"Lost in America and never heard from again..."

Kasksdjflksjfj  trip continued!

The quest to look for anything of my great, great, great grandfather (Alexander Lindquist, Senior) with his four sons turned out to be successful! Shocking, I know. I had a small feeling of anxiety this morning and I got on the bus and saw I was driving into the forest. And I had to get up at 6:00 a.m.

I got to Kronoby which is on the Finn-Swede border, but on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Thankfully, we pass a church that looks old and I decided to walk there first. This turned out to be an excellent decision. I walked to the cute, old and yellow church and start taking pictures since that’s all I expected to be doing. Well, I turned out to be wrong. There was a new church next to the old one and somebody pull up. I was just standing there, deciding whether or not to talk to him and he saw me contemplating. I decided to go talk to him. I tell him why I’m there and if he could help me at all, which leads to this other man who starts digging through original records of citizens’ births and departures! Unfortunately, they didn’t have the specific person I was looking for but it was still so neat. This extremely kind Finn looked through records for two hours with me. He also called a Lindquist who still lives in Kronoby who may have records; we may have found his actual birth year which is a good thing! I could not believe the kindness these people showed me. I couldn’t tell if they simply took pity on me or if they were actually interested in what I was doing, but they were still more than generous to help me.  Regardless of their motives, I was more than grateful.

Afterwards, I walked around the cemetery and found some Lindquist graves. I don’t know who they are but they could possibly be related to my ancestors.  I liked walking around regardless. J The rest of the day was spent walking to take a picture of the “Kruunupyy” sign and to find postcards. Both were successful! I stopped at a gas station, drank coffee, and read while I waited for the bus. It was a short and sweet but interesting and random trip.

A slightly funny story though, I stopped at a random bakery and they had meringue cookies. I love meringue cookies. The lady seemed like she didn’t really speak English so I spoke Finnish. I know I said one but I ended up with five cookies and I felt too bad to say that I only wanted one, so I bought all five. It’s a good thing I was walking all day…