My grandparents were from Finland years ago (early 1900s), and they came separately to the United States and arrived in Minnesota. My grandfather's name was XXX, but it was originally XXX, but the immigration people told him to shorten it. My grandmother's name was XXX, and she went first to Boston by ship, and then to Minnesota. Is there a way to trace my ancestry?
Vastaus
There is an institute called the Institute of Migration in Finland, their homepage is http://www.migrationinstitute.fi/index_e.php
The Genealogical Society of Finland have a page where they answer questions concerning genealogy. Their homepage: http://www.genealogia.fi/index.php?lang=en
There are books about genealogy - could you go to a library and find out if they have some books in English? I browsed through one of them (in Finnish; Sukututkimuksen käsikirja by Marjo Hyppönen and Rauno Luttinen, WSOY 1988, ISBN 951-0-14566-1). They recommend the beginning genealogist to start by interviewing his or her living relatives. In other words, you proceed backwords from the present to the past.
I think it is worth your while to visit the homepages of some Finnish Vähäkainus.
Mari Vähäkainu's homepage:
http://www.kase.fi/~mariva/
Jani Vähäkainu's homepage:
http://www.lesti.kpnet.fi/~janiva/INDEX.HTM
Do you know any Finnish? It seems that you won't get very far if you don't, unless you have a friend to act as an interpreter. You probably cannot avoid studying local histories and such things in Finnish.
If you can manage with the Finnish language, there are useful links on the Internet: http://www.htk.fi/kirjasto/ Use the search word "sukututkimus" (without the quotation marks).
http://www.kirjastot.fi/tiedonhaku/ is a very useful gate to all the search engines on the Internet, for searching information from the Finnish Internet pages as well as from Internet pages made in other countries - the Finns in the USA certainly have pages that could be useful to you.
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