14 Children of Matts BJÖRKBACKA

While browsing HiskiProject this morning, I came across this information on my 5th great grandparent's children.

14 Children of Matts Mattsson BJÖRKBACKA

Right now is not a good time for me to start adding all these newfound relatives to my Legacy Family Tree, after all it is the day before Christmas Eve and there are things to do around the house.

The satisfying part of adding all these individuals to my family tree is recording their names, births, christening dates, and the village and farm they were born on. At that point of documenting what I can on their lives I have hopes that they all lived a long life, married, and had children.

Yet, I have learned not to get my hopes up, after all, in this period of Finnish history many of my ancestors had children that died in infancy.

I do see the 1732 births of children Mattz and Brita that were only four months apart. Hopefully I can find the church records online and clear that up.

Simon Johansson Wertanen

Simon Johansson Wertanen 1687-1778 is my 6th great grandfather on my father's mother's side. He was born in Evijärvi, Finland, and died in Evijärvi, Finland at the age of 91.

When he was 9 years old, the Great Famine began in Finland. During this famine one out of three Finlanders died.

When Simon was 26, the Reign of Terror began when Russia invaded Finland, and this continued until he was 34 years of age.

I do not know the marriage date of Simon and my 6th great grandmother Susanna Henricsdotter (1705-1788), nor do I know the name of the farm she was born on. I do know that they had at least one child, my 5th great grandmother Maria Simmonsdotter Wertanen (1747-1795).

Hopefully I will discover siblings of my 5th great grandmother Maria, but I am pleased with tonight's discoveries.

How did I discover this info on my 6th great-grandparents? I searched through online church records for Evijärvi, Finland in hopes of finding the farm my 5th Great Grandmother Maria was born on, and once I finally found that, I also found info on her parents.

Anders Mattsson Ahlskog

Anders Mattsson Ahlskog 1813-1847 (Alaveteli - Nedervetil, Finland) is my grandfather's grandfather, on my mother's side.

I have tried to give special attention to him because of his short life span, gathering as much information on him as possible. To tell the truth, it is pretty hard to find anything beyond his name, birth, christening, marriage, children's births, his death, and burial dates, residence, and occupation (or social status). I was able to gather some of the same type of information on his parent's, spouse, and children.

Quite a while ago I decided that I had all the information on Anders that I could possibly find. Today I decided to have another look at what was available on him using HisKi Project. Hmm, I seemed to have missed a daughter, so I added her to my family records. I may have been careless and missed her when I looked quite a while ago, or perhaps HisKi Project had discovered and added this info after I researched the first time.

Just for curiosity, I searched beyond Anders death, and discovered something sad. My 2nd great grandmother Maria was pregnant when Anders died, though she may not been far enough in her pregnancy to be certain.

This child, also named Anders Mattsson, and their only son, died at less then two moths of age, the cause of death was not recorded.

Double checking my research was a good idea, and it did allow me to discover two family members that I was unaware of.

Seven Weddings In One Day

14 Oct 1804 was a busy day for weddings in Evijärvi, Finland, seven weddings took place that day! Here is a screenshot from HisKi Project showing the weddings on that date.

The Day My 3rd Great Grandparents Married

My 3rd great grandparents Johan Abrahamsson Särkijärvi and Lisa Eriksdotter Pesonen are third in this list.

Johan Abrahamsson Särkijärvi died in 1817 at the age of 37, and Lisa Eriksdotter Pesonen died at the age of 75 in 1852. Johan and Lisa had 6 children, 5 daughters and one son. Their 3rd daughter, Maria, was my 2nd great grandmother.

1746 Twins at Söder Ena Farm, Finland

I had a nice find today in my family history. My 5th great-grandmother Anna Andersdotter Söder Ena (1746-1823) had a twin brother named Anders!

Anna and Anders Söder Ena are not the first twins I have discovered among my ancestors, but this is the first twins of my Finnish ancestors to live a long life. Anna lived 76 years, and her brother Anders Andersson Söder Ena (1746-1828) lived 81 years!

I was afraid that Anders had a short life and no children, but he didn't! He married and Anders and his wife Anna Davidsdotter (born 1754) had nine children.

