Spirit of Finland Installed

In July I wrote about the sculpture Spirit of Finland, due to be installed in front of the Finnish Heritage Museum in Fairport Harbor, Lake County, Ohio. The sculpture, created by Ken Valimaki, represents Finnish immigrants to the USA. Last weekend the sculpture was dedicated during Fairport’s annual Community Days celebration. You can read about the ceremony here and see the whole process in a photo-essay here.

The sculpture committee includes a couple relatives of mine, my second cousin once removed Sharon Ojanpa Mackey and my second cousin once removed Ken Quiggle.

You can still donate to fund the lighting of the sculpture here.

From Finland to Fairport, Part 5

Isakki Salo, 1901.

We've arrived at the final two Finnish immigrants in this series of blog posts.

As I explained in Part 1 of this series, the Finnish Heritage Museum in Fairport Harbor, Lake County, Ohio, is preparing a Memory Book to accompany the Spirit of Finland sculpture being dedicated this month on September 15. The sculpture commemorates all Finnish immigrants to the USA. For the museum's Memory Book I wrote about my own ancestors who immigrated from Finland. Because the infomation is so dense, I'm presenting my Memory Book essay in several parts on this blog.

This concluding part presents Edla "Edna" Salo Hietanen's parents Isakki Salo and Helvi Serafiina Saaminen Salo:

Edna’s father Isakki “Isaac” Salo (5/18/1854-5/19/1908) was born in Ylistaro, Finland. So was Edna’s mother Helvi Serafiina “Serafia” Saaminen (2/2/1860-8/26/1907), and they married there on 7/16/1880. Isaac left for the USA in 1890, his passport dated 3/1/1890. Serafia and their four daughters, including Edna, arrived later on 6/25/1893. They settled in Fairport where a fifth daughter was born. Serafia died of a heart condition. Isaac, employed by G. W. Blackmon’s Sons, died tragically in a work accident. While he was digging in a water main trench, the casing on one side caved in. A flood of earth crushed Isaac against the other side. Both Serafia and Isaac are buried in Suomi Zion Lutheran Cemetery.

Helvi Seraphiina "Serafia" Saaminen Salo, 1901.

This is how they're related to me:

Isakki “Isaac” Salo is my great-great-grandfather, my mother’s father’s mother’s father

Helvi Serafiina "Serafia" Saaminen Salo is my great-great-grandmother, my mother’s father’s mother’s mother

Progress on the Spirit of Finland sculpture and its installation in front of the Finnish Heritage Museum has been updated with plenty of new photos on the museum website here. If you’d like, you can still donate to the sculpture fund. You can also become a member of the museum.

And that concludes this From Finland to Fairport series of posts.

From Finland to Fairport, Part 4

As I explained in Part 1 of this series of blog posts, the Finnish Heritage Museum in Fairport Harbor, Lake County, Ohio, is preparing a Memory Book to accompany the Spirit of Finland sculpture being dedicated this month on September 15. The sculpture commemorates all Finnish immigrants to the USA. For the museum's Memory Book I wrote about my own ancestors who immigrated from Finland. Because the infomation is so dense, I'm presenting my Memory Book essay in several parts on this blog.

Today continues the information about Matti Hietanen Jr. and introduces Edla Susanna Salo Hietanen:

Matti Hietanen Jr. and Edla Susanna "Edna" Salo Hietanen

Their son Matti Hietanen Jr. built the pulpit at Suomi Zion Lutheran Church in Fairport where on 10/10/1903 he married Edla Susanna “Edna” Salo (4/27/1884-8/15/1961). They lived at 316 Sixth Street, Fairport, for the rest of their lives and had nine children. Matti was a police patrolman. On the night of 10/28/1921, during Prohibition, he died in a shooting affair at Andrew Szabo’s pool room on High Street, Fairport. Newspaper accounts claim Matti committed suicide. Family tradition says he was murdered. Edna outlived him by four decades before dying of a heart attack. Both are buried in Suomi Zion Lutheran Cemetery.

Here's how they're related to me:

Matti “Matt” Hietanen Jr. is my great-grandfather, my mother’s father’s father (you can read about his death here)

Edla Sussanna “Edna” Salo Hietanen is my great-grandmother, my mother’s father’s mother

Progress on the Spirit of Finland sculpture and its installation in front of the Finnish Heritage Museum has been updated with plenty of new photos on the museum website here. If you’d like, you can still donate to the sculpture fund. You can also become a member of the museum.

Next are Isakki Salo and Helvi Serafiina Saaminen Salo.

From Finland to Fairport, Part 3

As I explained in Part 1 of this series of blog posts, the Finnish Heritage Museum in Fairport Harbor, Lake County, Ohio, is preparing a Memory Book to accompany the Spirit of Finland sculpture being dedicated this month on September 15. The sculpture commemorates all Finnish immigrants to the USA. For the museum's Memory Book I wrote about my own ancestors who immigrated from Finland. Because the infomation is so dense, I'm presenting my Memory Book essay in several parts on this blog.

Today is about Matti Uhmusberg Hietanen Sr., Liisa Kristiina Herttua Hietanen, and Matti Hietanen Jr.:

Matti Uhmusberg Hietanen

Liisa Kristiina Herttua Hietanen

Matti Uhmusberg (7/8/1857-5/22/1915) was born in Palo, Isokyro, Finland. On 11/11/1880 he married Liisa Kristiina Herttua (1/1/1861-1/22/1943), who was born in Ylistaro, Vasan Laani, Finland. They took the last name Hietanen evidently from a cottage where they lived on the Renko farm of Matti’s sister Maria and her husband Jaakko Aittanen. Matti arrived in the USA on 6/16/1887. Liisa and her sons Matti Jr. (5/29/1883-10/28/1921) and Edward Miikaeli followed later, sailing in steerage on the ship Aller and arriving in the USA on 7/5/1890. The family settled in Fairport, where Matti Sr. and Liisa helped found Suomi Zion Lutheran Church. Matti Sr. worked on the P. & L. E. docks. He was naturalized 3/22/1899. Matti Sr. and Liisa are buried in the Northeast Leroy Cemetery, Leroy, Ohio.

This is how these Finnish immigrants are related to me:

Matti Uhmusberg Hietanen Sr. is my great-great-grandfather, my mother’s father’s father’s father

Liisa Kristiina “Elizabeth” Herttua Hietanen is my great-great-grandmother, my mother’s father’s father’s mother

Matti “Matt” Hietanen Jr. is my great-grandfather, my mother’s father’s father (you can read about his death here)

Progress on the Spirit of Finland sculpture and its installation in front of the Finnish Heritage Museum has been updated with plenty of new photos on the museum website here. If you’d like, you can still donate to the sculpture fund. You can also become a member of the museum.

Next is Edla Susanna Salo Hietanen and more information about Matti Hietanen Jr.

