latviski
In August 1908, following sensationalized newspaper coverage of three Latvians robbing a local saloon, the Boston Sunday Post featured a public response by community leader John Klawa (Jānis Kļava), highlighting the Latvian community's high literacy rates, peaceful nature, and industrious labor — offering a crucial counter-narrative against inflamed anti-immigrant sentiment.
Background
Boston was home to the first sizable Latvian community in the United States. Sustained emigration from Latvia began in the last two decades of the 19th century, and thousands of emigrants settled in Boston's Jamaica Plain and Roxbury districts.1 The first phase of that immigration began in 1888, when several young men arrived in Boston, among them Jēkabs Zībergs (1863–1963), later a leading figure among Latvian Americans.2
Many firsts followed in Boston. The Boston Latvian Relief Society, founded in 1889, was the first Latvian organization in the United States.3 In 1891, the Society organized the first Latvian Lutheran church service in the country. Shortly thereafter, the earliest known Latvian Lutheran congregation, St. John's, was founded in Philadelphia in 1893. The Lettish Workingmen's Society, a Latvian socialist organization, was founded in Boston in 1893, and from 1896 Boston was also home to Amerikas Vēstnesis, a nationalist, church-oriented newspaper begun by Zībergs and Estonian Pastor Hans Rebane.456
The failed Revolution of 1905 brought a new wave of immigrants beginning in 1906. Many of its leaders and fighters faced death if caught by Russian troops and chose to emigrate. These newcomers were more radical than the earlier settlers. The Latvian community split between conservatives and socialists, and the socialists split among themselves. The left's most important paper was Strādnieks (The Worker), a Boston weekly published from 1906 to 1919.7 In 1908 the Boston-centered Latvian socialists affiliated with the Socialist Party of America.8
That summer the community made headlines for the wrong reasons. Just before 11 p.m. on July 21, 1908, three men robbed the Winterson & McManus saloon at 3171 Washington Street, Jamaica Plain, of $90, shooting the proprietor and customers. The next day a running gun battle through Jamaica Plain ended at Forest Hills Cemetery, where watchman Herbert Knox was fatally shot. Early on July 23 one of the robbers was found dead in the cemetery. Police said they had shot him.9
The dead man, Edmund Gutman (also spelled Guttman), was the only robber positively identified. He had reportedly fled Latvia during the 1905–1907 revolution, was rumored to have killed a man there, and arrived in Boston from Liverpool aboard the S.S. Ivernia on December 20, 1906. He boarded at the Hotel Winchester until two weeks before the robbery and was foreman of a gang of Latvians fighting the gypsy moth infestation in the Middlesex Fells. In 1914 Boston police learned from London police and Scotland Yard that the two fugitives had returned to Europe and were tied to the 1910 Houndsditch jewelry robbery and killings and the 1911 Siege of Sidney Street. The same information said Gutman had been killed not by police but by a fellow robber, who feared that Gutman, unable to keep up, would be caught and confess.10
Because the “Letts” were a very small, largely anonymous immigrant group in the United States at the time, Boston's mainstream newspapers reacted with a sudden spasm of hostile, sensationalized headlines.1112
In response, explanatory features — like the piece here in the Boston Sunday Post — and defenses in literary magazines like The Arena emerged to educate the public on who the Latvian people actually were, humanizing them beyond the actions of the criminals.
“Who Are the Letts?”
Twelve days after the robbery, on August 2, 1908, the Boston Sunday Post gave John Klawa (Jānis Kļava), editor of Strādnieks, a platform to answer the question “Who are the Letts?”
Boston Sunday Post, August 2, 1908
[Illustration labels: Not a word of English · One year in this country · The Editor · Running the press · A future American · The School · STRAHDNEEKS (on the newspaper)]
The recent raid by a band of desperadoes on a Jamaica Plain saloon has once more brought to the public notice the fact that the least known among Boston's foreign population are the Letts.
Despite the fact that they have been settling in Boston for the last 20 years few suspected their existence before the Woburn "shooting-up," and their general characteristics, their national traits, their mode of life, as well as their history, remain a mystery to the average American.
"We are not bandits," vehemently protest the leaders among the Boston Letts. "We do not deny that the bandits of both the Woburn and the Jamaica Plain hold-ups were Letts, but it is wrong to condemn a people because of them."
