Jill's Genealogy Journey

Stories, Discoveries & Tips

Jill Holman

West of the Moon and Norwegian Emigration

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Cover of West of the Moon by Margi Preus

I found myself listening to West of the Moon by Margi Preus on a recent road trip and I really liked it. It is a good story and it won a Minnesota Book Award in 2015. She draws on Norwegian folk tales, so I felt I was getting in touch with my Norwegian heritage.

While this book is fiction, she was inspired to write it by her great-great-grandmother’s diary, where she describes coming to America in 1851. In particular, there was a girl alone on the ship in the diary which inspired Preus to write this story.

I have always been interested in emmigrant stories. What is that like to leave everything you know and endure a difficult journey in the hopes of making a better life somewhere new?
The author did a bunch of historical research and yet the book still has a timeless, fairy-tale quality. It is not just a children’s book either! There are some good philosophical questions in there as well.

Wait a minute, didn’t my Norwegian great-great-grandmother come to America as well? Did she come alone like the girl who inspired the story? Was she hoping to find her father like the girl in the story?

Pic of Fjerstads1940
Anna with her son Pete and his daughter Fran and her son Boyd (Four Generations! circa 1940)


Here is what we know so far . . .


We find my great-great-grandmother, Anna, in an emigration database leaving Bergen, Norway 8 Apr 1885. I have not yet been able to document her complete journey through ships logs or border crossings. She has a lot of name variations.


Her father was already in America, but we don’t know that they kept in touch. She had been born out of wedlock, so she probably was looking forward to a fresh start. Her brother Amond emigrated later in 1905.


She got married to Lars Fjerstad in Minnesota on 22 Nov 1889. He had emigrated the year after Anna. I imagine they met here since they were from different Norwegian towns. They went on to have six children and 22 grandchildren.


They did have relatives around from Lars’ side of the family. His three siblings also came to America in 1892 and 1893. His mother came in 1893 after her husband died and we see her living with Lars and Anna at the time of the 1895 census. Brother Ole was living with Lars and Anna at the time of the 1900 census.

The White Bear from Kay Nielsen’s version of East of the Sun and West of the Moon in 1922


Additional Resources:

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Ethnicity Percentages

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Have you been attracted to those glossy ads to find out who you are by doing a genealogy DNA test?

Roberta Estes wrote this interesting article where she figured out her estimated ethnicity percentages from her traditional genealogy research and then compared them to results from several genetic genealogy vendors: Concepts – Calculating Ethnicity Percentages.

I was inspired to play with this idea myself, though I simplified things a bit. For example, I have only used one testing company. I took my 16 great-great grandparents and what I know about where they were born and their heritage (based on decades of traditional genealogy research) and estimated ethnicity percentages. I tallied my parents separately to make a clean comparison since I tested them separately and put them on the left side of the table. Then I put the ethnicity percentages from the Family Finder test from FamilyTreeDNA in to my table on the right side.
Compares percentages from research and dna test

Discussion of Results

What Came Through as Expected (or close to expected)

  • Mom is 50% Finnish through both methods.
  • Family Finder reports 44% West & Central Europe compared to my estimate of 50% when I combine French, German and Dutch for Mom.
  • For Dad, we see Family Finder’s 75% British Isles matching with my 75% for English.

What was Unexpected

  1. Family Finder’s Scandinavian at 8% seems very low. (And is funny since Estes had a strangely high Scandinavian percentage.) Relatedly, the Eastern European at 16% seems too high. My 25% Norwegian estimate is pretty solid. I have connected with a cousin in Norway who has done research. The ancestors seem quite Norwegian at least back to my great-great-great-great-great grandparents. And 16% would be roughly 1 great-grandparent or two great-great-grandparents who were half East European or a bunch of ancestors further back. There are no family stories about someone coming from East Europe.
  2. Family Finder reports 3% Southeast Europe, which is news to me, but Estes talks about how Germans tend to be 30% Mediterranean, so the 3% Southeast Europe here is plausible.
  3. The trace amounts could be noise or something from very far back. We may never know.

As Estes says:

“The science just isn’t there yet for answers at the level most people seek.”
“Ethnicity estimates are not a short cut to or a replacement for discovering who you are based on sound genealogical research.”

I agree with Estes. Most people want more detail than “West and Central Europe” or “British Isles” or “Scandinavia.” Traditional genealogy research is still important in order to understand our heritage.

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:

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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?

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