonpoika Sambo from the old regiment was captured at Lesnaya, returned to his company in October 1722 and was discharged on 27 September 1727. Notes: Sambo has trouble with his right eye, the left eye is gone, he has been wounded through both shoulders, has served 17 years and is 70 years old. The allotment put forward Pertti Sambo as the new recruit, 20 years old, born in Stockholm. He was accepted.

38. Koivukoski, the crown farm of Juho Matinpoika, 1/6 military assessed value; from Venesjärvi, Esko Paavonpoika’s farm 1/6 and Matti Matinpoika’s farm 1/3; from Karhosmaja, Yrjö Yrjönpoika’s farm 1/6; from Koivuluoma, Heikki Jankkari’s farm 1/6. Soldier was Heikki Matinpoika Stubbe, 33 years old, served 15 years, born in Finland, married and of old Finnish stock.

The whole of Samminmaja was at one time counted as part of Ala-Honkajoki. “Kårdjsto” must be the same as Kortteisto in Ala-Honkajoki. Within the Kyrö Company the allotment number was 37, and within the full regiment it was 550. Later in the 18th century the allotment is usually called the Rakennuskoski allotment. The second allotment, no. 38 (regiment number 551), was maintained by the farm of Juho Matinpoika Koivukoski, and was known as the Koivukoski allotment.

Juho Paavonpoika Sambo had seen hard service: his right eye was damaged, his left eye was entirely gone, he had been wounded through both shoulders (by bullet or bayonet), had served 17 years and was 70 years old. During the Great Northern War he had been captured at the Battle of Lesnaya and returned from Russian captivity in October 1722. He was discharged on 27 September 1727. We return to his story, and to that of Heikki Matinpoika Stubbe, later.

The First Allotment Soldiers and the Great Northern War

The Pori Regiment transferred to the allotment system — under which two to four farms were obliged to recruit and maintain one soldier, equipped by the Crown and provided with a cottage — in 1694. The first complete muster roll survives from 1728; earlier rolls exist from 1700 but not from the earliest years of the system. Since those years included the great famine of 1696–97 (which killed soldiers as well as civilians), we cannot be certain that the men serving in 1700 were the same ones enrolled in 1694.

The Great Northern War (1700–21) broke out with a Saxon attack on Riga just after New Year 1700. Riga was an important city — by population the largest in the Swedish empire, larger than Stockholm — and well known to the Pori Regiment as a garrison town. The regiment was ready to march at Messukylä on 16 March; ten days later the rapid march began. After a three-day rest in Viipuri, they continued on 13 April, passed through the future site of St Petersburg on the 21st and reached Riga in May, by which time the besieging Saxons had withdrawn. Among those who took part in this impressive march from the Kyrö Company were the soldiers of allotment 37 (Mikko Sammi) and allotment 38 (Matti “Wänä”, probably = Vene, cf. the village names Veneskoski and Venetjärvi). These are the first known allotment soldiers from Ala-Honkajoki; they may have been soldiers since 1694. A muster roll dated 4 August 1700 in Riga records their names in Jakob Finckenberg’s (Kyrö) Company and Juho Pirkkala’s corporal’s section.

In late July 1700 the Saxons returned to besiege Riga. The muster roll mentioned above was thus made during the early phase of that siege. In garrison conditions of the time, diseases — epidemic fevers — were very common. A muster roll dated New Year’s Day 1701 shows that most men in Finckenberg’s Company were sick and several were dying. Mikko Sammi died just before Christmas, on 23 December 1700. Matti Vene was ill at the New Year and died on 18 March 1701. As late as early November they had been healthy and would have taken part in the defence of Riga’s walls and ramparts.

It soon became clear that the forces were too small. In the summer of 1700 three allotments were ordered to provide one extra soldier each, and before December two more each. The former were called “treemen” (kolmikaat) and formed a joint regiment of Uusimaa, Turku and Pori counties; the latter were called “twomen” (kaksikaat) and formed the Pori County Second Battalion. The Ala-Honkajoki farms will have participated in this burden, though no detailed records survive.

Both allotments 37 and 38 were unfilled in March 1703 but were filled in the summer with new recruits who arrived in Viipuri with Lieutenant Blåfield: to allotment 37, Risto from Veitakkala, and to allotment 38, Matti from Kajala. Risto later bears the nickname “Sambi” and probably died of illness in Riga on 20 May 1705. A new man came by ship in November 1706 for allotment 37: Juho Paavonpoika from Rakennuskoski. A year later he bears the nickname Sammi. Matti from Kajala also inherited his predecessor’s nickname Vene. Juho Sammi and Matti Vene were among the 25 men detached from the Pori Regiment in Riga (from Finckenberg’s Company) to join the field army, under a sergeant, a quartermaster, two corporals and drummer Frosterus. A list of these men is dated 28 June 1707.