Who are the Letts?
This question is answered for the readers of the Boston Sunday Post by John Klawa, editor of the Stradneeks, which in English means the Worker, a weekly paper published in Boston.
Work for Small Wages
John Klawa can be found at 27 Oakdale terrace [sic], Jamaica Plain,13 in a large house that serves as the domicile of two families.14 Here is located the establishment where the paper he edits is set up and printed.
Klawa is chief compositor and business manager, besides shouldering all the editorial cares and being the principal contributor. For this work he receives the munificent salary of $9 a week.
His wife represents the mailing department at a total weekly expenditure of $4. Three more men work in aiding the paper to see the weekly light. Two of these get $9 a week each, one is paid but seven.
The paper is printed on a hand press and the whole force takes turns at making it go.
"It's very hard work," explains Klawa, "although our circulation is but 900 copies."
By JOHN KLAWA
"Living in the Baltic provinces of Russia is a nation, 2,000,000 souls strong, a nation distinct from all the other component parts of the Russian population. The Letts, the legends say, came originally from Asia. They were conquered by Germans in the 13th century, and through all the years of their existence have remained untouched by assimilation with other races.
"The Letts first began to emigrate to America about 20 years ago and today there are about 15,000 of them in this country and about 3000 of this number are to be found in Boston.
"The Letts in Boston do not live in one colony. Some of them are to be found in Jamaica Plain, some in Roxbury, others in Cambridge and South Boston.
"The Letts in this country are all workingmen. As a matter of fact, they have not begun as yet to enter the ranks of professionals, and there is but one Lettish physician in America, who lives in Chicago.
Boston Is [ a ] Lettish Centre
"The Letts are an agricultural people and the farms claim the majority of the arrivals in this country.
"Boston may be considered the Lettish centre in America, for the only papers published are printed in this city. These papers are the Stradneeks, the organ of the Socialists, and the American News, edited by the pastor of the local Lettish church.
"It is as well to state at the outset that of all the peasant population of Russia the Letts are the only ones among whom illiteracy is practically unknown, as they have a compulsory education law, and the peasants themselves support the schools.
"The Letts are first mentioned in written histories in the 13th century when the Teutons conquered the territory adjacent to the Baltic Sea, and the Knights of the Sword founded the city of Riga.
"It was an easy matter for these warriors to subdue the blonde, peaceful Letts, who were strangers to arms, who tilled the soil and dreamed of no conquests.
"The Letts, a free people until then, became slaves, the word Lett being synonymous with serf. They were baptized into Christianity, but they were forbidden to learn the art of letters, and only in 1800, when Pastor Gluck translated the Bible into the Lettish tongue, was the first attempt made to establish a Lettish literature.
Limited in Their Speech
"The Letts were also forbidden under penalty of death to speak the German language, as the feudal barons resented such audacity in a serf, and as no intermarriage could be thought of under such conditions, there is nothing remarkable in the fact that the Letts know no other class among themselves but that of peasants. Even in Russia the city population counts but few Letts among its numbers.
"There is no Lettish nobility, and as in former years the name Lett signified a serf, so in the 20th century it may be taken to indicate that the one who responds to it is either a peasant, or, in fewer cases, a city-dweling [sic] workingman.
"Alexander I. freed the Letts in the early 19th century, and since then the progress made by them has been very marked.
"In the early 60s appear the first original stories and novels in the Lettish language, the first newspapers are established, and the Letts begin to send their sons to the Russian universities.
Have High Hopes for Future
"Of course, for a nation as young as the Letts, there has been but little opportunity to achieve anything in any field of human endeavor, but they are learning very rapidly and the part they played in the Russian revolution in 1905 shows that they are conscious of their aims and desires.
"The revolution of 1905, when for a time it seemed as if the end of Russian tyranny had come, and when the Baltic republic became nearly an established fact, ended in a failure, and the Baltic provinces were literaly [sic] flooded by the blood of the unfortunate revolutionists.
"But for a short period the Letts, the youngest of Russia's many nations, were in the vanguard of the revolutionary movement, and the Russian Czar knows no more bitter enemies than they are.
"The Letts are very peaceful by nature. Of course, there are criminals among them, but those Russians who hail from the Baltic provinces will all testify that on the whole they are a very tractable people and that the percentage of crime among them is very low.
