Last evening, I presented a program, “Some Experiences with Finnish Genealogy,” at the Geneva (Ohio) Public Library. Among the attendees were James Siekkinen and his wife Nancy. Jim is my first cousin once removed and they live in Ashtabula, Ohio.
In reminiscing after my presentation, he said he remembered visiting our house in Andover, Ohio, as a child, traveling with his father from Ashtabula. He remembered a man in a wheelchair. That, of course, would have been my father, Walfrid, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis.
I, in turn, remarked about how our family was impressed with how his mother, my Aunt Mary, kept her house spotlessly clean with everything in its place. And she always had lots of flowers.
Jim then mentioned that his mother or his Aunt Edith (he couldn’t recall which) gave him some old records that looked like passports. They were in Russian, he thought, and nobody could read them, so he passed them on to a representative of the Finnish American Heritage Association, which has a museum in Ashtabula.
Needless to say, I am going to ask if I can see those records to try to understand what they are and who they are about. They might represent some more information to our family story.
Stay tuned.
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