Genealogy Jottings

Over the past couple of months, I have been searching for the identity of an unknown family member. I can recall my mother talking about an aunt in Biwabik, Minnesota, but neither of Mom’s surviving siblings recalls any such person. Was this aunt real, or did I just imagine this conversation?

I do know that the woman was likely not my mother’s aunt, but probably my grandmother’s. To the best of my recollection, they would mention her when they spoke of the Mattilas who had immigrated from Finland at the turn of the last century–my great-grandfather Alexander Mattila, and his sisters, Mrs. Anderson, Mrs. Silberg, and “the aunt in Biwabik”. How could I identify this woman if she did exist?

I began with my grandmother’s address book, which I  have kept since she died in 1977. She used to correspond with a Mrs. Eliot Haberlitz in California. Women never used their first names in those days, but I thought I remembered that Mrs. Haberlitz was named “Dee” and was Grandma’s cousin. Since the Andersons had no children, and the  Silbergs had only a son, could Dee Haberlitz have been a child of the Biwabik aunt?

I consulted the family tree section on Ancestry.com to find anything I could on Eliot Haberlitz. There he was, married to Bertha Parks. Bertha, not Dee? I thought I had the wrong person until I looked at Bertha’s family information. I found that her nickname was “Dee”, her maiden name was Parks, she was born in Minnesota, and her mother was Ida Mattila!

So now I had a possible name for the mystery aunt, Ida Mattila Parks. Sure enough, there she was in Biwabik on the 1910 census. Bertha had not been born yet but there were other children in the household named Elsa, Martha, and George. Now I remembered Grandma talking about these cousins, too. This was likely the correct family.

So, what happened to Ida, and why wasn’t she named in Alexander Mattila’s 1945 obituary? I looked for her on the 1920 census but could not find her.  Ten-year-old  Bertha Parks resided in Biwabik with her sister, Elsa (Mrs. Edward Glass). Where was Ida, and why wasn’t her young daughter living with her? Could Ida have died before 1920?

I went to look at the Minnesota death index on Family Search. There I found that Ida Parks, daughter of Antti Mattila, passed away in Biwabik in 1917.

I hypothesize that this Ida Parks was the missing aunt from Biwabik, and a sister to my great-grandfather Alexander Mattila. Mom’s brother and sister did not remember her because she died long before they were born. So how can I confirm this relationship?

My next step is to search for Ida’s obituary. I have contacted the library system that serves the Biwabik area, and they are searching the newspaper archives for me. I will be thrilled if they locate something. I want to verify that this Ida Parks was the “aunt in Biwabik” whom I heard about as a child.

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