"The Lettish home is celebrated for its scrupulous cleanliness, the Letts share in this respect the fame of the Hollandese. Unlike the other peasants of Russia, the wife of a Lett shares the power and privileges with the head of the house, and while by nature not given to ostentatious display of feeling, the average Lett is deeply devoted to his home and family.
A Law-Abiding People
"The Boston Letts are law-abiding people. It is useless to accuse all of them simply because several bandits were found in their midst. Nobody deplores this more than the Letts themselves. The chief difficulty the Letts find in making known their desire to aid in the apprehension of these criminals is their inability to speak fluent English. The younger generation, that is the children born in this country, speak English like natives, but we, the older folk, find learning English a task of such magnitude that few are able to surmount all the obstacles. It is, perhaps, because the Lettish tongue is dissimiliar [sic] from every other language, and really it is fully as hard to master as is Chinese for instance.
"We welcome a nearer acquaintance with Americans, should the latter choose to wish it, and we are certain that an investigation will dispel whatever prejudices people have against the Letts on account of the Jamaica Plain and Woburn outbreaks."
Read more
A profile of the newspaper „ Strādnieks “ and a biography of its associated writer, John Klawa, appear on the following pages.A profile of the newspaper „ Strādnieks “ and biography of editor John Klawa appear on the following pages.
- One Dead and Eight Wounded in Tavern Robbery, retrieved October 20, 2026
- The Latvian Presence in America — at the Library of Congress, retrieved October 20, 2026
- Elga Zālīte, “Exploring the Library of Latvian Socialists in San Francisco”, retrieved October 20, 2026
Sources
| 1, | The first Latvian immigrants to America, Latvians Abroad – Museum and Research Centre, retrieved October 20, 2026. |
| 2, | Andris Straumanis, Latvian Americans, Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, via Encyclopedia.com, retrieved October 20, 2026. |
| 5 | History, Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church of Philadelphia, retrieved October 20, 2026. |
| 6 | "The first religious leader in the Estonian American community was the Reverend Hans Rebane, who arrived in New York in 1896. Rebane had been invited by the American denomination, the German Missouri Lutheran Synod, to establish a mission for Estonian and Latvian Lutheran immigrants. Rebane established a small congregation in New York City and visited other Estonian settlements in the East and Midwest. Rebane also established a newspaper, Eesti Amerika Postimees (Estonian American Courier), the first Estonian publication in the United States. Rebane used this newspaper to push his religious views and feuded with Estonian socialist groups until his death in 1911. Though the congregation in New York survived, and the Missouri Synod continued mission work among Estonian immigrants, this work was not particularly successful. During the period before World War II only two other Estonian American congregations took hold: a Baptist congregation formed in 1919, and a Pentecostal congregation formed in 1928, both in New York City." — at Mark A. Granquist, Estonian-Americans. Rebane left Boston in 1908 for Wisconsin, where he founded the first Estonian-American church in the Gleason area; his descendants still live there. — Gleason area hosts Estonian rock legend. |
| 8 | Paul Buhle, Latvian Americans, Verso Books, retrieved October 20, 2026. |
| 9 | Mark Bulger, One Dead and Eight Wounded in Tavern Robbery, Jamaica Plain Historical Society, retrieved October 20, 2026. |
| 10 | Ellen Knight, Sensational Boston Robbery Involved Hotel Winchester Resident, Town of Winchester, Massachusetts (2019 revision of an article first published in the Daily Times Chronicle, September 2, 2016), retrieved October 20, 2026. |
| 12 | “The Police Adopt Russian Methods in Boston”, in “In the Mirror of the Present”, The Arena, vol. 40, no. 226 (October 1908), pp. 345–346, at Internet Archive, retrieved October 27, 2026. The editorial condemns “this sudden spasm of newspaper hostility, which was as false as it was wicked”. |
| 13 | We could not locate this address in Google Maps, so we checked the Boston city directories. The 1909 and 1910 editions list “Klawa John editor h[ome] 17 Oakdale J[amaica] P[lain]”. Oakdale Terrace, a short spur off 19 Oakdale Street, has only three houses, indicating the correct address is 17 Oakdale Street. We subsequently uncovered confirming information in the 1910 census. |
| 14 | The 1910 census indicates a total of ten individuals at the address. |
