Digiarkiston keskustelufoorumi

I'm tracking parish records for Johanna Gustava Frants (1809-1890), my 3X grandmother, in Kosko, Kvevlax parish. There is a lot of writing on the 1820-1826 page 16 (https://digihakemisto.appspot.com/edit? ... d=10055993). Can anyone decipher any of the notes? The page is very dark.

It appears that the two daughters in this family, Anna Caisa/Catherina and Johanna Mattsdotter, each had numerous illegitimate children. Johanna Gustava had several illegitimate children, as well, before she was married and after her husband died. This seems quite unusual, although the parish birth records do have quite a few illegitimate births.

Much obliged for any insights into this. Lorna

If you can change the lightness and sharpness of the image in a programme, you can see a bit more. I do not see the texts clearly myself but at least the chapelain has made it clear these women needed punishing because of e.g. "4. resan lönskaläge" (4 times "hidden" intercourse; 4 children without wedlock) or got "kyrkoböter" (church fines) and "absolv" (absolvation from their sins).

It is of course difficult to say why their family looks like this. Anyway, it has not been easy for the mothers. The fathers of the children were maybe married or did not want to marry? The chapel was far away, in Kvevlax/Koivulahti, the chapelain with his eyes, too.

Tuula K

Tuula, Thank you so much for looking into this. Altogether, the 2 sisters each had 5 children out of wedlock. When I look at the birth register book from this parish at this time, there are a number of illegitimate births. But an extended family with 10 illegitimate kids seems to be unusual! In the next generation, my 3X great-grandmother had 2 illegitimate kids before she married, then 2 more after her husband died.