Last night while working on one pair of my 3rd great grandparents I had more than my usual amount of confusion as I started out.
I felt fairly confident that my 3rd great grandfather's name was Johan Andersson Luomanperä.
Yet I found references to what I believed was him listing him as Johan Andersson Herlefvi and also Johan Andersson Huhtakangas. Adding to my confusion was that he was from Ullava, Finland. I had no other ancestors from this town.
Could this be the same person?
Yes! What we think of today as a permanent last name was, in the time of my 3rd great grandfather the name of the farm they lived on. If they moved to a different farm, they took that farm name as their "last name".
Usually my male ancestors were born, lived their lives, and died on the same farm. Not so with Johan, and that added over an hour to my research just trying to convince myself that these three names referred to the same person.
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