Genealogy Jottings

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

I am planning a field trip–literally. Our Norwegian forebears raised wheat when they homesteaded on Montana and North Dakota in the early 20th century, and the sites remain as farmed fields. The nearest towns are Plentywood, Redstone, and Homestead, Montana and Palermo, North Dakota. We are heading there soon to visit the homesteads and cemeteries, and to see the land our families knew so well.

Not many people still live in these areas. I found Palermo, with just 74 people, on a list of North Dakota ghost towns. At one time, these places thrived, but the Dust Bowl years began a long period of slow decline. Neither of us has any family left on the MonDak border, although mine still owns farmland near Redstone.

Preparation for this trip began ages ago. First I looked for the homestead files for these ancestors, and they proved difficult to find. Norwegian immigrants came to America with no surnames, and they often tried on several, with various spellings, before settling on one as the new country required. Ultimately, I collected all their land records, and I identified the cemeteries I should visit.

So we will drive and drive through farm country until we come close to the Canadian border. Then we will walk through farmland and fields of eternal rest, remembering the hardy Norwegian homesteaders who lived and died there. If we have extra time, we may drive a little further to visit Mohall, ND, too. An entrepreneur in my husband’s family, M. O. Hall, founded the town and named it after himself. As far as I know, he never farmed anything, and he did not stay in North Dakota. Like so many others, he moved on. Like us, who will leave the fields after a brief visit and return to our busy suburban lives.

After observing recently that the genealogy message boards no longer seemed to result in many new connections, I must confess that I had not entirely given up on them. Now I am very glad that I kept on posting.

I had come to the end of the line with my Finnish great-grandmother, Ada Alina Lampinen. No one in the family knew anything about her origins except that “they all stayed in Finland.” No names, no places.

My earliest record for her was the 1904 Viipuri marriage to my great-grandfather when she was nearly 25 years old. I hypothesized that she and Alex married there because her family lived there. Still, I found nothing further about her or any connection to family members in the Viipuri records.

I chalked up my lack of success to my frustrating unfamiliarity with Finnish records, so I turned to the Finland message boards for help. Very quickly I received a GenForum reply. My Ada came from Juuka parish in then-Kuopio province just north of Viipuri province. The reply included a link to her baptismal record and the names and birthdates for her parents. What a gift!

I now have so much more information to use in my search. The message boards my be less busy these days, but they are still worth a try. Thanks to all who take time to lend a hand via these boards.

How do you locate other genealogists searching for the same surnames you do? Trading information with them can really push along your results.

For many years I have used a couple of online genealogy message boards for this purpose. I have been delighted to discover Reed cousins in New York and Florida; Riddle cousins in Montana, Canada, and Germany.

But increasingly, the posts on the message boards have dwindled. Often they are not queries and answers at all but rather just people looking to test DNA or posting links to recent obituaries. Although I still check them every week, I am finding the message boards have become less and less helpful. So where did all the family researchers go?

I suspect I might find them on Facebook or Twitter. Neither of these has interested me much. They seem time-consuming, and I worry about privacy, so I have been dragging my feet on joining.

This week, however, I listened to a RootsTech presentation by Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers on using Twitter. He made a good case for establishing a Twitter account and using it solely for genealogy. One can follow surnames, other genealogists, or genealogical organizations to connect with like-minded researchers.

I am thinking of giving it a try. I just need to think of a clever Twitter name first.

I cannot remember exactly what my Finnish grandmother told me about her father’s birth family. She said he was the only boy, but was he the youngest of nine, or did he have nine sisters? I do not recall.

Lately, I have scoured 19th-century Finnish baptismal records in an effort to find out. I am finding this task infinitely more difficult than the same search would be in American records. Aside from the difficult-to-read Gothic script used in the records, Finnish names during the period varied between Finnish and Swedish renderings, and patronymics or surnames. Thus, the father’s name in the records I am reviewing could be either Antti or Anders, Mattila or Abelsson (and I did find a Paulsson, too, but I am not positive this is the same guy).

To do a thorough search, I must look for all these names in any order. So how many permutations and combinations can you make out of these names? At least eight by my count–Antti Mattila, Antti Abelsson, Anders Mattila, Anders Abelsson, Mattila Antti, Mattila Anders, Abelsson Antti, and Abelsson Anders. I should probably look for more records on this Anders Paulsson as well to determine whether I have the right person. Oh, and I must not to forget to search for initials instead of full names. And would he have had a nickname?

Every Finnish name is like this. Comprehensive research takes forever, but searching for every possibility is the only way to make sure I compile an accurate family tree. So far, I have located baptism records for seven, maybe eight children of Antti Mattila. I know I am searching for at least nine. If they do not all turn up with searches for the father’s name, I will try the mother’s with all her possible combinations. It gets overwhelming unless you apply the science of permutations and combinations.

Every genealogist hears family tales but knows they are not always true. Over the years, I have heard my share of family stories from earlier generations. I try to research each one, looking for that nugget of truth beneath the embellishments, exaggerations, and confused details.