From Finland to Fairport, Part 2

As I explained in my last post, the Finnish Heritage Museum in Fairport Harbor, Lake County, Ohio, is preparing a Memory Book to accompany the Spirit of Finland sculpture being dedicated this month on September 15. The sculpture commemorates all the Finnish immigrants to the USA. For the Memory Book I wrote about my own ancestors who immigrated from Finland. Because the infomation is so dense, I'm presenting my Memory Book essay in several parts on this blog.

Today I'm presenting Mattias Nikolai Stuuri, Walpori Wilhelmina Erkkila Stuuri, and their son Mattias Vihtori Stuuri:

Mattias Vihtori "Matti" Stuuri, circa 1945.

Mattias Nikolai Stuuri (1861-11/11/1922) was born at Huhtilinto in Kortesjarvi, Finland. He married Walpori Wilhelmina Erkkila (1860-1925). On 5/1/1889 Nikolai arrived in Canada and worked on the railroad around Montreal. His last name was originally Störr, but he changed it to Stuuri. Eventually he arrived in Lake County, Ohio. In September 1899, his wife Walpori with their daughter Hilma and son Mattias Vihtori “Matti” Stuuri (5/17/1888-5/13/1981) traveled from Hunkonilmi, Finland, to Hull, England, and took a train to Liverpool where they waited one week before sailing to New York on the White Star Line ship Germanic. The crossing to Ellis Island took another week. From New York they took a train to Painesville, Ohio, to join Nikolai. The family settled in Fairport Harbor, living upstairs at Rogat’s Hardware store. Nikolai died of mitral valve insufficiency, and he and Walpori are buried in Suomi Zion Lutheran Cemetery, Fairport. Their son Matti worked at Stores & Harrison Nursery. On 7/2/1912 Matti married Wilhelmina Elizabeth “Minnie” Hirvi (11/12/1890-12/7/1946), daughter of Wilhelm and Wilhelmina Hirvi. They had six children. Matti built the house at 503 Independence Street, Fairport, and lived there with his family until his death. He’s buried in Evergreen Cemetery with his wife Minnie.

This is how these people are related to me:

Mattias Nikolai Stuuri is my great-great-grandfather, my mother’s mother’s father’s father

Walpori Wilhelmina Erkkila Stuuri is my great-great-grandmother, my mother’s mother’s father’s mother

Mattias Vihtori “Matti” Stuuri is my great-grandfather, my mother’s mother’s father (the only one of my Finnish immigrant forebears who I knew in person)

Progress on the Spirit of Finland sculpture and its installation in front of the Finnish Heritage Museum has been updated with plenty of new photos on the museum website here. If you’d like, you can still donate to the sculpture fund. You can also become a member of the museum.

Next are Matti Uhmusberg Hietanen Sr., Liisa Kristiina Herttua Hietanen, and Matti Hietanen Jr.

From Finland to Fairport, Part 1

Later this month, on September 15, the Finnish Heritage Museum in Fairport Harbor, Ohio, will dedicate a sculpture commemorating Finnish immigrants to the USA. A couple months ago I wrote a blog post about the sculpture, the Spirit of Finland, and the fund to raise money for its installation. Donors to the fund have a chance to contribute to a Memory Book that will be available in the museum for people to read. I made a small donation, so I was invited to contribute to the Memory Book.

Half of my ancestral heritage is Finnish. All of my Finnish immigrant forebears settled in Fairport Harbor on the Ohio shore of Lake Erie where the Finnish Heritage Museum is located. So for the Memory Book I wrote about these immigrants, trying to tell as much of their stories as I could in a limited space.

Over the next few posts to this blog, I'm going to share what I wrote for the Memory Book. Eleven ancestors of mine immigrated from Finland. I wrote about them pretty densely, so for this blog I'm just going to present them a few at a time. Check back for further installments.

First up are Wilhelm Hirvi and Wilhelmina Oberg Hirvi:

Wilhelmina Oberg Hirvi and Wilhelm "Bill" Hirvi, circa 1938.

Wilhelm “Bill” Hirvi (11/25/1866-7/10/1949) was born in Ylistaro, Finland. He arrived in the USA on 3/18/1884. He was naturalized 3/26/1895. On 9/11/1885 Bill was one of a group of twenty-three Finns who arrived in Fairport Harbor, Ohio, and established the first permanent Finnish settlement there. He lived at 116 Fourth Street in Finn Hollow and worked for the Pennsylvania and Lake Erie Dock Company until 1933, first shoveling iron ore into hoisting buckets and later as gang foreman, driving the dockworkers under him so hard that they called him “Wild Bill.” He served several terms on the Fairport village council. His wife Wilhelmina Oberg (2/2/1865-1/7/1945) was also born in Ylistaro, Finland, and upon arrival in the USA in 1886 settled first in Ashtabula, Ohio. In 1887 she moved to Fairport and married Bill on 3/15/1888 in Painesville, Ohio. They had seven children and were among the founders of Suomi Zion Lutheran Church in Fairport. They are both buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Painesville.

You might have noticed that I didn’t explain how I’m related to these Finnish immigrants. That’s because other members of my family donated to the Spirit of Finland fund and these immigrants are also their relatives. I wanted what I wrote for the Memory Book to be relevant for my other family members, too. But here on this blog I’ll explain my relationship to each of my Finnish immigrant ancestors:

Wilhelm “Bill” Hirvi is my great-great-grandfather, my mother’s mother’s mother’s father (you can read about his house and listen to him sing here)

Wilhelmina Oberg Hirvi is my great-great-grandmother, my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother

Progress on the Spirit of Finland sculpture and its installation in front of the Finnish Heritage Museum has been updated with plenty of new photos on the museum website here. If you’d like, you can still donate to the sculpture fund. You can also become a member of the museum.

Next are Mattias Nikolai Stuuri, Walpori Wilhelmina Erkkila Stuuri, and their son Mattias Vihtori Stuuri.

Spirit of Finland

The Finnish Heritage Museum in Fairport Harbor, Ohio, is planning to erect a sculpture at the front of the museum. Titled "Spirit of Finland," it has been designed by Ken Valimaki, a 1955 graduate of Fairport Harding High School. The Finnish Heritage Museum website has a photo essay of the sculpture in progress. You can see that here.

Funds for the sculpture itself are in place, but additional funds for the base, the security system, and the lighting still need to be raised. Any amount you might wish to donate is welcome. The names of all donors at any level will be recorded in a memory book at the Finnish Heritage Museum. Donors at the $250 to $499 level will also have their names listed on a plaque outside near the sculpture. Donors at the $500 plus level will have their names listed on that plaque in larger type. Click here for the online donation form.

I have strong connections to Fairport Harbor, Ohio. Many of my maternal relatives were immigrants from Finland who ended up in Fairport. I've visited Fairport many times and still have many relatives there and in the area, including the current vice-president of the Finnish Heritage Museum, Ken Quiggle.