Charles XII had been fighting in Poland and Germany for years and finally resolved his disputes with his adversaries there, then turned his main army toward Russia, marching through Poland directly toward Moscow. Lewenhaupt was to bring him a strong reinforcement force from the Baltic. Lewenhaupt set out in June 1708. The march southeast on poor roads with heavy baggage was slow. Charles XII did not wait but changed his plan and turned toward Ukraine. On 29 September the Russians attacked Lewenhaupt’s column. The battle continued until darkness, when the Russians withdrew. Among those killed was Company Commander Jakob Arvid Finckenberg. Lewenhaupt managed to hold his ground but could advance only by abandoning his baggage train and artillery, with heavy losses. Under cover of darkness discipline broke down, some men looted brandy casks and were no longer fit to march. Of the roughly 900 Pori Regiment men under General Stackelberg at the start of the battle, 480 were killed or taken prisoner. Juho Sammi was among the prisoners. Only a little over half of Lewenhaupt’s army — 6,700 men — eventually joined the main force.

Matti Vene’s fate is unknown. If he was not killed or captured at Lesnaya, he may have taken part in the crossing of the Desna and, if still healthy, the decisive battle of the whole war at Poltava on 28 June 1709. Either way he never returned home after the Peace of Uusikaupunki in 1721. But Juho Sammi did return from Russia, his nickname acquiring a Swedish form, Sambo.

The Great Northern War did not end with Poltava. Finland became the battleground. Viipuri, partly defended by the Pori Second Battalion, fell in June 1710. Finland then entered the period called the Great Wrath (isoviha). The Pori Regiment was reconstituted; its nucleus was only a handful of men previously in the ranks. By taking on recruits the regiment was brought nearly to full strength in 1712. Into the Rakennuskoski allotment (no. 37) was enrolled on 30 August 1711 Juho Matinpoika, who received the nickname Kihl; into the Koivukoski allotment, Antti Kallenpoika with the nickname Stubbe. The army retreated after the defeat at Pälkäne in 1713, withdrawing to Ostrobothnia. There they apparently took part in the Battle of Napue (Isokyrö) in February 1714, in which most of the reconstituted Pori Regiment was killed. Since Juho and Antti are not mentioned again, at least Juho is assumed to have fallen at Napue. The army retreated around the Gulf of Bothnia to Sweden. Kihl and Stubbe took part in the ill-fated Norway expedition of winter 1718–19. On the return march around New Year, most of the troops perished in a blizzard on the fells. Antti Kijl, probably from wounds sustained on the return journey, died in Jämtland on 9 February 1719. Heikki Stubbe returned home after the peace, was discharged at the 1733 muster and lived thereafter as a crofter at Venetmäki in Venetjärvi with his wife and children — his feet frostbitten on the Norway expedition. According to church registers he was born in 1687; his wife Kaisa Laurintytär was born in 1692; they moved to Jokihonko around 1750.

The Great Northern War lasted 21 years. Over its course a single allotment had to provide three soldiers and replacements for those lost. During the Great Wrath the country was under Russian occupation, but Ala-Honkajoki, away from main roads and theatres of war, probably suffered less than farms along routes of march. Conditions in the late 1710s were fairly stable. The occupier collected taxes according to the old assessments. In 1720 the Russians also drafted soldiers from the country: one man per mantle of land. These men were taken by ship to Russia via Turku and many died early on in the vicinity of St Petersburg. No list of them is known, so we do not know whether any young man from Ala-Honkajoki ended up in Russia.

Poll Tax Rolls as Sources for Soldiers

Although soldiers were exempt from the poll tax and therefore do not appear in the poll tax rolls themselves, the rolls can be used to supplement church records. They help in two ways. First, soldiers’ wives paid the poll tax and appear in the rolls. Muster rolls often note whether a soldier was married but not his wife’s name — that appears in the poll tax roll, provided you can connect a wife named Anna to the right soldier. Children of soldiers rarely appear. Through the wife you can also find out which farm the soldier lived on.

Second, the poll tax rolls list sons, brothers and farm-hands who could become soldiers. When they do enlist, they disappear from the rolls. In this way the poll tax rolls can help trace the backgrounds of soldiers whose origins are otherwise obscure.