Jill's Genealogy Journey

Stories, Discoveries & Tips

Jill Holman

William & Katri Laitala – A Finnish Family in Northern Minnesota

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William & Katri Laitala with grandson circa 1944 Chisholm MN

Hooray! The second edition of A Finnish Family in Northern Minnesota is available with lots of new information. Read about William and Katri here!

Please note: a PDF is available for printing on the book home page, but the links don’t come through that way. Use this version to link to the resources that are cited in the book.

The Basic Facts:
William LAITALA
b. 1 Jan 1878, Hapavesi, Finland
d. 21 Apr 1952, Virginia, St. Louis, MN

Katri Elizabeth (Kaisa Liisa) KEMPPAINEN
b. 17 Feb 1879, Paltamo, Finland
d. 29 Jun 1963, Virginia, St. Louis, MN
m. 6 May 1906, Chisholm, St. Louis, MN

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Kettle River, MN

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Recently and unexpectedly, I found myself in Kettle River, MN. Wait, my mom lived here when she was little! Oh look, there is an historical marker in memory of the Finnish pioneers!

And a Finnish church from 1915!



So I had to do more digging. Did you know Kettle River was originally called Finland? There were a lot of Finnish settlers here.

The church was built in 1915. Then they had a terrible fire in 1918. Over 450 died, with fifteen hundred square miles consumed. (More on the fire here.) But the church was spared! There is some interesting information about the church building in this National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. The builders were Kaipainens, which is one of our family names – they could have been cousins. I need to do more digging on that.

Where did they live?

Gertrude and Sulo on the farm in Kettle River in 1950
The Kalevala School in Kettle River, MN about 1950


Lastly, here is some information on the first settlers in the area: Reminiscences of the History of Kalevala District. There are some names in there that could be cousins as well. More digging to do!

Marie Marguerie and mtDNA

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This discovery is a great example of how genetic genealogy can help with our research. I had done traditional paper research on my maternal line back to Marie Louise Desmarais, born in 1716, using birth certificates, parish registers and the Loiselle and Drouin marriage indexes. The maternal line is your mother’s mother’s mother’s line and can be difficult to research because of all those name changes.

A dna test can help you get in touch with cousins who have information you don’t have and that is what happened here. Taking the mtDNA test, I found others with the W3a2 haplogroup and they had done the research between Marie Marguerie and Marie Louise’s daughter, so we overlapped two generations. I love it when the paper research and dna results sync up!

Matrilineal Ancestors

In addition, Marie Marguerie is very interesting. She is my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. She immigrated to Quebec in about 1640 and it was tough going in those early days in New France. Her brother, first husband and son were legends – key figures in the fur trade and in relations between the early settlers and the first nations tribes. Marie Marguerie has hundreds of thousands of descendants in the United States and Canada. Mark Wade has gathered a lot of information about her descendants and her life. Also, she lived to be 80, which is impressive. Back then, the average life expectancy was about 35 years.

I am also intrigued that Marie’s daughter was named Gertrude, which is also my grandmother’s name. I think this is a coincidence. I don’t believe my great-grandparents knew about our family history. I still like it though! Gertrude, back in early Quebec, lived to be 78. Her husband also knew several languages of the first nations tribes and was a fur trader.

Genetic genealogy, especially mtDNA, can also give you an idea about your ancient ancestors . . .

Have you heard of the book The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes?

First, the bad news . . . if you find you are a member of the W haplogroup and you were excited to learn which of Eve’s seven daughters is your ancestor, prepare for disappointment. There is a low percent of Haplogroup W in the world and it is not one of the seven daughters of Eve.
However, there is some information available for the W line and here is a rough sketch of the key points from Mark Wade’s current hypothesis for the W timeline:

  • 151,600-233,600 years ago – Mitochondrial Eve in Africa
  • 130,000-200,000 – L haplogroups in Africa
  • 56,000-87,000 – N haplogroups in the Near East
  • 17,000-29,000 years ago – First W in India/Pakistan
  • 14,000 years ago – First W3 in India
  • 13,000 years ago – First W3a in India
  • 6000-12,000 years ago – First W3a2 between Caspian and Aral Seas
  • One branch ends up in Rouen, France
  • About 1640 – Marie Marguerie migrates to Quebec and all of the W3a2 “French W” descendants in North America seem to trace their ancestry back to her.

The original website is gone, but you can see Mark Wade’s work in the Internet Archive:

More Resources

Native American DNA

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Native American DNA book coverThis is an interesting book. As the marketing blurb says, “Who is a Native American? And who gets to decide?”

Have you seen ads for genealogy dna tests so that you can prove your Indian ancestry? It is a lot more complicated than they lead us to believe.

The author places our current interest in genetic genealogy in context, reminding us that our history includes racism, colonialism and eugenics.

Most alarming, samples have been collected and used for things without consent. This raises questions such as who owns and profits from the samples?
The author is a professor and is enrolled Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate. She also is descended from the Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.

