This group was created for people searching in Finland for their ancestors.
Members: 26
Latest Activity: Jun 15, 2016
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Colleen, this group is not very active, I would suggest Finnish Genealogy on Facebook if you have a FB account:
https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/groups/14108279806/
Hiski is great for finding information, but you really should check everything in the communion books as well (assuming they exist for the period in question). Often there are people with the same name living near each other. I once had two couples who had the exact same names and they even gave the same names to their children! The only way to separate the families was to look them up in the communion book, so you knew which child belonged to which couple.
There are two sites for viewing communion books. The easier to use is Finland's Family History Association's Digital Archive:
http://www.sukuhistoria.fi/sshy/index_eng.htm
Go to Church Records and then pick the correct parish. communion book = rippikirja. Most books have an index, that lists which farm is on what page. The books themselves are in Swedish until the 1880's, but just looking at the names and birth dates helps with the Hiski data. The FB group has a lot of members that are willing to translate hard texts. The site has material up to 1912 (not from all parishes), but material newer than 125 years is for members only. Since the digitizing is done by volunteers, the quality ranges from excellent (digitizing from original material) to poor (from scratched up microfilm/fiche). Not all parishes have been digitized and some parishes only have a few books ready. Material is added on a daily basis, though.
The other site is the National Archives Digital Archive:
http://digi.narc.fi/digi/?lang=en_US
It's a bit harder to use, but has better quality images since they digitized them using the archival microfilms. Go to Search and the Tree View to see a list of parishes (seurakunta/församling). Please note that Swedish speaking parishes are listed using their Swedish name. So you won't find Mustasaari, but Korsholm, etc. After you pick the parish, the communion books are listed under Pää- ja rippikirjat. They are not indexed, but there's a project by volunteers that creates indexes for the site:
http://digihakemisto.appspot.com/
That site is in Finnish only, but if you pick a parish off the list and then Pää- ja rippikirjat it gives you a list of the available books. The ones that are bolded out are ones that people have indexed. They might only have one line of text or be all ready, sometimes people add to it when they're looking for a specific page and stop when they get to the page. Usually the books that are not on FFHA's website are the ones where the index is more complete.
This was a bit longer than I intended, but I hope it'll help you and other members. :)
Hello
I became interested in my Finnish Ancestry over 10 years ago but didn't find any documents other than my Grandmother, Olga Maria Walkonen arriving in Australia in 1915 through Australian Immigration Records. She gave birth to my father near 6mths after arriving but died when he was two. My father was fostered to the Leinonen family. Now I am researching two families - the Walkonens prior to 1915 and Leinonens since. I have gathered most my information via the Finnish Hiski site and our family tree is growing. However whether the Walkonens changed the spelling of their surname or it was changed when transcribed from the Parish Records I have noted quite a few variations including Wallkoin (1814), Wakoin (1817), and Valkoin (1842). Also spelling of given (Christian) names also vary eg my Great Grandmother Eva Stiina Ronkain is also listed in the HisKi Project as Eva Regina, Eva Stina, Eva Stiina Ronkain, Kristina Ronkanen, Eewa Ronkanen, and Eewa Stiina Ronkainen. Frequently a child is not listed with it's father's surname but with their Patriotic name (son/daughter of). It's no wonder individuals searching for their ancestors often can't find them. But the HisKi Project remains my main source of information.
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