“Remoted” – Workday 160 / Day 234 (Thursday)

The new after work hobby already feels like a part-time job. Tonight involved another three-hour research journey. Holy moley. Add one record to a family tree and then there are dozens and dozens of potential records matches. Okay, more accurately, after the ten children in the family and a couple spouses were added, and there were 210 new “hints.” Modern technology is amazing. And exhausting.

In six hours of research I have learned that practically everything I thought I knew about Mummu’s family was not quite right. For example, I thought my grandmother, the youngest of ten kids, was the only child born in America but it turns out that all of the children in the family were born here. She was truly the only one to finish high school and the brothers and sisters made it through eighth grade. 

Suomi, land of my
 Holy Grail of info.

Learning about the occupations of the past is interesting. On the census records, my great grandfather John had jobs including “Driver - Ice Crew” (1910); “Teamster – Coal Industry,” (1920); “Paper Maker – Paper Mill” (1930); and “Washer – Paper Mill” (1940). 

Two newspaper stories may involve my ancestor, but with more than one John Maki in the same city at the same time, it’s hard to know for sure. A newspaper story in July of 1943 has a John Maki of Falulah Paper falling during a power blackout and suffering a head injury. Another news story has a John Maki who was assaulted by three men on the same street where my John Maki lived, and brought to the police station for assistance by four other young men. I’m fairly certain my John Maki is not the one who was part of a murder investigation, who may be the same one who served time in Shirley Prison.

The Holy Grail is the missing key of how and into what port John Jaakko Maki and Wilhelmina Ollila arrived in the US from Finland in 1893, and every scrap of info from Finland. Right now, John and Minnie seem to have sprung into the world without benefit of parents. Sweden is listed on the country list in Ancestry, but not Finland. I wonder how many more Finnish lessons it will take before I can read documents in Finn, assuming I find any to read. Things to aspire to!