Archives: August 2017

Advice to White Supremacists: You Might Not Want to Test Your DNA

Last week (Aug 17, 2017) Dick Eastman posted an article with the title above on his blog, “Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.” We are reprinting it here with permission: UPDATE: This news story is mushrooming. The original news article listed in the article below was knocked offline for a while, probably because thousands of people were accessing

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One Hundred Years of Finland’s Independence

Dec 6, 2017, is the day Finland will officially celebrate its centennial as an independent country. In the lead-up to that momentous day, it is appropriate that Finland has a website with information about the centennial: Suomi Finland 100. The page on that website that is very interesting to me is “One hundred years of

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Take Your Ethnic Purity Business Elsewhere

This email was distributed to subscribers of the Ancestry Blog a couple days ago. Especially appropriate for us as genealogists is what Ancestry states in the third paragraph: The entire Ancestry family is horrified and appalled by the tragic events that occurred in Charlottesville. We not only condemn the violence that occurred but are deeply

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Hello to Finnish Cousins

I just received word via email that notice of my recent posts about Cousin Matti sending Kaapro Huuskonen’s biography to me, and how he and my brother Walfrid translated it into English, has been circulated to other Huuskonen (original spelling of surname) cousins. For their benefit, in case they take a look at this blog,

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Burning the Turnip Patch

In today’s earlier post containing Kaapro (aka Gabriel) Huuskonen’s biography, there was the following statement about his farming practices in Finland: “Every summer he burned off a small patch for turnips … ” This intrigued me so I did a Google Search and came up with an interesting website exactly about this practice in Finland.

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More on Gift of Family History from Finland

Yesterday, I received the email below from my brother, Walfrid. It was a follow-up to the subject of my post on Aug 8 (http://www.collectingancestors.com/2017/08/10/a-gift-of-family-info-from-finland/ ) Wallace, Attached is my translation of Kaapro Kustaanpoika Huuskonen.  I had help from Matti [a cousin in Finland and the provider of the subject biography] in translating a couple of places,

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Uncle Walter’s Marriage Found Online

Today, I opened one of the hints on Ancestry.com and it led me to the marriage record of my great uncle Walter Chase Dingman. I had visited the Archives for Trumbull County, Ohio, in Warren, more than 15 years ago to obtain a paper copy of this marriage record. Now it is available online. If

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Avoiding Danger when Checking Missed Calls on My iPhone

I have been getting a lot of incoming calls from unknown telephone numbers recently on my iPhone. Here is a recent example: 763-275-1399. I didn’t recognize the area code. Later, in my missed call log, the iPhone indicated that the call was from Becker, MN. I don’t know anybody in this little town (pop. 4,500 according to

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A Gift of Family Info from Finland

My brother Walfrid has maintained regular correspondence with cousins in Finland. Recently, I asked him exactly what the relationship was. He responded with his best explanation. I entered the info in my Ancestry.com tree. There were some missing “leaves” so I decided last evening to contact our cousin Matti myself by email and ask for

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Learning about German Genealogical Research

While attending the Monday (7 Aug 2017) evening meeting of the East Cuyahoga County Genealogical Society,  I announced that the Cuyahoga Valley Genealogical Society would be holding a FREE seminar on German genealogical research on Saturday, 9 Sep 2017, at the Independence (Ohio) Civic Center. I mentioned that the presenter was a representative the Palatines to

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