Records for Hammarland, Åland, Finland
I'm been researching Finnish records using Digihakemisto, but find birth and communion records don't seem to go beyond the early 1860's. Are these records currently not available, or is there another place I might search for them? If they are currently not available, any idea when they may become available and where?
Thank you.
Judi
Best Answer
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Thanks Norm for tagging me!
Judi, unfortunately Hammarland church records (and most the records in Åland parishes) end to about 1860-1870, at least their availability. After that church records have not yet been digitized and there is no information when they will be digitized.
Here is the list of all records that were microfilmed and all of those should be available in digital form. Hakemisto (arkisto.fi). Some parishes have records digitized after these years and they can be viewed from FFHA database FFHA - Finnish Family History Association (sukuhistoria.fi), but only for members of FFHA. Membership fee is very low (17€/year) if you anytime need records from main land (Finland), but that database do not contain records from Åland.
If you need any specific information, you need to send a family history research request directly to the parish. then they will do the research and send you the information. Parishes have they own fees and they do not have any specific personnel to do those researches, so getting information varies a lot from parish to parish. Some time it takes only days to get an answer but sometimes it might take over year (I have been waiting the answer from one parish 4 months now).
But do not be saddened!
Taxation records (Henkikirjat) for all Åland are available until 1919. These records are little bit similar than US Census records and many call these records as census records. There have been several different ways that people have been listed in taxation records. Age boundaries have been changes and groups of people who had to pay taxes varied.
Taxation records list people house by house, house owner and his wife and all people who paid taxes. At first is was all people over 12 years. Then it was people between ages 15-63 and at year 1865 over line (age border) was removed from master of the house (house owner) and under line was risen to 16 years. Children under age 15 (16) are listed only by numbers like 2-3 which means 2 boys and 3 girls or just 5 underage children. During some time periods poor and crippled ones were released from paying life money (henkiraha, tax).
Taxation records were kept annually and for Åland they can be found under province of Turku and Pori.
In Digihakemisto (usually good indexes) they are here: Turun ja Porin läänin henkikirjat - Henkikirjat (digihakemisto.appspot.com) (indexed as Ahvenanmaa)
In FamilySearch (no indexes, but better images) can be found from here: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/2856949?availability=Family%20History%20Library
I recommend that you first find all information what can be found from taxation records and then you ask from parish more detailed information like exact birth, marriage and death dates. Because when you have the family's living location (farm, village, parish) and what were the names of the people who lived there and the approximately birth, marriage and death dates, you will get the answer more faster and that means also cheaper.
Ok, this was quite long answer :)
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I am going to tag @Heidi Kuosmanen on this to see if she can help. She is Finnish and is a very good researcher. If anyone can help on this, she can.
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Thank you, Norm, for passing this on.
Also, I wanted to thank you for your most recent recommendation to use https://sok.riksarkivet.se/digitala-forskarsalen for researching records from Sweden. I've spent quite a bit of time on the site now familiarizing myself with it. Not speaking Swedish, it is somewhat of a challenge, but well worth it. I've been able to translate on the website many of the items that are not in English and I've already been able to pull up many of the birth records from my father's family...it's been very exciting! Haven't had a chance to get beyond the birth records yet, but perhaps you could suggest the best place to positively identify members of a family...it seems communion records aren't always reliable. Also...When reading some of the birth records, I recognize family names. However, there seems to be titles in front of some of the names that are in Swedish and I'm unable to make out the handwriting to be able to translate them. Some birth records have many names with no titles...who would these other individuals most likely be?
Thanks, Norm.
Judi😊
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The household (communion) records are more often reliable than not. However, you should always remember that they are secondary sources and should always be verified by looking at the primary sources-birth, marriage, moving, and death records-if they are available.
The titles in front of names are most often occupations. Hans Högman has an excellent site for Swedish researchers. He has a list of genealogy terms and occupations here: http://www.hhogman.se/dictionary_genealogy.htm. There are also many other useful pages on his site.
For learning to read the letters, this site has some very useful helps: https://swedishgenealogyguide.com/. It includes a Swedish/English (or English/Swedish) dictionary where you can enter the letters you are able to recognize and it will give you choices to try to figure out the word: https://swedishgenealogyguide.com/dictionaries/swedish-historical-dictionary-database-shdd and a Learning Center where you can find some very fine videos on reading the Swedish language records: https://swedishgenealogyguide.com/learning-center. The Swedish Gothic Alphabet Samples is also worth checking out: https://swedishgenealogyguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Swedish-Gothic-Alphabet-Samples.pdf.
And, as always, we are happy to help here on the Nordic Community page.
As far as the "many names" in a birth record, these are probably the witnesses/godparents at the baptism. They could be relatives or just neighbors or friends of the family.
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