Each tombstone has its own story - Vilhelm Broända

William Broenda's gravestone at Greenwood cemetery in Astoria, Oregon. Picture: Jan Anderson

One of my hobbies when visiting another locality is walking in the local cemetery if there’s even a little time left. In addition to looking for relatives and characters, I am looking to find both aesthetic beauty and peace of mind. Cemeteries are soothing and stopping oases in the middle of a noisy, dusty and restless city. Tombstones and the names written and carved on them tell about the history of the region, the power structures of the past, the linguistic and religious division, and the spectrum of surnames of the region. Every person listed on the tombstone has their own life story, sometimes very colorful.

A few days ago, I received a photo of a tombstone off the west coast of the United States in Astoria. Astoria is a city at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. This city, which lived on salmon fishing, became one of the significant destinations and bases of Finnish immigrants from the 1880s onwards. The tombstone tells of the deceased being born in my hometown of Lappeenranta. The image of that tombstone erected 113 years ago on my screen invited, even outright demanded, to tell the story of the deceased buried in the caches of the archives. 

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Picture: Jan Anderson

Vilhelm Broända was born in Lappeenranta, southeastern Finland, in 1853. Although his date of birth is marked on March 26, 1853 in church records, there is no complete certainty about the date of birth. Namely, his name cannot be found in the list of those born and baptized in Lappeenranta from 1852-1853. Vilhelmi's parents were Erik Broända (laborer, born 28.10.1826) and Anna Helena Kemppi (2.1.1814 - 27.3.1871). Anna Helena and Erik were married on April 12, 1852 and the wife was thus 12 years older than her husband. The marriage was Anna Helena's second. Her first husband Anders Kemppi had died at the age of 49 on May 10, 1850 from diphtheria. Would the absence of Vilhelm's name from the list of births and baptisms be explained by the fact that the parents were in another place at the time of the child's birth and baptism was performed there? 

Vilhelm lived in Lappeenranta until 1875. On May 2, 1875, he applied to the priest of the Lutheran congregation for a certificate of migration with the intention of moving to St. Petersburg, the then capital of Russia. At that time, there was a practice in Finland according to which every migrant had to apply to the authorities of his or her home area for a certificate of migration, which recorded the most important personal information such as date of birth and marital status, literacy and possible vaccination. This paper was then presented to the authority both on the way to the new locality and at check-in to the authorities of the new home area. If the traveler could not find a certificate of migration, he/she could be arrested for detachment and patched up in his former home area once it had been found out. 

The exact date of Vilhelmi's move to St. Petersburg is not known, but he registered as a member of the Finnish Lutheran congregation there on November 13, 1876 and at the same time presented his certificate of migration he had brought from Lappeenranta. Enrollment as a permanent resident of St. Petersburg was accelerated by a planned marriage. Vilhelm had apparently met a young lady, Maria Mathilda Eskola, in St. Petersburg. Maria had moved to the city at the beginning of August 1875 at the latest. Maria, born on September 30, 1852 in Oulainen, Ostrobotnia, had taken her certificate of migration from Vihanti, where she lived at the time, to Vyborg in southeastern Finland on September 21 1872. The certificate paper of migration contains entries about the stay in the Kivennapa on Karelian isthmus (October 12, 1873) and in Siestarjoki in Ingria (February 19, 1874). The wedding of Mary and Wilhelm was celebrated in St. Petersburg on December 26, 1876. 

The newly married couple stayed in St. Petersburg for about fourteen years. Vilhelm's profession is listed in the church book (in German) Arbeiter, but there is no mention of Mary's possible professions or work. Apparently the marriage was childless. In the 1890s, American fever had also taken over many Finns in St. Petersburg. It also grabbed Broända’s couple. They applied for a certificate of migration on February 8, 1891 and their destination was the United States. At the same time, it was the last mention of them in the documents of the Finnish Lutheran Church in St. Petersburg. Vilhelm Broända, who then turned into William Broenda, pops up on the west coast of the United States in the city of Astoria in the summer of 1899. In a local newspaper, he advertises his Russian baths, or maybe we should say in Finnish, his sauna.  

More than eight years later, William's life ends in the city of Astoria at a fairly young age, as he was only 54 years old when he died on November 21, 1907. William is buried there in Greenwood Cemetery. Instead, his wife Maria lived for a long time and married Anton Johnson (1853 - 1935). Maria's life ended in Astoria at the age of 84 on September 13, 1937.