Tuesday, July 2, 2019

Hilma's letter from Oregon

I know I already blogged today but I'm getting ready to go on vacation and won't be able to post for a couple of weeks so I thought I'd squeeze another in today.

My grandpa's cousin Shelly found a lot of letters that Hilma had written that she ended up with.  My grandpa had given me 3 letters that Hilma wrote to him but Shelly had an additional 18 of them.  It's nice to have her handwriting and you can tell how she spoke by the way she spelled different words.  She very obviously had a thick Swedish accent but did know English.  One letter in particular struck me as potentially helpful to my research, but it took me several years to figure it out.

I have to preface the letter by posting a communion book record that I posted in my last blog, and that I posted in the blog I referenced from 2016.
When I was revisiting these records I'd received I took note of the family listed below Lisa Greta's family - Stina Johanna is most definitely Benjam Kiviniemi's sister.  This record shows her husband and 6 children.  I added them to my tree and moved on, since I'm having so much difficulty tracking these families beyond the communion books.  That was until I revisited this letter:






Of course the stamp and postmark were cut off so I don't know what year this happened but it definitely is a visit to a cousin.  On the 2nd page of the letter she mentions "may kusen" (my cousin).  She mentions that the cousin didn't remember her and that the last time they saw each other was when Hilma left for America, when the cousin was 9 years old.  Because I had seen that Stina Johanna's family was listed on that communion record I knew I had some of Hilma's cousins in my tree, one born in 1888.   I went into ancestry.com and searched for all women named Elna, who were born about 1888 and lived in Coos Bay Oregon and lo and behold:

The 1st record I found was the Oregon Death Index, which has her middle name Johanna truncated and no birth day but a potential match showed in the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) and there it was, a perfect match on the birthdate.  

I then found her in the census records and discovered that although Elna married, she never had any children.  It was still nice to see who it was Hilma was referring to in her letter.  






I then did the "Member Connect" (ancestry's matching of uploaded family trees) to see if anyone had Elna in their tree and several people did.  Upon looking a bit I found that Stina's daughters Judith and Alma also came to America and I was able to trace those families (and have reached out to a descendant already).  I got one of the daughter's obituaries and it also listed a sister Ida so there is one child not yet born yet when the communion record was written.  

I found the Petitions for Naturalization that Alma and Judith filed, both listed their maiden name as Gustafson (their father's patronymic) but that they sailed under the name Kiviniemi, which was Hilma's maiden name.  

Hopefully this leads to more connections and more information.  For now I'm happy that reading over the records and the letters led to the connection in the first place.





Off to vacation - everyone enjoy their 4th of July!

Revisiting a record I already had

So in my last blog about Hilma I referenced another blog.  I wrote that in 2016 shortly after receiving the new information that I had received, which completely shocked the descendants of Hilma who had no idea that she had an additional sibling Selma (that we aren't sure what happened to but guess didn't come to America).  I'm not going to repost the additional record for Selma or for the birth of her son Nils Ragnar but I did want to revisit some of the records because I completely missed something the first time.

So as mentioned twice previously, Hilma was born to Benjam(in) Henriksson Kiviniemi and Lisa Greta Johansdotter Känsäkangas (have also seen her listed as Rasmus).


Benjam was born 14 Feb 1859 at Kivijärvi Finland to Henrik Mattsson Kivijarvi (1829-1887) and Anna Caisa Andersdotter (1830-????).  He's listed as Benjam and Benjamin in various records.  As stated before, he abandoned the family about 1881 and allegedly went to America, although I can't find him anywhere.  His birth is listed as record #17 on the upper left section of this book page.

Many thanks to Alan for finding Benjam's birth record and marriage to Lisa Greta for me today!


Lisa Greta was born 18 Jan 1855 at Kaustinen Finland to Jonas Johansson Känsäkangas-Virkkala (1818-1868) and Helena Johansdotter Hotakainen (1817-????).  There is a project that was turned into a book called the "Caino-Torp" book that takes the Känsäkangas family back to the 1500s.





Benjam and Lisa Greta were married 4 Nov 1877 at Karleby Finland.  Their marriage record is the last record on the bottom of the right page.










So, these are new records that weren't listed in the previous blog - where is the information that I missed from the records in 2016?


So in this communion book for 1885-1894 Lisa Greta is shown with her family (although there is a note that her husband left for America in 1881).  She's listed with her in-laws above her, her 3 daughters, including the illegitimate Selma, and her sister-in-law and her family below.

When I was initially sent these records I didn't see the possible connection in the next record.





I was also given this communion book page, which covers the exact same time frame (1885-1894).  In this one Lisa Greta is almost listed as a member of the family of her 2nd husband Gustaf Robert Wäyrynen, tacked onto the end of his family, which included his 1st wife and their 4 children, and again Selma.

I don't quite understand why she's listed twice, although I know in American census records there are times people got enumerated twice.  Perhaps it's a simple as that.


Lisa Greta marries Gustaf Robert Wäyrynen 22 Jul 1894 at Karleby Finland.  His 1st wife passed away 5 Jun 1893 at Karleby.  Lisa Greta is 39 years old when she remarries and her husband is 42 years old and they have 6 children between them.  Surely Hilma doesn't have any further siblings (at least on her mother's side)?







This is the record I missed.  I was given it, with an explanation of what the notations in the right column were and filed it away.  As I was going back through records and corresponding with Alan again I noticed another child, Karl Emil, listed with the family.  Who is Karl and what is he doing with the family?  I asked Alan who did a little digging and...........





.......lo and behold, Karl Emil was indeed born to Gustaf and Lisa Greta, who had (what I think is) her last child at the age of 42.  His birth is the middle record on the right page.

I'm not sure how I overlooked this child the first time but it proves again that you need to have to have a pair of studying eyes when you look over documents.  Overlooking something like this can limit future benefits of receiving the document.  How you ask?



For me, I work on the ancillary lines - descendants of my direct ancestor siblings.  I'm trying to track down what happened to Lisa Greta - if one of Karl Emil's descendants works on the tree (alas there is nothing that I can find to indicate this yet) but I don't have him in my tree I may not make a connection.  Same with a photo of Lisa Greta - entirely possible that there's a photo of her - perhaps it's the unidentified photo in the first post I referenced.  Perhaps one of Karl Emil's grandchildren is still living and has a photo.  Again, he needs to be in my tree for that to work.  What about DNA testing?  If one of Karl's children or grandchildren get DNA tested, they may eventually show as a match in my tree.  If Karl isn't in my tree it's entirely likely that the connection could be missed.  In my mind the ancillary lines are just as important when you're trying to track down records and photographs that, if they exist, are in the hands of descendants.  I know for a fact that Hilma and Anna's descendants do not have them so I have to rely on Selma or Karl Emil's descendants.  Perhaps one of them will read this and solve the mystery for me?