Posts By: whuskonen

Married almost 57 Years

Yesterday would have been 57 years of marriage for my wife and me. Mary Jane (MJ) and I were married on 25 Jun 1960. Unfortunately, she passed away on 19 May 2017, just 37 days shy of that 57th wedding anniversary. It was tough not being able to celebrate this latest marriage milestone with her. Several

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Ending Editorship of Footsteps to Past Newsletter

Today, I completed laying out my last issue as editor of Footsteps to the Past, the quarterly newsletter of the Cuyahoga Genealogical Society, a chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society. Martha Nienhaus is taking over as editor and will put together the Fall 2017 issue. When John Stoika died in May in 2013, I took over the Footsteps editorship. I included the

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Finnish Research Strategies and Records

I get my start in genealogy during a visit to the Family History Library in Salt Lake in 1992. It was during a business trip and the colleague that I was traveling with said that he was visiting the Library in the evening. He agreed to take me along. While there, I did some checking

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Flu Pandemic Claims a WWI Soldier from Ohio

This is another installment in my ongoing WWI research to commemorate America’s Centennial of entering the War in 1917. “To Appear Saturday” read the headline on page 9 in the Hutchinson News for Tuesday, 16 Jul 1918. The Reno County, Kansas, newspaper was reporting that local men had been notified to appear for physical examinations: Thirty-three

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Resumption of Posting to This Blog

It’s hard to believe but it has been one month and two days since I last posted to this blog. The subject of that post was to record the passing of my wife Mary Jane, MJ for short, on May 19. Since then it has been quite an adjustment not having her present in my

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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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RootsMagic Moving Closer to Syncing with Ancestry.com Family Trees

Thanks to Randy Seaver and his Genea-Musing blog, I was able to view a video created by Bruce Buzbee about how his RootsMagic personal computer database program (Version 7) will shortly be able to “sync” with family trees in Ancestry.com. His post is here: http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/05/rootsmagic-provides-video-demonstrating.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+geneamusings%2FlEXw+%28Genea-Musings%29. The new capabilities of RootsMagic 7 in working with trees in

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Finland Record Selection Table from FamilySearch Wiki

I have been doing genealogical research for about 20 years, and since my paternal grandparents came from Finland, I have spent a good amount of time trying to do Finnish research. FamilySearch.org has provided a table that helps organize your approach to what records to seek and how to access them. I have copied the

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In Finland Cemeteries, Graves May Be Recycled after 25 Years

When I visited Finland a few years ago, I made sure that I toured the cemeteries of Vesanto and Rautalampi, the villages my grandparents emigrated from. I found several cemetery stones with Huuskonen and Hytönen (Grandma’s maiden name) engraved on them–but none were for ancestors I knew about at the time. There is a good

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Two Date Calculators Useful for Genealogy

Today I noticed a small water leak coming from the furnace in our basement. We had the furnace humidifier serviced in January. There was a 90-day guarantee for replacement of a water pad in the humidifier. I wanted to calculate exactly how long it was since the service was done. I searched on Google for

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