My Family History

Our Connections with Ukraine

Watching the news coverage of Putin’s War against Ukraine has reminded me of what my late wife Mary Jane said some 60 years ago about teaching elementary music at Thoreau Park Elementary School on W 54th St. in Parma, Ohio. She said that her music room was converted most Saturdays into a classroom for area

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Seizing the Moment: Obtaining Grandma Grace’s Divorce Record

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Juhannus Celebration Potluck dinner at the Finnish-American Heritage Association (FAHA) Museum in Ashtabula, Ohio (FYI, Juhannus is the Finnish name for St. John, the disciple, and Juhannus Holiday is a national holiday in Finland celebrating the Summer Solstice, the start of summer. I am a member of

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Mom Was Born 110 Years Ago Today

Mary Jane Dingman was born on December 14, 1908 (110 years ago today), to Wallace Betts Dingman and Grace Green Morley Dingman. She was born at the family’s home in Conneaut, Ashtabula County, Ohio. She grew up to be a teacher, wife, and mother, then a teacher again, business manager, and finally a caregiver. Her

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Conversion to LastPass

Well, here I am again. Finally. I have been very busy daily for more than a week with transitioning from Roboform as my password manager to LastPass. I have completed that process and checked out each of 195 different log-in/sign-in items. They all work after I updated some obsolete URLs and passwords in my Roboform database.

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Mary Jane Van Court Huskonen 1938-2017

On Friday, 19 May 2017, we said goodbye to our wife and mother, Mary Jane. She had suffered from dementia as well as hip and shoulder problems during the last three years. After a brief hospital stay in April, followed by four weeks in a skilled nursing facility, she lived out her final days at

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A More Complete Timeline for Grandma Grace

On 15 Dec 2016, I posted a timeline for my Grandma Grace that I found on my computer. I had forgotten that I had created it and discovered it during a search for other timeline documents. Today, I found another document in timeline format about Grace Green Dingman in which I had compiled some additional

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Surnames in Finland

Today, I accessed the wiki page on FamilySearch.org labeled “Finland Surnames.” It was quite helpful as it very clearly explained the surname practices in Western Finland versus those in Eastern Finland. Eastern and western Finland have different naming traditions. Both naming customs date back to the earliest written sources. There was frequent overlap of these practices

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Wow! Nine Hints for 7GGF Johann Valentine Landt from Germany

When I opened my Huskonen-Dingman-Van Court-Scheppelmann Family Tree on Ancestry.com this afternoon, I saw that 99+ ancestors and collateral relatives had “hints.” I clicked on the first name on the list: Johann Valentin Landt from Germany who is my 6th great grandfather. Here is how I am descended from Johann on my tree: Johann Valentine

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Grandpa Huskonen Becomes a U.S. Citizen

My paternal grandfather, Evert Huuskonen, immigrated to America in 1902. He arrived in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, on the SS Tunisian, and entered the U.S. at Buffalo, New York on 29 Oct 1902. He left behind in Finland his wife, Ida Maria, and four children: Edith, Emil, Wilma, and Mary. They would join him the

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More on Grandma Huskonen’s Alien Registration

As I posted yesterday, my grandmother, Ida Maria Huskonen, was required to register as an alien during WWII. As it turned out, she was one of more than 4.7 million people living in America who registered as aliens. In my grandmother’s case, I’m sure that my father, Walfrid, took Grandma to Jefferson, the Ashtabula County

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