Genealogy Jottings

As I do every year, I chose one family line for my research focus in 2014. This year my husband/tech advisor and I plan to take a trip to Finland, so guess what? I will target my research on my Finnish line. Two of my great-grandparents emigrated from Finland in 1905.

I worked on them once before, a couple of years ago. At that time, I pretty well fleshed out my great-grandfather Alexander Mattila’s birth family. He was from the area outside Viipuri, then Finland’s second-largest city. Today, the city lies in Russia and is known as Vyborg. We plan to take a canal cruise to see Vyborg while we are in Finland.

My great-grandmother, Alex’s wife, was Ada Alina Lampinen. I think she came from the Kuopio area of Finland. She presents a more difficult research subject than her husband Alex did. Their eldest daughter, my grandmother, knew a lot about her father’s family, and she passed that information along to me. Not so with her mother’s family. All she could say was that her mother was the only member of her family to emigrate, and she knew nothing of those who remained behind.

Obviously, then, my goal is to learn more about Ada’s family this year. Lampinens, I am on my way to find you. I do not want to be visiting the wrong places when I take my trip.