It looks like I will be working on twin brother Anders' family as the current part of my family history, gathering and documenting his descendants. It would be nice if I could hope to search for information newer than 1860 on HisKi Project, but that's as far as that website goes for church records from Evijärvi, where they probably spent their whole lives.

Margeta Eriksdotter Slåtte born 1751

My 3rd great great aunt Margeta Eriksdotter Slåtte was born 16 Jan 1751 in Kronoby, Finland. She married Hans Olofsson Rudnäs on 23 Oct 1772 in Kronoby, Finland. It appears they had 11 children from 1776 to 1794, also in Kronoby, Finland, at Rudnäs farm, though I haven't gotten to the stage of verifying those births.

Now, it seems like with all that information on Margeta and Hans, I should be able to discover when they died. No luck yet on that, though. Last night and this morning I spent hours online checking churchbooks and HisKi Project, and not finding when these two died, but at least I know their last child was probably born 17 Feb 1794, so at least I have that to work off of.

There is a Greta Eriksdotter that died in 1832 with a residence of Rudnäs farm, but the age at death is off by a few years. I found that on HisKi Project.

Still, that might be her....

I think it is time to move on to a different ancestor and come back to Margeta and her husband some other day.

Johan Drill 22 July 1778

My 3rd great grandfather Johan Drill was a soldier in Finland, with a birth date of 22 July 1778.

However, his birth name was not Johan Drill, and I've been stumped for quite a while anytime I tried to discover his real name. I better add that soldiers in Finland were assigned new names, and the only reference I was able to find for him for a long time was as Johan Drill.

Last night looking at Finnish church records I discovered that he moved to Ylikiiminki, Finland from Oulu in 1809.

Once I knew where he was from, and already knowing his wife's name and date of their marriage, I searched Oulu, Finland marriages for her, and discovered that when they were married he was still using what I assume was his birth name of Johan Grönlund.

That had been one of those searches that just wasn't going anywhere for a long time. Some times I'd ignore him for a week or more and concentrate on more productive searches on other family members, but I kept going back to him, and finally it paid off!

Henrich Henrichsson Pöyskö

Henrich Henrichsson Pöyskö (Cal 2 Jan 1724-3 Dec 1795) and Elin Markusdotter Leskelä (17 Nov 1721-29 Apr 1796) are two of my 5th great grandparents, and their daughter Lisa ( 23 Feb 1751-11 Dec 1805) is my 4th great grandfather. The lived in Ylikiiminki, Finland. I have had them in my list of ancestors for a while now, and tonight I decided to investigate HisKi project on this family group to see if Lisa had any brothers and sisters.

Nice! I discovered Lisa had seven siblings (with a couple more that probably are siblings). The seven I felt confident in adding to my list of blood relatives were all born in Ylikiiminki, Finland,between the years of 1753 and 1766.

It takes a while for me to put seven more family members into my Legacy family tree software, so I only set tonight's goal at inputting their names, birth dates, christening dates, religion, and farm residence at time of their birth.

I am really hoping that all these newfound relatives lived long lives, married, and had children.

Find Finnish Ancestors

A good start place for finding your Finnish ancestors is a website called HisKi Project.

The start page I linked to above is in English, something many of us really need.

Keep in mind that the information is transcribed for this site from the original parish records by volunteers, and sometimes (but not often), there are mistakes. What they have made available online is great.

Many parishes in Finland are covered, and quite a few years have been covered. Keep in mind that more recent info is not posted (Finnish privacy laws?). The years covered vary by parish, and I seem to find many of the church records I hope to find information from have info from about 1700 to 1850. I have found a lot of good family info there!

What might they have? Births, christening dates, marriages, and deaths are the most commonly found items by me. These may also include farm names they resided on when the event occurred, causes of death, and occupation (or social status).

When filling out the search form, you don't have to fill out every section. For patronymic, sometimes unexpected forms of abbreviation may have been used. One example is Anderson, sometimes it is spelled out as expected, sometimes not. If I can't find what I want by the name I expected, I go back and search using only the first letter of the name. That sometimes helps.

You may also wish to expand your search by including more years in the date you are searching for.

For my level of certainty on any results I find here, I label my results no higher than "Almost Certain" because I am not seeing the actual original document.