An Immigrant Story - Steven Yoo

Advertisement from The Calumet News, April 10, 1914.

The Calumet News, April 10, 1914

In 1888, Steve Yoo, a native of Hungary, arrived in New York from Hamburg, one of nearly 1,250 third-class passengers on board the SS California. Thus begins an immigrant story. He married fellow Magyar-speaking immigrant Susie Roczey in Cincinnati in 1898, and they soon moved to Calumet where Steve began working as a laborer for the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company. Susie kept 8 boarders at their house in Wolverine Location in April of 1900, all Magyar-speaking Hungarian immigrants.

 

Young Lidia Yoo's grave is marked at Calumet's Lakeview Cemetery.

NPS Photo

Steve tried his hand at a number of occupations during the family's 20 years in the Copper Country. In 1910, he was a teamster for a meat market; by 1911 he was operating a saloon at 406 Sixth St. In 1914, after returning from a visit to Hungary, Yoo and a partner opened Yoo and Reshovsky's clothing store just north of today's Northend Bar on Fifth Street. Yoo lost the business around 1917.

After losing the business, Yoo and his family moved to Detroit, as many others did at that time. Although their time in Calumet was temporary, they left behind a memorial to a lost loved one: young Lidia Yoo can be found at Calumet's Lakeview Cemetery, a victim of pneumonia.