I'm proud to say I've written my check for a donation to the Spirit of Finland fund. Whether you're the descendant of Finnish immigrants to the USA or interested in preserving immigrant history or simply an art lover, I hope you'll consider donating, too.

Edith Helen Hietanen Wilde, 1925-2013

Edith Helen Hietanen Wilde (1925-2013), about 1946.

My first cousin twice removed Edith Helen Hietanen Wilde passed away on February 27, 2013, at the Elizabeth House at Four Seasons Hospice in Flat Rock, North Carolina, just days before her eighty-eighth birthday.

She was born March 4, 1925, in Fairport Harbor, Lake County, Ohio. Her father was my great-great-uncle Edward (Miikali Eemeli "Emil") Hietanen (1885-1950), who immigrated to the USA from Isokyro, Finland, with his mother Liisa Herttua Hietanen and brother Matti. Edward arrived July 5, 1890, aboard the ship Aller to join his father Matti Sr. in Fairport Harbor. I posted a photo of Liisa and Matti Sr. here—the photo includes some of their children, although not Edith's father Edward.

Edith's mother was Mary Elizabeth Concoby Hietanen (1892-1959). Mary's brother Harvey E. Concoby (1902-1975), Edith's uncle, married Alma W. Ladvala (1991-1992), my first cousin three times removed and niece of the above-mentioned Liisa Herttua Hietanen. So I was connected to Edith through both her father's and her mother's family lines. I never met her, though.

Edith Hietanen Wilde graduated from Harding High School in Fairport Harbor and from Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio. She taught first and second grades in Madison, Ohio, for twenty-five years, mostly at Homer Nash Kimball Elementary School. Her husband was Robert Eric Wilde. They had two children, Vicki Lyn Wilde Hauser and Scott Edward Eric Wilde. Edith moved from Ohio to Asheville, North Carolina, in 1991. I express my condolences to all Edith's family and friends.

Funeral service will be at 3 p.m., Friday, March 22, at Central Congregational Church in Madison, Ohio. Pastor Harry Buch and Pastor Kristin Rometti Pike, Edith's granddaughter, will be presiding. Local arrangements are being handled by the Behm Family Funeral Home, 26 River Street, Madison, Ohio 44057. Memorial donations may be made to Trinity View Resident Association Fund, 2533 Hendersonville Road, Arden, North Carolina 28704. For the full obituary click here.

My Gay Relatives: Albert Hietanen

Albert Fridiof Hietanen (1911-1985).

As I said here in the first entry to this series of posts on gay relatives, it’s difficult to tell whether long-deceased relatives were gay or not when little information is left from their lives. But what about deceased relatives that I knew when they were alive? What if a relative was gay, but never talked about that with family? What if I didn’t suspect a relative was gay until after that relative was gone?

Albert Fridiof “Al” Hietanen (1911-1985) was my great-uncle, the brother of my maternal grandfather Everett John Hietanen (1915-1998). He was born in Fairport Harbor, Lake County, Ohio, and lived his whole life in the house where he was brought up. His father, Matti Hietanen (1883-1921), died when Al was a child. (You can read about Matti’s death in a previous blog post here.) His mother Edla “Edna” Salo Hietanen (1884-1961) spent her adult life in the same house. Al’s brother, Edwin “Et” Hietanen (1909-1983) lived there his whole life, too.

When I was a child and visited relatives in Fairport, Ohio, with my parents and sister, we’d always stop to visit “the boys,” Al and Et. I was often bored by the conversations among the adults, so I usually took a book along. But I did have a few conversations with Uncle Al over the years. He, also, was interested in books. There were lots of books in Et and Al’s house. Everyone knew they were Al’s books, not Et’s. (Probably a few of them actually were Et’s.)

Often Uncle Al gave books as gifts. His taste was generally refined. On one visit there were several paper shopping bags full of new paperbacks sitting on the floor of the study. Uncle Al told me to go through them to pick out what I wanted. Among my choices I remember The Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell and the previous year’s edition of The Guiness Book of World Records. Uncle Al gave my mother books when she was a child, too, including Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers and Stuart Little by E. B. White. My sister and I both were fascinated by the copy he gave her of The Charles Addams Mother Goose.

E. B. White and Charles Addams had in common another of Uncle Al’s interests, The New Yorker magazine. If anyone in the small working-class town of Fairport Harbor subscribed to The New Yorker, it would have been Uncle Al. And he did. It fit his style of sophistication. I don’t recall him ever being an overt snob, but he was clearly aware of and drawn to a level of society that was found beyond Fairport’s borders, and he encouraged others to expose themselves to that world.

He knew I was interested in cartooning, so he tried to interest me in the cartoons published in The New Yorker. I didn’t think New Yorker cartoons were funny (except for Charles Addams’s work). When I was a kid my favorite comics were things like Richie Rich, Shazam!, The Justice League of America, and The Uncanny X-Men. The New Yorker didn’t do it for me.

The Annotated Wizard of Oz by Michael Patrick Hearn, first published in 1972, fit in with the type of book Uncle Al owned. Knowing I liked L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, Uncle Al pointed out his copy of Annotated Wizard to me during a visit and asked me whether I knew where the word Oz came from. As a fifth-grader I’d read The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was by Martin Gardner and Russell B. Nye. I was familiar with an Oz origin theory from Gardner’s essay in that book: Baum enjoyed stories that cause the reader to exclaim with “Ohs” and “Ahs” of wonder, and the word Oz can be pronounced either way. When I offered this theory to Uncle Al, he dismissed it and explained the story of Baum noticing a filing cabinet labeled O-Z and taking the name of his magical land from that.*

Uncle Al told me several times that he had an Oz book (other than Annotated Wizard) somewhere in the house and that if I could find it, I could keep it. I never found it. After he died no such Oz book turned up among his possessions. So I don’t know whether he was mis-remembering, whether he was teasing me, or whether there really was an Oz book that ended up elsewhere.

Uncle Al liked to travel, although I don’t remember him ever visiting my family in any of the various places we lived. He went to more urban or exotic destinations, often New York City. He traveled to Finland, the country his parents had emigrated from, and made friends there, including Liisa, the woman who became a longtime girlfriend of Al’s widowed brother Everett, my grandfather.

Sloppy Joe's Bar in Havana, Cuba. Albert Hietenan is on the left. I think that's his brother Carl Hietanen on the right. I don't know who the women are, but is this evidence that Uncle Al was not gay? The clothing looks late 1930s.

He liked to visit Havana before the Cuban Revolution. When my family stopped to visit Uncle Et and Uncle Al on our move to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Uncle Al told us about a woman he’d known in a Havana night club who could balance a cocktail on each of her large, shelf-like breasts. The details of that story—Havana, a night club, cocktails, and the woman’s remarkable breasts—epitomize to me who Uncle Al was.

He claimed to remember being a babe in arms. He remembered looking up at a lapel pin his mother was wearing when she held him, a pin she lost before he grew older. My mother joked that of course he remembered the pin since it was probably pressing into his forehead.

