Today marks the 102nd year anniversary since Heikki Kähkönen arrived in New York. Last week I had gone to bed, but was reading a book with Internet sites and was checking out the ones on Immigration and Ships. Over the last three years I have been looking for Heikki's immigration papers and have always come up short. I decided to get up and get on the computer and check out the websites for fun. I did several searches and nothing much came up, but one site led to Ellis Island. I have searched on the Ellis Island website several times. This time I clicked on the menus with "alternate spelling, close matches, sounds like" and one name popped up. It was Henrik Kaakonen. I looked at it and wanted to see more, but I had forgotten the sign in and password. I retrieved that and looked at the original ship manifest. As I read across the information, I knew I had finally found Heikki. I want to share that information with you. I learned much about him from one piece of paper not lost to history and the marvel of technology.
Heikki Kähkönen aka Henrik Kaakonen left Glasgow, Scotland on August 31, 1907 on the ship SS Astoria. His age is listed as 26, (he was really 28 - or the 6 could be an 8) and a single male. He was a laborer and able to read. His nationality, race and country were listed as Finland. His city or town was Normiss. The 'name and town of relative from whence alien came' was his brother Tomas Kaakonen from Normiss. His final destination was Scofield, Utah. Heikki had a ticket to his final destination and paid for his passage himself. He had never been to the US before and looks like he had $180 upon arrival. He was on his way to join his brother, R. Kaakonen in Clear Creek, Utah. His health was good, six feet tall, fair complextion, dark hair and black eyes. He had no identification marks and was born in Normiss, Finland.
Some background about Heikki Kähkönen born in 1879. His father, Anders died in 1883 and his wife, Greta Lisa moved to Nurmes (Normiss) as a widow in 1888 with her three children, Thomas (age 16), Heikki (age 9) and Matti (age 5). When Heikki was 27 years old, he moved to Kittilä, (Lapland) to work most likely herding reindeer from February of 1907 to August 1907. His purpose was to earn enough money for passage to the US. Each immigrant had to have proof of his birth and the parish minister of Kittilä, F. Oberg, produced that document for the purpose of Heikki's move to the US on the 3rd of August 1907, his 28th birthday. He had to obtain a passport to leave the country as Finland at the time was a Grand Duchy of Russia. Economic conditions were very poor and difficult for the Finns. Heikki traveled from Finland to Scotland to board the SS Astoria. He arrived in New York on September 12, 1907 at 1:30 pm and came through Ellis Island. He made his way to Utah and there met Pauliina Jussila, another Finnish immigrant who was beautiful and single. I am assuming Heikki knew of other Finns who worked as miners in Carbon County and made up the name R. Kaakonen which could have been someone he knew, as he had no brother with the first name starting with R.
Over the last few years, I have wondered many times and asked Heikki to help me find his immigration information. We know where he came from and where he died but had little information of how he got here. The promptings of doing family history work are real. I have a very poor picture of Heikki when he was newly married in 1910.(I wanted to post this today, so I didn't have time to get a real good picture to go with the post, sorry). I hope you enjoy this blog and share it. I get really excited everytime I think about finally finding this information about Heikki.
