Frustrating Finnish DNA

As I mentioned in a previous post, I took an autosomal DNA test recently and was curious and excited to find out where the results would lead me. Since I took the test, several genealogical websites have provided me lists of DNA matches to other people.

The first three names on the list of matches that Ancestry.com gave me were all names of cousins I already had on my family tree, all three on my mother’s side. One of these cousins I’ve never met, but the other two I’ve met in person and enjoyed spending time with.

But that was nearly where the navigable connections stopped on my mother’s side. I’ve been able to laboriously sift through my DNA matches and add a number of previously unrecorded relatives to my father's side of the family tree. But discovering new connections to my mother’s side through DNA matches is nearly impossible.

My mother is of Finnish descent. Three of her grandparents—Matti Hietanen, Jr. (1883-1921), Edla Sussana Salo Hietanen (1884-1961) and Mattias Vihtori Stuuri (1888-1981)—were born in Finland and immigrated to the USA as children. Her fourth grandparent, Wilhelmina Elizabeth “Minnie” Hirvi Stuuri (1890-1946), had parents who were both born in Finland and immigrated to the USA as young adults—Wilhelm Heikkinpoika “William” Hirvi (1865-1949) and Wilhenmina “Minnie” Oberg (1865-1945).

Thanks to extensive international research by other family members, especially my cousin Bob Hietanen, the ancestry of my great-grandfather Matti Hietanen, Jr., is known to a great extent. Other cousins, particularly Jaakko Heinimäki, have provided a lot of ancestral research on my great-great-grandfather Wilhelm Hirvi. (These are my sources for the information that I’m a direct descendant in two lines from sixteenth-century Finnish freedom-fighter Jaakko Ilkka.) But for the rest of my Finnish lines I only know a few generations earlier than my great-great-grandparents at best.

I’d hoped that my DNA test would help reveal more of my Finnish relatives and forebears. But there turns out to be an obstacle I didn’t expect. Up through the nineteenth century the Finns had an unusual custom. The surname of a Finnish family was the same as the name of the family’s farm. When a family moved from one farm to another, the family changed its surname to match the new location. This makes genealogical research based on surnames maddening.

This custom is evident in my family tree. For instance my nine times great-grandfather Heikki was born with the last name Punkari in about 1606. At some point he moved, evidently to the Reini farm, and gained the last name Reini. His son Yrjänä, my eight times great-grandfather, was born with the surname Reini about 1660. Evidently he moved about 1685 to the Karhu farm and took that name. His son Esaias, my seven times great-grandfather, was born there about 1704 and evidently remained living there, since he retained the surname Karhu.

In Finland during those days, if a man married a woman and moved to her home, the man took his wife’s last name, since that was the name of the place where he now lived. That’s what happened when my five times great-grandfather Elias Matinpoika Karhu (1760-1809), who was born with the surname Kujala, married my five times great-grandmother Margareta Andersintytär Uhmusberg (1765-1846). For a few generations after that, this line of the family kept the surname Uhmusberg (pronounced Oomsperry), until my great-great-grandfather Matti Juhonpoika Uhmusberg (1857-1915) ended up with the surname Hietanen.

Matti Juhonpoika Uhmusberg Hietanen (1857-1915).

What prompted that name change? No one’s completely sure. But other family researchers have proposed what seems a likely reason. In 1881 Matti Uhmusberg’s elder sister Maria Uhmusberg (1856-1935) married Jaakko Hermanninpoika Aittanen and moved to the Renko farm where there was a cottage named Hietanen. It’s possible that Matti at one point lived in the cottage on his sister’s farm and took the surname Hietanen from the cottage before he emigrated to the USA in 1887.

Comparing family trees to find common last names among ancestors is the main way to figure out how I’m related to other people who match my DNA. I’ve found a couple family trees of DNA matches that have names and dates corresponding to names and dates on my mom's side of my family tree. If I can trust their research, I believe that I’ve found our exact lines of connection.  But finding the line of connection for a DNA match on my mom's side is rare. The custom of changing last names among the Finns makes it anywhere from difficult to impossible to figure out my connections to DNA matches who have Finnish last names or Finnish backgrounds.

Complicating the last name problem is the fact that a Finn whose last name appears in my family tree might have no connection to my family. That person—or an ancestor—might simply have once lived on the same farm as my ancestor. Juuso Hietanen, the Finnish ice hockey star in the 2014 Sochi Olympics, has the same last name my mother grew up with, but he's probably no relation to me.

All my Finn lines come through the Finnish towns of Ylistaro, Kortesjärvi, and Isokyrö, and my maternal grandparents and great-grandparents were all from Fairport Harbor, Ohio. When I find a DNA match who lists an ancestor who was born, married, or died in any of those places, I feel as if we’re oh-so-close to connecting. Is that name a sister, a brother, a cousin, or some sort of blood relation of one of my Finnish ancestors? I long to make the connection, but the name of a town isn’t enough. Without more information, there’s no way to do it. Like Tantalus reaching to pick a luscious fruit in Hades, I can’t reach far enough. The branch is always just beyond my grasp.

It’s not as though my DNA results haven’t listed many people of Finnish descent who are related to me. There are plenty of them—with ancestors named Myllykoski and Walkkila, Niemi and Luoma, Sillanpaa and Rintamaki, and more. But they’re like puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together. These puzzle pieces are lying in plain sight, and I’m sure they’re pieces from the same puzzle I’m working on. But the pieces that connect them are missing.

Maybe one day DNA research will be able to pinpoint connections among relatives with much more accuracy. But until that day, I'll just have to live with the frustration.

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.

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.