He could be high-handed. His brother Et was older, but I remember Et deferring to Al’s opinion whenever there was a disagreement. Al knew his mind and didn’t have much time for views that didn’t fall into line with his. When it came to the public perception of the family, Al interfered even when he wasn’t wanted. He never married, but he decreed at least one marriage for a family member and tried to decree another.

I visited Ohio during the November 1981 Thanksgiving break from my first year in art school. I stopped in at Uncle Et and Uncle Al's to show them examples of the work I was doing in school.

Because Uncle Al had always seemed somewhat interested in my development, I expected him to be interested in hearing about my progress in art school and seeing what I’d accomplished. But Uncle Et ended up being the one to sit through my long-winded explanation of each assignment I’d brought. Uncle Et was amused by the long eyebrow hairs I’d given one character—he mentioned how he had his barber trim long eyebrow hairs during haircuts.

I don’t think Uncle Al was particularly interested in what I was showing. I'm sure the naturalistic, genre-leaning direction of my work didn't fit his tastes. I still didn’t draw enough like New Yorker cartoons to suit him. I was more puzzled than troubled by Uncle Al’s lack of response, but not puzzled enough to discuss it with him. That was the last time I saw him.

What makes me conclude that Uncle Al was gay? There's no hard evidence.

His tastes for night life, travel, reading, and a sophisticated urban outlook exemplified by The New Yorker, while not uniquely gay, fall into line with gay stereotypes. Stereotyping someone is usually distasteful, but stereotypes often have an underpinning of truth.

It’s quite a stretch to consider the following any sort of indication, but Uncle Al wanted to call my sister Elizabeth by the nickname Liz. She wouldn’t have it. Her reason, unstated at the time, was that Liz sounds too much like Lez. Thin stuff, even for speculation, but does it hint of something in the air?

Albert Hietanen in Switzerland at the Matterhorn, 1980.

The only substantial clue is that there’s no evident reason he never married. He was an intelligent, active man of reasonable looks. He could have found a woman to marry if that’s what he’d wanted. It’s possible he had sexual relationships with women on his travels. But his high-handed management of marriage plans for relatives back home in Ohio make me suspect he didn’t, although double-standards about women wouldn’t have been unique to Al Hietanen. In the face of no reasonable answer to the question of why Al didn’t marry, the obvious conclusion seems to be that he didn’t because he was gay.

But it’s relatively common to wonder whether unmarried adults in good health are gay. And nothing I've mentioned is at all conclusive. I even have evidence that could indicate he wasn’t gay. I once saw, tacked up just outside Et and Al’s basement sauna one of the two times I used it, a full-page photo of a nude woman obviously clipped from a girly magazine. Why was that there? I doubt it was for aesthetic reasons. Was it Et’s? Did it belong to one of their brothers, Everett or Carl, who’d drop by to use the sauna? Was it misdirection? I don’t know.

In the end my belief that Uncle Al was gay, despite any indications to the contrary, comes down to one incident. When I was fourteen he gave me a copy of J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye—the copy that I still own—and told me to read it. My mother, doing her job as parent, raised the question of whether Catcher in the Rye was appropriate for me at that age. Uncle Al characteristically dismissed her reservations.

So I read the book. Catcher in the Rye was exactly Uncle Al’s type of high-brow, twentieth century literature, well written, thought-provoking, worthwhile. But, more than that, I think one reason he wanted me to read it was for the gay content. Many of the story’s details are hazy to me all these years later, but I remember how creepy and sad and confusing the scene was when Holden Caulfield wakes up to a man stroking his forehead.

I don’t think I’d ever read a story with identifiably gay characters in it before. The portrayals of “flits” in Catcher in the Rye aren’t what I’d call empowering. But the book acknowledges that gay people exist in real life. It shows that they’re real people. They’re not some amorphous, hidden, predatory “other” set apart from everyday society—which was pretty much my idea of homosexuals when I was young. The book didn’t revolutionize my views of gay people, but it let some light in. If that impact is part of what Uncle Al hoped the book would give me—and I like to think it was—then it worked.

I was still years away from considering that I might be gay, but I think Uncle Al understood what was in store for me. He recognized that being gay was a part of me, and his ability to recognize that and to offer his style of coping tool, Catcher in the Rye, is why I believe it was also a part of him.

Three brothers, left to right, my grandfather Everett J. Hietanen, Edwin "Et" Hietanen, and Albert "Al" Hietanen. This photo was taken in September 1981, just two months before I saw Uncle Al for the final time. Photos courtesy Robert M. Hietanen.

* I have never been convinced by the filing cabinet story, despite the fact that in a newspaper interview L. Frank Baum himself claimed it as the origin of the word Oz. Baum was known for making up convenient and amusing stories off the cuff, and the filing cabinet story reeks of this to me.

The Hirvi Homes of Finn Hollow, Fairport

Up until a couple years ago I’d never heard the term Finn Hollow. As associated with the little blue-collar town of Fairport Harbor, Lake County, Ohio, Finn Hollow seems to have been a name recently resurrected from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My mother had never heard it either, and she spent much of her childhood growing up in Fairport, the town where her parents, aunts, and uncles had all grown up, too.

My great-great-grandfather, Wilhelm Heikkinpoika Hirvi (1866-1949), didn't grow up in Fairport, but he was one of the men who built Finn Hollow there. He was born in Ylistaro, Heippolan Kyla, Finland, and immigrated to the USA, arriving on March 18, 1884, at the age of seventeen. It’s probable that he went to Ashtabula, Ashtabula County, Ohio, for a while, which had a large population of Finnish immigrants. But my cousin Kenneth J. Quiggle* (born 1944) reports that Wilhelm first went to Burton, Geauga County, Ohio. (I have Shanower relatives still living in Burton.) As many Finnish immigrants did, Wilhelm may have been working on the New Central Railroad that went to nearby Chardon, Ohio. But that’s speculation on my part.

Somewhere along the way Wilhelm Hirvi's name was Americanized to William "Bill" Hervey. On September 11, 1885, he and twenty-two other Finnish immigrants—many from Ashtabula—moved to Fairport Harbor on the east bank of the Grand River where it meets Lake Erie. There they established the area of Fairport known as Finn Hollow or “alanko.”

Finn Hollow included ten houses built by those Finnish immigrants next to the Grand River on land above the docks where many of them worked. The land belonged to the Pennsylvania and Lake Erie Dock Company. The PLE allowed the men and their families to live there with the understanding that the land could be reclaimed by the company. So the houses were built with the knowledge that one day it might be necessary to move them.

In the early twentieth century, that day came. Nine of the houses were moved to locations elsewhere in Fairport. But for some reason Wilhelm Hirvi’s house was not moved. I suspect it was either not on the portion of land that the PLE intended to use or else it was not actually on PLE land. In any case, it’s still there at 116 Fourth Street in Fairport. The other houses still survive, too, although not in their original Finn Hollow locations.

