A book titled, “Elk Township Homecoming” will be introduced at the 145th anniversary celebration of Scandia Evangelical Covenant Church.

The event wil be held on Sunday, Sept. 10, beginning at 10:30 a.m.

The book – written by Julie Lindblom Boozer, PhD., focuses on the history of the “Homecomings” held through the years as well as its significance to the community.

Everybody who had ever lived in Elk Township knew there would be a grand reunion on Labor Day and they came by the hundreds, sometimes even thousands to celebrate their kinship.

It was a huge extended-family reunion “to greet old friends and make new ones.” Some still lived in the community and some traveled great distances to revisit the beloved hills where they had grown up working on the family farm, attending Church and the one-room school, courting, marrying and raising their children. This was a time to cherish the past, its pleasures as well as its sorrows, and to rekindle precious friendships.

Most of the families in southern Elk Township had immigrated in the latter 19th century from several provinces in southern Sweden so when they gathered they could celebrate their shared beliefs, customs, language and memories of the old country. Back when this was a fairly isolated close-knit rural community up on the mountain, an extraordinary value was placed upon helping each other. This interdependence nurtured lasting friendships that were renewed each Labor Day as they sat under the shady oaks and maples on the church lawn drinking coffee and reminiscing. Older folks, bent over by time, could be seen walking hand-in-hand through the cemetery next to the Church stopping now and then to respectfully bow their heads.

When Homecoming began in 1930, the landscape was little changed: Cattle still grazed in the grassy fields surrounding wooden barns and some, though not all, of their homesteads were still visible.

The one-room school, the Church and the Grange remained operational so here they could easily step into the footsteps of their childhood. Their continuing attendance over the years in such large numbers confirms how very meaningful this Homecoming was to them, even though they had now moved away from the hill.

The data used to prepare this history of Homecoming are its actual minutes from 1930 through 1982 when it evolved into Scandia Community Days. These minutes are preserved in the archives of the Scandia Evangelical Covenant Church.

The other primary informational source is the personal files of Dr. Fenner E. Lindblom, who participated in Homecoming over the years as president, director and chairman of the Church.

All of Elk Township participated in Homecoming whether of not they were Scandinavian, as well as former residents who by then lived in such faraway places as Jamestown, New York, Warren or Ridgeway, Pennsylvania and Youngstown, Ohio.

But as one reads through the names of the officers and attendees in the first thirty years (1930 – 1960) of Homecoming’s existence, it is difficult to locate a surname that does not reflect Scandinavian heritage. The majority of surnames of officers and attendees listed in the minutes are clearly Scandinavian, principally Swedish, which reflects the make-up of the population of southern Elk Township in the late 19th century.

Looking back into the history of Elk Township to the early to mid 19th century, the population of southern Elk Township was largely Quaker, and therefore it became known as Quaker Hill. However, by mid-century most Quakers were moving west. In the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s, great numbers of Scandinavian immigrants moved in to take over the abandoned Quaker landholdings and Quaker Hill became mostly Swedish, eventually becoming known as Scandia.

But by the beginning of the 20th century, many of these immigrant Scandinavians had moved to industrial cities to seek their fortunes in the factories of the burgeoning Industrial Revolution. It is this population that had moved away, along with some still living in Scandia, that founded the Elk Township Homecoming in 1930 and became its officers and members.

Over the years, as these folks aged and their numbers diminished, there was no longer a need for a Homecoming as it had been originally conceived and it faded away.

In the 1980s, a new concept was undertaken for a few years that converted Homecoming into Scandia Community Days to meet the needs of the current population of families that had moved to Scandia. This new population was made up of young families with small children, as well as retirees, who were drawn to Elk Township by its pastoral beauty as rural farmland and/or saw it as a bedroom community to their Warren and Jamestown places of employment.

By this time improved roads, including modern snow removal, made it possible to reside in Elk Township to enjoy its sparkling clean air and sylvan beauty, but also to commute daily to a job in the city. In this sense, then, this story reflects how populations shift over time and how they react to change and adjust to meet their current needs.

All proceeds from the sale of this 90-page book shall be contributed to the Scandia Evangelical Covenant Church, formerly known as the Scandia Swedish Mission Church, which sponsored this event all through the years.