Genealogy Jottings

After searching the handwritten Boston ship passenger index from June 1905 through early 1906, I still have not come up with a listing for my great-grandmother Ada Alina Mattila. A 20th-century record for an uncommon name should not be this difficult to locate. I wish the family had kept her travel information, but the daughter who remained in the family home never kept anything.

In all, I now understand why people complain about the difficult search for ship passenger records. I have spent a lot of time looking for the Mattila immigrants without complete success. My results:

• Found Alex Mattila,  Olga Mattila, Ida Mattila Mattson and three children
• Not found Ada Mattila, Karl and Anna (nee’ Mattila) Anderson, Oscar Silberg (husband of Olga), Sam Parks (second husband of Ida), Ida Mattila’s eldest daughter (Rose?)

What could I try next to document these immigrations? Naturalization papers contain immigration information, so I could locate those for the men. I cannot check Ada’s naturalization record because she would not have had a record of her own. Women gained or lost citizenship with their husbands in those days.

Perhaps Finland retained an emigration record that shows Ada’s departure from Finland. A couple of years ago, I found such records for my Norwegian ancestors. The problem in locating a Finnish counterpart is that I am not certain of her identifying information beyond her birth date. Where did she reside before she emigrated? Relatives lived in Kotka, but Ada and her husband always spoke of life in Viipuri (the city or the province?). Alex Mattila sailed from a third location, Hango, but I do not know whether he actually lived there. Still, the Finnish records provide the obvious next research objective for Ada.