[Update, August 2013: A family member reports that Wilhelm Hirvi's house wasn't moved because it was the only one of the Finn Hollow houses that had a basement.]

Wilhelm Hirvi and Wilhelmina Oberg Hirvi's Finn Hollow home in recent days, still in its original position at 116 Fourth Street, Fairport Harbor, Ohio. This photo is courtesy of my second cousin once removed Lee Silvi (born 1952), great-grandson of Wilhelm and Wilhelmina through their daughter Lillian Justina Hirvi Silvi (1901-1964), and is used with his permission. Photo copyright © 2012 Lee Silvi. All rights reserved.

Wilhelm Hirvi was naturalized on March 26, 1895, in Fairport Harbor. Wilhelm worked on the PLE docks. He would enter the holds of ships carrying iron ore and shovel the ore into buckets, which were hoisted out and the ore loaded into railway cars. He worked his way up to gang foreman, driving the men on the docks so hard that they called him “Wild Bill” and hated him. Brutal work and unforgiving attitudes of his fellow workers may have been contributing factors to why he drank.

On March 15, 1888, he married Wilhelmina Oberg (1865-1945), another Finnish immigrant to Fairport by way of Ashtabula. She, like Wilhelm, had been born in Ylistaro, Finland. I have no idea whether they knew each other as kids in Finland, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.

Wilhelm and Wilhelmina had seven children, six who survived to adulthood. Their eldest, John (1888-1918), was born October 31, only seven and a half months after his parents’ marriage, so it looks as though he was conceived out of wedlock. That would have been scandalous at the time, though hardly uncommon. I suspect it was a primary reason for his parents’ marriage, probably just after Wilhelmina realized she was pregnant. Great-great-uncle John died at age thirty during 1918’s worldwide flu epidemic. Wilhelm and Wilhelmina's second child was my great-grandmother Wilhelmina Elizabeth “Minnie” Hirvi Stuuri (1890-1946).

One of Wilhelm’s older brothers, Johan Heikki Hirvi (1860-1935), also emigrated from Finland and ended up in Finn Hollow in Fairport Harbor. I don't know whether he arrived in the USA before Wilhelm, afterward, or whether they traveled together. Johan Heikki's name was Americanized to John Henry Hervey and he was called Henry. In 1891 when the Fairport Fire Department was established, Henry Hervey was among the first group of firemen. This great-great-great-uncle of mine also lived in Finn Hollow in one of the nine Finn Hollow homes that were moved. Its current address is 221 Fourth Street in Fairport.

Wilhelm retired from the docks in 1933. He served several terms on the Fairport village council. On July 10, 1949, he died at the Painesville, Lake County, Ohio, home of his daughter Sigrid Maria Hirvi Ollila Youppi (1897-1989) and her second husband Frank Youppi. Wilhelm's funeral took place at Suomi Zion Lutheran Church in Fairport where he was a charter member. That’s the church that all my mother’s Fairport family have attended since they helped to establish it. You can see an old photo of the church in one of my earlier blog posts here.

Sometime about the mid-1940s Wilhelm Hirvi recorded a song on a home-made record. You can listen to it right here. I’m afraid the sound isn’t very good, especially for the first six or seven seconds. The whole thing isn’t very long—only 48 seconds. Wilhelm sang in Finnish, but even if you can speak the language, I doubt you’ll be able to distinguish the words. If you recognize the song, please let me know the title in the comments section at the end of this post. Whether anyone finds it listenable or not, I’m just glad this recording of my great-great-grandfather, a Finnish immigrant, survives.

Click Here to Listen to Wilhelm Hirvi sing.

Depending on your audio player you may need to click the little PLAY arrow.

* Kenneth J. Quiggle is my second cousin once removed through my maternal grandfather’s family, the Hietanens. Ken’s grandfather Forrest Quiggle (died 1961) married my great-great-aunt Aliisa Elviira “Ella” Hietanen (1894-1950). Ken could also be considered my second cousin twice removed along my maternal grandmother’s Hirvi/Hervey line, too, if you take two marriages of one woman into account. June Megley (1924-2007) married my first cousin three times removed Richard Henry Hervey (1917-1962). June Megley Hervey’s second husband was my first cousin twice removed Kenneth Grant Quiggle (1920-1986), uncle of Kenneth J. Quiggle.

The Shadow of Matti Hietanen

I
“Edla, darling, I fear we’re in for rough times. All I know is, if anything bad happens, deputy sheriff Rasmussen will be at the bottom of it.”

Matti Hietanen, Jr. (1883-1921)

“Matti, what are you telling me? What do you mean ‘if anything bad happens’?” Lately Edla had an almost constant dread of something bad happening to her husband. Up until two weeks ago Matti had walked the night patrol beat in Fairport Harbor. Every morning she’d thanked the good Lord above when he stepped safely once again through the doorway of their home.

“The trial is next week and I mean to tell the truth—the whole truth. There are men in this county that won’t like that. And Rasmussen is one of them.”

“Maybe you won’t have to say anything, Matti. Maybe Alex and Steve will be enough.”

Matti frowned at the floor. “Edla, I can’t fail to back them up. Alex is my partner.”

Edla didn’t know exactly what secret police work Matti was involved in, but she knew something had already gone wrong. Two weeks ago he'd been arrested with his fellow patrolmen, Alex Southerland and Steve Forks, for receiving intoxicating liquor. All three had been suspended from the Fairport Harbor police force and were awaiting trial. The trial was supposed to have been before the end of October, but for reasons that Edla couldn’t fathom, it kept being postponed.

Edla sighed. “This Volstead Act—this Prohibition—it’s brought nothing but trouble. I wish . . . I wish . . .”

“It’s no use wishing, Edla. Things are as they are. Our parents brought us here to the United States from Finland in hope of better things. But trouble is the same all the world around. There are Rasmussens everywhere.”

“But Rasmussen is deputy sheriff. He can’t be a bad man.”

“He’s an ambitious man. His father was famous in this town. The son means to outdo him. He has his eye on being sheriff of Lake County. One big case can make his career. I’m afraid he means for Alex, Steve, and me to be that case.”

“But that charge isn’t true!”

“Doesn’t matter to a man like Rasmussen. He’ll take whatever opportunity he can find—and woe betide the man who stands in his way.”

“Then you must stay out of his way, Matti.”

“I’m already in it, Edla. That’s why I’ve got to go talk things over with Alex and Steve. Don’t sit up for me—you need your rest. I won’t be long.”

“Be careful, Matti. The children can’t do without you. I can’t do without you.”

Matti gave her a quick kiss and then he was out the door and gone. Edla parted the window curtains just a little and watched her husband vanish into the Thursday evening twilight of late October.