The author did an interview after the book was published: There is no DNA test to prove you’re Native American.

“Kim Tallbear warns that genetic tests are a blunt tool. She tells Linda Geddes why tribal identity is not just a matter of blood ties.”

Before DNA testing, people did traditional paper research. To be a tribe member, you might need to prove as much as one-quarter blood quantum. (That means one grandparent was a tribe member or two ancestors further back.)

And it isn’t just about biology or blood. It is about culture and citizenship. It is complicated. As Tallbear says:

“I think we need to stop conflating the concept of a tribe with a racial group. I and many of my relatives have non-native fathers, yet we have a strong sense of being Dakota because we were raised within an extended Dakota kin group. We have a particular cultural identity, based in a land that we hold to be sacred. That’s what gives our lives meaning. It’s what makes us who we are.”

I have been interested in this topic because, like a lot of us, I have a family story that we have an Indian ancestor. In my case, it was quite specific. Supposedly, my great-great-great grandfather, Peter LeClair, was a French Canadian fur trapper and he married an Indian maiden. It is the whole reason I started doing genealogy research decades ago! I wanted to know more about that.

And yet, it doesn’t seem to be true. The parish registers and other sources document these ancestors of mine back to the early settlers of Quebec, but there is no sign of an Indian. I still wonder . . . who started this story? And why?

More Resources

Mayflower Ancestors

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Funny story . . . I discovered I have a Mayflower ancestor last Thanksgiving. Yes, on the holiday where we think about the Pilgrims and the Indians, I discovered I have a Pilgrim ancestor. I sure wish I had known when I visited the Plymouth area years ago! I have to admit I am kind of excited about this discovery. There are lots of descendants of the approximately 217,000 Revolutionary War soldiers, but there were only 102 Mayflower passengers and about half of them died the first winter.

While checking sources, I discovered another Pilgrim ancestor! A married couple, Samuel Washburn and Abigail Leonard each had a Mayflower ancestor. Here is what we know about the ancestors of Samuel Washburn and Abigail Leonard. Some dates are approximate and calculated. Most of this information is from the Mayflower Families through Five Generations volumes 12 and 15.

The Ancestors of Samuel Washburn and Abigail Leonard

I will go into more detail on the Washburns in an upcoming post, but for now let’s talk a bit about the Mayflower passengers, especially Francis Cooke and James Chilton, both signers of the Mayflower Compact.

There is some great description about the ship and the journey here. Over two months on a small ship under bad conditions! They got off course from where they were supposed to settle and there was some disagreement between the Puritans and non-separatist Pilgrims.
They wrote the Mayflower Compact to govern themselves and this was the first written framework of government established in what is now the United States. Many people believe the Mayflower Compact influenced the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

The Mayflower Compact by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863–1930)
The Mayflower Compact by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863–1930)

Francis Cooke

Francis Cooke was my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather. He had been a woolcomber in England, then he was in Leiden for a bit and then ended up on the Mayflower in 1620 with son John. He made it through that hard first winter and lived many more years, until 1663. Wife Hester and the other children came on the Anne in 1623.

James Chilton

James Chilton was also my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather. He may connect back to Robert Chilton who was a representative from Canterbury to Parliment in 1339 – I would love to find out more about that! James was born around 1556 in Canterbury England. He was a tailor and spent time in Leiden. Rocks were thrown at him and his daughter. He came over on the Mayflower in 1620 with his wife and daughter Mary. He died in Cape Cod during that first infection and his wife died soon after. Poor daughter Mary! Only 13 years old and an orphan in a strange land. Another daughter, Isabella, came to Plymouth 1629 or 1630.

Resources

Family History Month is Coming in October

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October is Family History Month. If you haven’t started to research yet, grab a blank chart and start writing things down! And then ask your oldest living relatives what they know ASAP.

For those of us who have been researching awhile, here are 5 of the most interesting projects that are off the beaten path of traditional research . . .

1) Make a family cookbook with recipes that have been handed down in your family. Or try a new recipe to honor your heritage. You could just borrow a cookbook from your public library.

Here are some fun ones I found . . .

cookbooks

2) Do something with those old pictures! Ideas:

photobook-holman
A photobook doesn’t have to be complicated – just pick some key photos and get started.

3) Gather tombstone pictures. You can go traipsing through cemeteries or do this from home via Find a Grave. While the amount of information varies for different entries, sometimes you get lucky and see pictures of someplace too far away to visit in person.

nathan-washburn-grave

4) Inventory, take a picture and write down the story for any family artifacts you might have or that your relatives have. For example, who has the family Bible? Where is great-grandfather’s military medal? If you have older furniture, there is a big difference between “I bought this table at a garage sale” and “My grandmother gave me this table and she got it just after World War II.”

5) Make a poster of your research. You could buy one and fill it in with your information. Or have one printed from one of your charts – Walmart posters start at $6 at the time of this writing.

More Project Ideas