At a meeting of the Finnish American Heritage Association (FAHA) at its museum in Ashtabula a couple of years ago, a friendly lady remarked to me that she rode to work with my father, Walfrid Herbert Huskonen, during World War II. They drove from my hometown, Andover, Ohio, about 12 miles south on Ohio Rt
Read on »Ashtabula County
Walfrid Huskonen’s Dream: Andover Pattern Co.
My mother, Mary Jane Huskonen (born Dingman), passed along to us the promise that my father, Walfrid Herbert Huskonen, made to himself to be in business for himself by age 45. He achieved that goal when he quit working as a patternmaker at Glauber Brass in Kinsman, Trumbull, Ohio, and founded Andover Pattern Co. in
Read on »Eating Pizza in a Covered Bridge in Andover, Ohio
In my quest to accumulate information about the history of Andover, Ohio, where I grew up, I ran across a Google search result for the Covered Bridge Pizza Parlor. The company’s web page provides details of its origins: At the Covered Bridge Pizza Parlor we invite you to discover a pizza parlor that gives you
Read on »More on Grandpa Wallace Dingman
Earlier, I posted about my maternal Grandfather Wallace Betts Dingman and how he worked “for the railroad.” Click here for that post. I have done some more research which I would like to report on now. First, here is a photograph of Grandpa Wallace taken in 1918 when he reportedly was working as a switchman
Read on »Newspaper Find from 50 Years Ago
Today I was searching in NewspaperArchive.com for any “hits” on Huskonen. I found plenty of them starting in about 1995. I was trying to go back to earlier times, specifically to see if I could find any newspaper articles about my father Walfrid H. Huskonen. What I did find though was an interesting “hit” in
Read on »Why We Need to Include a Country Name with Genealogical Locations
One of the effects of using online genealogical databases in our research is that we need to enter a country name to completely identify each family history location. Back in the day before online databases, American researchers just assumed that readers of their research reports about American ancestors would know that a location reference was
Read on »Small World Dept: Meeting Up with a Cousin
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
Read on »Hooray! Ancestry.com Adds New York Death Records
If you have ever tried to research death records in New York State, you know it was a big pain. The state death index existed only on microfilm and was accessible only in a half dozen libraries across the state. You had to know the year of death to be able to browse these records
Read on »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
Read on »Researching Frank Morley Green’s WWI Service
Frank Morley Green was my first cousin, once removed. He was born on 11 Jan 1896 in Pierpont, Ashtabula County, Ohio, when his father, Edwin Green, was 23 and his mother, Nellie White Green, was 20. As a child, I and my family often visited his home in Andover, and he and his wife
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