She turned back to where she’d left her darning. The children wore holes through their stockings so fast, even little Ruth, who was only three and a half. Edla adjusted cushions and settled herself into the sturdy rocking chair. Seven months of pregnancy made it difficult to sit comfortably for a long time. Thank goodness her eldest daughter Elsie would be around to help when the baby came—especially if “anything bad” happened to Matti. But she mustn’t think about that.

II
Matti hadn’t come home all night. Edla had a hard time concealing her frantic worry as she got her five older children up and off to school. She tried to get through the housework, but Matti’s words of warning echoed in her head all morning. Then, just before noon, when she’d finally made up her mind to walk over to the police station and ask about her husband, two police officers had knocked at the door. She recognized them, but didn’t know either of them well.

Edla Sussanna Salo Hietanen (1884-1961)

They’d told her the news—Matti was dead, shot once through the heart. Edla had hardly been able to keep from collapsing. She had to see Matti, prove to herself that it was true. She’d dropped little Ruth and baby Dorothy at the neighbors. Then the policemen had brought her here to the Lake County hospital.

Now Edla stared at her husband’s dead face. The room was gloomy, full of harsh shadows cast by the single light bulb. Matti’s body lay on the table. Matti—her dear, darling Matti. He was gone. He’d never speak to her again, never take her hand as he always used to in that shy way when they were alone. She didn’t know how she’d make it through the next hour, much less face the rest of her life without him.

She let them lead her back into the ugly gray hallway. People bustled by—people who had no idea who Matti was. People who didn’t care that he was dead.

How had this happened? The officers wouldn’t tell her anything. Was Rasmussen responsible as Matti had hinted last night? Edla didn’t dare mention Rasmussen’s name—didn’t even know whether she could force the word past her lips. There were forces in play here that were far stronger than she was. Money and power and what else, she didn’t know. She couldn’t fight the men involved in Prohibition—neither the men who smuggled liquor across Lake Erie from Canada nor the men who fought them. She just wanted to go home. The older children would be arriving from school soon. She’d have to break the news to them. She would need all her strength just to do that.

III
Edla was resting in her upstairs bedroom, lying in the bed she and Matti had shared since their marriage just over eighteen years ago. Her insides felt scraped empty. Telling the children the awful news had been almost too much on top of her own sorrow. Without seventeen-year-old Elsie, Edla didn’t know how she would have even made it this far.

Elsie Emilia Hietanen Austin Behm (1904-1990)

Someone rapped softly at the bedroom door and stepped inside. It was Elsie. She sat down beside Edla on the bed. “Mother, how are you feeling?”

“Don’t worry, Elsie. I was born a stubborn Finn. I’ll go on.”

“Mother, I don’t know how to tell you—but you’ll need to see it soon. I suppose all of Fairport is already talking.” Elsie held out the evening newspaper. “Here. Read this.”

Edla took it. It was the Friday evening edition of the Painesville Telegraph. Why was Elsie bothering her with the newspaper? Edla had no room in her head for anything beyond her own family’s trouble. She held the paper toward the dregs of daylight falling through the window. She could just make out the headline.

MAN SHOOTS OFFICER, KILLS HIMSELF

MATT HEITENAN, PATROLMAN AT FAIRPORT, AFTER WOUNDING

ALEX SOUTHERLAND, TURNS GUN ON SELF

The newspaper slipped from her fingers. She felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach.

"Mother?” said Elsie. “Mother, are you all right? Oh, I’m sorry I let you see it.”

“No, Elsie, don’t be silly. Read it to me. You know I don’t read English well. I need to know what it says.”

Elsie read aloud.

The newspaper was crazy. It told a story about a Matti that she’d never known. Last night he’d been down at that new pool hall over on High Street, Szabo’s, drinking with Alex and Steve. Then early this morning Matti and Alex had gotten into an argument. Matti shot Steve twice then turned the gun on himself. Sheriff Ora Spink had come over from Painesville to deal with the aftermath. And with Spink had come deputy sheriff Rassmussen. Edla couldn’t listen any longer. She laid a hand on Elsie’s arm.

“Is this true, Mother?” asked Elsie. "What the newspaper says?"

“No, Elsie. Burn it. Don’t tell your brothers and sisters. Your father’s dead—that’s all they need to know. I’m going to tell you what your father said to me last night, but you must never breathe a word of it to any living soul.”

“Yes, Mother. I’ll do exactly as you say.”

IV
Saturday had been a blur—arranging for the funeral, arranging for the casket, and the delivery of Matti’s body. Alex Southerland had died in the hospital, and Steve Forks was nowhere to be found. But Sunday—already Edla could feel how Sunday would drag. All day they’d be at Zion Lutheran. Church service in the morning was first. The afternoon would be Matti’s funeral and then burial in the church cemetery. Leaving the house was the last thing Edla wanted to do, but the idea of staying home was absolutely unacceptable.

They owed it to Matti to show themselves, show that they were coping with tragedy. They’d hold their heads high in order to say that Matti wasn’t a drunk, wasn’t a murderer, hadn’t committed suicide—even though the whole Finnish community of Fairport Harbor knew those things already. Everyone knew what sort of man Matti Hietanen was, no matter what the newspapers were saying. But Edla and the children had to show them that right to the end Matti had been the man everyone knew. And the only way to do that was to show that she and the children were still the same, too.

Suomi Zion Lutheran Church and parish house, Fifth and Eagle Streets, Fairport

Morning service was a torture. She could feel the eyes on her, but when she raised her own, so many other eyes refused to look back. And the ones that did held looks she’d never seen before—looks of pity, looks of disapproval, and blank looks shielded by an impenetrable wall.

The pastor’s sermon had deplored the way that crime could ravage a community. He’d prayed for a blessing on Edla and the children. But the only time Matti’s name crossed the pastor’s lips was when he announced the funeral for the afternoon. Matti’s siblings and their families, even her own sisters, had been strange. They had spoken to her, true, even murmured words of consolation. But there had been a distance, almost a coldness, that Edla could barely bring herself to acknowledge was there.

Six-year-old Everett had run up to her after the service ended. He was crying because a friend had refused to play with him and called him a dreadful name. As they all walked back home to the house on Third Street, Everett’s older brothers Et and Al had teased him back into a better mood. But Edla’s mood had only grown darker.

Elsie carried baby Dorothy. Karl and Et were kicking through piles of dead leaves. Al was lost in dreams as usual. Once home they would just have time to see the casket with Matti’s body put onto the truck for the funeral, maybe eat a quick meal, and then they’d be on their way back to church to sing a few hymns and watch Matti being lowered into the ground. Edla’s back hurt—her pregnancy was really starting to show.

Was this the way it would be from now on? A shadow cast over them? Family and friends holding them at arms’ length? Why couldn’t everything go on the same way as before—only without Matti? She knew he hadn’t killed himself. He would never have pointed a gun at his own heart and pulled the trigger. But the world was saying different.