Here is an example. My Finnish grandmother told me that her paternal grandfather was a fisherman who had drowned when his only son was a small boy. True?

Not completely. From Finnish parish records, I have learned that the paternal grandfather was named Antti Mattila, and he lived in the village of Alasommee, near Vyborg. He did die when his son was just 4 years old, but not from drowning. His 1882 death record states that he died from tuberculosis.

This makes sense, too. Tuberculosis struck everywhere in Karelian Finland in those days. Just a couple of years later, Antti Mattila’s eldest daughter Helena died from the same disease.

So who drowned?

“I am researching Finns this year,” I keep telling myself. And so I must if I hope to maintain focus and steady progress. Jumping from family line to family line creates confusion and slows you down.

But the temptation this week has been strong to take a long-postponed look at my Revolutionary War ancestors. Not only did we celebrate Independence Day yesterday, but I also attended a class last weekend that stole my attention away from the Finns.

Four times a year, on a 5th Saturday of the month, the Denver Public Library hosts a class on some topic of specialized genealogical interest. This month they discussed Virginia research. Well, who has 4 family members who served in the Revolution from the colony of Virginia? I do–Joshua Reed, Robert Kirkham, and John Day (Senior and Junior). I attended the class, learned a bunch, and now I would love to dive into the records to learn more about those patriots.

But I have a research plan. Everything Finnish lies spread across my desk, and I need to finish (ha! ha!) this before I move on to something else. Those Revolutionary ancestors will wait for me, and when their time comes, they will get my full attention.

One of the reasons I maintain a family website is to provide a way for distant relatives to find me. I have learned so much family history from second, third, and even fourth cousins I never knew until we found each other on message boards or via the website.

It happened again this week, but with a twist. The person who contacted me was not a relative, but rather someone wanting to write about a relative. She is with the Broomfield, CO genealogical society, and they are doing a project on the men who served as station agents for the railroad depot there.

My great-uncle, Robert Morton Reed, was one of those men. Everyone in the family looked up to him, so I am thrilled he is being recognized for his work. Next time I want a nearby genealogy field trip, you can bet I will be going to the Broomfield Depot Museum!

Recently my husband and I decided to begin planning a trip to visit the homelands of our Norwegian and Finnish ancestors. The Norway part comes easily because we have long known exactly where our forebears lived. My Finnish family origins are a bit murkier. So how do you plan a trip when you do not know exactly where you are going?

My husband had the answer. He would do some of my genealogical research himself and find my ancestral villages–pronto.

Instead of the careful working backward with a research plan that I do, he tends to use the shotgun approach. He locates as many documents as he can in as short a time as he can. Only later does he worry about fitting it all together.

In just a few days he has located Mattila baptism records, marriage banns, marriage records, etc. by poking around in Finnish church and newspaper databases. No matter that he knows not a word of Finnish. He copies whatever he finds and forwards it to me. Now I am drowning in documents that it will take days to sift through.

He learned that my Lampinen family probably came from the city of Viipuri/Vyborg but the Mattilas lived in the rural area south of there. All lies in Russia now. Do we really want to go there?

I think we probably will, but it will be different from the tour of Finland than we had originally envisioned. The logistics of a Russian trip will take time to work out, so now I have a dilemma. Spend my time analyzing all my newly-discovered documents, or work on planning the trip? I feel like I am drinking from a firehose, yet what a satisfying drink it is.

Lately I have been thinking about the method I am using to keep my family history in the cloud. Although I work primarily in my desktop The Master Genealogist software, every month I upload my new data to my website using PHP Gedview. I have had this process in place for some time, but I am thinking it is time to upgrade.

Storing genealogy in the cloud is a rapidly evolving field. Recently  D. Joshua Taylor spoke at RootsTech on this topic. He says that the future of genealogical record keeping lies in this direction. He points out that saving genealogical data online offers us several benefits such as permanent storage, universal access, and the opportunity to collaborate and interact with other genealogists.

Recently I attended a conference where someone expressed interest in the process I already use. She suggested that I do a presentation on it to our local genealogy society. I hardly feel qualified to do this because I feel that my current approach is outdated. But once we do the research and upgrade our record storage, perhaps we should share that information with others.

I changed my tagline on this blog today. I chose the new one after I attended a seminar last weekend and heard an interesting twist on a familiar phrase. We all know that the Declaration of Independence asserted our right to the pursuit of Happiness. The seminar speaker took that phrase and changed it to speak of genealogy as the happiness of pursuit. That really says it all for those of us who relentlessly seek information about our ancestors. So I adopted that thought as my new tagline.

And I have had a happy discovery or two this week. I located a ship passage record for relatives from Finland, and it proved quite interesting. This group came over in 1908, and their record was very detailed–physical descriptions, names and addresses of kin in Finland, and information about relatives already in America.

I still have a couple more ship passage records to locate for my Finns. Four  Mattila siblings in all came over, some with spouses and some with children. I now have the passenger lists for Alex and Ida. I will be truly happy when I have found the records for the rest of them.