Today she had the funeral to think about. But tomorrow she needed to find paying work. She had seven children who needed her and an eighth was on the way. She couldn’t change the world—Matti was right, trouble was everywhere—but she would not let it defeat her. In her heart, where it really mattered, she would fight, and she would conquer. She would put this all behind her and simply go on.

_______________________________________________________________

The foregoing is a fictionalized account of the death in the early morning hours of October 28, 1921, of my great-grandfather Matti Hietanen, Jr. (1883-1921). No one can say for sure whether his death was a suicide, as the official story goes, or whether it was murder, as family tradition has it.

“Family tradition” may be a glorified term. Matti Hietanen’s death has been an established fact since 1921, but the circumstances surrounding it were suppressed within the family. My mother Karen Hietanen Shanower grew up knowing nothing of the events surrounding her paternal grandfather’s death. Then in the 1970s while doing some genealogical research she ran across the Painesville [Ohio] Telegraph article of October 28, 1921, the article referred to in my story above. Some high points of the article are as follows:

“An argument on politics and socialism, conducted in Andrew Szabo’s pool room . . . ended tragically . . . when Matt Heitenan [sic], Fairport policeman, shot and twice wounded Alex Southerland, . . . and then turned his revolver on himself. . . .

“At the time of the shooting five men were in the establishment. . . . In addition to Heitenan [sic], Southerland, Forks, Szabo, there was a man who is said to be John Merk, Szabo’s partner.

“Sheriff Spink and Deputy Edward Rasmussen arrived about 20 minutes after the tragedy took place, and proceeded to place Szabo under arrest. The latter is being held in the Lake county jail on a charge of possessing intoxicating liquor.

“Four chambers of the revolver were found empty by Sheriff Spink and Deputy Rasmussen when they arrived. The fourth shot can not be accounted for.

“Later in the morning, Prosecuting Attorney Ralph M. Ostrander and Deputy Rasmussen searched Szabo’s establishment for evidence of liquor. Empty bottles were found strewn about the place, but no liquor was discovered until they looked into the trap of a sewer. Then, they say, they found a quantity of liquor which had evidently been hastily poured there.

“Heitenan [sic], Southerland and Steve Forks were arrested October 13 on a charge of receiving intoxicating liquor. Their trial was to have been held some time this month.”

When my mother discovered this article she asked her father about it. Everett J. Hietenan (1915-1998) had been six-and-a-half when his father died and hadn’t been aware of the circumstances. But one of his siblings had since told him this: their father, Matti Hietanen, Jr., had told their mother, Edla Sussanna Salo Hietanen (1884-1961), that if anything happened to him, it would be deputy sheriff Edward Rasmussen’s fault. In-the-know family members believed that Matti Hietanen hadn’t committed suicide, but that he’d been a victim of murder.

Everett Hietanen’s eldest sister, Elsie Emilia Hietanen Austin Behm (1904-1990) had been seventeen at the time, old enough to remember what had happened. At first Aunt Elsie agreed to tell my mom what she knew about Matti Hietanen’s death. But then she changed her mind. Eventually all knowledge she had went to the grave with her. As my mom once wrote, Aunt Elsie died following her mother Edla’s advice to “put it behind them and get on with their lives.”

So the “official” story of suicide remains in conflict with the “family tradition” story of murder. No one knows how the truth might be discovered at this point. I prefer the "family tradition" version, however lacking in detail it may be. But I suspect that the truth may lie somewhere between the two versions.

There was a major split in the Hietanen family a couple generations ago, and those “stubborn Finns” wouldn’t talk about the reasons for it. Some of us in the more recent generations wonder whether the split had anything to do with Matti Hietanen’s death. Into my story above I put implications to support that possibility, but I want to make it clear that I have no idea whether that was actually the case.

I believe the bedrock of Matti Hietanen's death was Prohibition. The National Prohibition Act of 1919, known as the Volstead Act, was enacted by the US Congress to prohibit intoxicating beverages in the United States of America. Organized crime took over the illegal importation and distribution of liquor. Violence among rival gangs escalated as their influence grew. Many politicians either caved in to gang intimidation or, tempted by power and money, joined the illegal activity. But by 1933 public opinion had overwhelmingly condemned prohibition. In December 1933 the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was repealed. Prohibition was over. But not before many lives had been affected.

Edward T. Rasmussen, circa 1927, during the Velma West case

After Matti Hietanen’s 1921 death, Edward T. Rasmussen went on to achieve a degree of fame, surpassing the local Fairport Harbor fame of his father, seafaring captain N. W. Rasmussen. After serving as deputy sheriff of Lake County, Ohio, Edward Rasmussen ran for sheriff in 1924 against Arta Spink, sheriff Ora Spink's wife, and won election for the term 1925 to 1928.

In 1928 Rasmussen was peripherally involved in investigating crimes surrounding the 1926 gangland murder of Donald Ring Mellett, editor of the Canton [Ohio] Daily News, slain for his newspaper crusade against underworld activity during Prohibition. Mellett's bravery is still celebrated today in journalism circles.

However, the case that brought Rasmussen’s name to national attention was that of “Hammer Killer” Velma Van Woert West’s 1927 murder of her husband, Thomas Edward West. Young socialite Velma bashed in T. E.’s head with a claw hammer in their Perry, Ohio, honeymoon cottage. This murder had nothing to do with Prohibition, but more to do with a bridge party given by Velma’s lesbian lover Mabel Young. Associated Press articles reveled in the lurid details of the case, spreading sheriff Rasmussen’s name across the country from Florida to Washington state. Rasmussen's fame, though wide, seems to have been brief.

Velma West (right) with her legal team

Family tradition doesn’t implicate Lake County sheriff Ora Morris Spink in Matti Hietanen’s death, but as Rasmussen’s immediate superior at the time, if there was corruption in the sheriff’s department, Spink could have been involved. Like Rasmussen, Spink also had later career highlights. On October 25, 1922, nearly a year to the day after Matti Hietanen’s death, the body of Hazel Burns was found dead in a shallow grave near Painesville, Ohio. Hazel’s husband Harry Burns was charged with the murder. Sensational clues turned up around the marshy countryside—a pistol, a raincoat. The newspapers duly quoted sheriff Spink’s opinions.

I have little idea what happened to the other men mentioned in the Painesville Telegraph article about Matti Hietanen’s death: pool hall owner Andrew Szabo, his partner John Merk, policeman Steve Forks, and prosecuting attorney Ralph M. Ostrander. Alex Southerland evidently died from his two gunshot wounds, whoever inflicted them. Town Marshal John Werbeach seems to have lived in Painesville until 1980, and there are Werbeachs still living in Lake County.

I wonder whether any of these men have family who could shed any light on the three shots that rang out during those fateful early morning hours of October 28, 1921.

My Mother the Genealogist

Up until several years ago I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about my family genealogy. Family stories were often interesting and of course I liked to know my specific relationship to relatives that I’d actually met. But I was happy to leave researching, compiling, and recording to others.

My mother, Karen Elizabeth Hietanen Shanower, was one of those others. In the early 1970s she began seriously researching both her own family tree and my father’s. We lived near Washington, DC, so things like US Census records were close.  Some days when my dad was at work and my sister and I were in school, my mother would travel into the city to do genealogical research.

Back then I had little concept of how research libraries worked. But I’ve since had experience looking up entries in catalogs, submitting call numbers, and waiting for books and other written records to be delivered to the call desk, then either consulting the index or going through the laborious task of visually scanning pages. These time-consuming methods of research are a lot of work. (But I find the process kind of fun when I’m interested in the subject I’m researching. I never know when the next surprising and valuable nugget will turn up.) Today, gathering much of the same material my mother found back then simply takes an internet search, winnowing through results, then a few computer commands to copy and paste it into a word processing document and backing that up. But personal computers and the internet weren’t available to my mother in the 1970s.

For a while all things genealogical seemed to interest her. One time she went to hear an author speak about his forthcoming book that incorporated family research. Afterward she told my sister and me how this author had incorporated family stories passed down through generations into a book, which my mom had put on request from the public library. It seemed like a year or two passed before the book was finally published. But when it was, Alex Haley’s Roots was a sensational best-seller and adapted into the first tv mini-series. To me Roots seemed a little old-hat, since it felt like I’d known about it forever.

I remember my mom trying to explain to my sister and me the ranking of cousins. On the big chalkboard on the family room wall my mom would write the names of relatives into a grid. She’d patiently explain how and why so-and-so was a certain number cousin, so many times removed. At eight years old I didn’t get it. Eventually, however, I was able to understand the concept. Now it’s hard for me to understand how I couldn’t grasp it at one point.

My mother, sister, and I would play a game. One person would think of a relative, then recite the chain of relationship leading to that relative. The challenge was for the others to guess the relative the speaker was thinking of. For instance, my mother might say, “Your father’s brother’s mother’s father’s wife.” My sister and I would each try to be the first to call out, “Grandma Dell!”

One Christmas—must have been about 1972—we were visiting relatives in Ohio, where both my parents were born and grew up. My mother interviewed her maternal grandfather, Mattias Vihtori Stuuri (1888-1981), about immigrating to the USA from Finland when he was a child. This was one of the few times I was present when my mother was actually doing genealogical work. Usually I might only hear about results, which were fine, but not of great interest to me then. But hearing Paappa* Stuuri relate facts about his family’s trip from Europe to North America stuck with me—mostly, I think, because I rarely saw Paappa Stuuri interact with others.

Mattias Vihtori Stuuri (1888-1981), my great grandfather, is seated at left in this photo from the early 1940s. My mother, Karen Elizabeth Hietanen Shanower, is the child standing center. My great aunt Adela Mirjam Stuuri Bixler (1918-2003), also mentioned in this post,  is standing on the right.

I rarely interacted with Paappa Stuuri myself. He didn’t talk much and my impression is that he was hard of hearing. When I knew him he usually sat in his accustomed chair on the enclosed porch of the house at 503 Independence Street in Fairport Harbor, Ohio, the house where several generations of the Stuuri family had lived for decades. He’d just sit there silently. Whenever my family arrived on a visit, his eyes would light up for a moment, he’d smile, and he’d let out an "ohhh," perhaps chuckle, and say a few words of greeting in his high, rough voice. Then we’d go on into the house to see the rest of the relatives.

In 1976 my sister and I stayed a week in that house with my great aunt and uncle, Adela Mirjam Stuuri Bixler and Alvin Ahlstrom Bixler. Their youngest child, my cousin Jim Bixler, was still living there, too. One day I was searching for a library book I was reading, one of Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll titles. I passed by the door to the porch and spotted my book—open in Paappa Stuuri’s hands. He was more than just casually glancing through the book, he was reading it! I was a little annoyed that someone had usurped the book I was reading, but I was also struck by the fact that this old man originally from Finland was reading a children’s book by a Finnish author.

Through the years my mom’s interest in genealogical research has waxed and waned. In the summer of 1978, my mother, sister, and I stopped in Pennsylvania where my mom did some research into the Lancaster County Shanowers. But after that I don’t remember her doing much with genealogy. Maybe I was simply unaware of it after I moved out of my parents’ home. In the 1990s other members of the family began to contact my mom for assistance with their own research, but I don’t think she ever plunged back into it to the depth she’d gone in the 1970s.

Her research has proven valuable to later family researchers. For instance, she had determined the place in Finland where her father’s family branch originated. In pre-internet days my mom hadn’t had the time or resources to follow where that information pointed. But in the 1990s when a US cousin researching the Hietanen branch of the family contacted my mom, she was able to guide him in the right direction. He forged ahead, made contact with Finland, and uncovered a wealth of information on our ancestors there. He credits my mom with providing the foundation for his success.

After I became fascinated with family genealogy a few years ago, my mother, I think, was a little relieved. Finally she had someone to turn all her research over to. She wouldn’t have to store all those papers and books anymore. I got them all. Well, a lot of it, at least. She held on to most of her old family photographs.

But I was grateful for everything that she gave me. I began entering all the information into the online family tree. It was fascinating to study some of the process she’d gone through to gather information. She’d kept neat graphs detailing which relatives she’d contacted, when they’d replied, and when she’d followed up. Different types of pencil and pen are used on the same pages, making it clear that at certain points she was filling in information later. Some of her questions have still not been answered. Her research into the McNaughton branch is exhausting to look at. She copied down McNaughton names and dates from record after record, even including variants such as McNorton. She had no way to be sure whether these were related or not.

About two weeks ago, when I wrote a blog post here about my McNaughton forebears, I didn’t have much more information about them than my mother had gathered back in the 1970s. At the end of that post I noted that some details of info I’d gathered myself seemed questionable. Writing that post spurred me to look again at the McNaughtons. I found more information. Turns out I was right to be suspicious—some of my information was wrong. But I’ve now revised it and have discovered a slew of relatives I hadn’t known about before as well as a consistent scenario for their movement from Scotland to Ohio. I’ll save that for another blog post.

Among the research my mom gave me I found the notes from her interview with Paappa Stuuri. I’d only had vague memories of the answers he’d given her back then. But now, decades later, here they were written down in front of me. I’ve recorded them on the online family tree so that the rest of the family can see them if they’re interested, so that any other interested researchers can access them, and so that they’ll be preserved for future generations. And, yes, I perform regular back-ups of the family tree to a couple external drives.

My mom is still interested in her family history. A few years ago she was excited to learn from one of her uncles that he’d found an archive of family letters from the 1940s. The letters contain some family history as well as being of immense sentimental value. I haven’t seen the letters, but I dearly want to make copies and computer scans to preserve them. One of these days.


* Paappa – Finnish word for grandfather, pronounced “boppa.”