North American Juntunen Journal Being Prepared for Publication

From a very modest beginning with a few volunteers and a small amount of available information on Juntunens, the North American Juntunen Project has grown and collected submissions of data from more than 10 branches of Juntunens in North America. A Website has been established and has been used to publish 14 newsletter issues with current information about project activities. From research at the U.S. National Archives in Washington, D.C., records for more than 200 Juntunens have been found for ship arrivals at North American ports. Selected data about 147 Juntunens who arrived through eastern Canadian ports has been listed in newsletters. Occasionally these arrival records included the immigrants’ place of birth in Finland and often indicated their destination in North America. A full listing of data we have found will be published in the Journal. Ship arrival records for Boston, New York, and other ports in the U.S. and Canada are still being researched.

In North America, primary sources of information for Juntunens are:

Ship arrival and official immigration records at points of entry.
Naturalization records for Juntunens that have applied for citizenship.
Official birth, death, marriage, and other records maintained in county courthouses throughout the U.S.
Official Census records identifying individual Juntunens and where they have lived.
Family branch data researched & submitted by individuals.

We are hoping to receive a listing of Juntunens who emigrated from Finland so that we can include it in Volume I. This data can be compared with Juntunens in ship arrival records. We would welcome receiving this very helpful data from the Juntusten sukuseura, as compiled by the Emigration Institute in Turku.

Due to the large amount of work to still be done, our revised objective is to publish Volume I of the North American Juntunen Journal during this winter. Our first publication will begin a series of volumes that we hope will present as complete picture of Juntunen’s in the United States and Canada as possible from available information sources.

For Volume I of the North American Juntunen Journal, data is being gathered from US Census for Juntunen immigrants who lived in selected counties of Michigan’s Copper Country. This was the place where a majority of the early Juntunen immigrants first settled. Later Juntunen Journals will focus on census & other data for other regions. In the US, summaries of Federal census data is available almost immediately after completion of the census every 10 years, but data for individuals and households is only released 72 years after collection to protect individual privacy. The last US census for which individual records are currently available is the 1920 census. Juntunen data found in census listings for the Copper Country will be published in Volume I.

From research at the county clerk’s office in Houghton and Keweenaw County, Michigan, John & Ruth Stierna & Margaret Smith have collected all Juntunen names found in the courthouse records from about 1870 to 1940. The data is for naturalization records & marriages. Death records include some dates after 1940. We also hope to collect all Juntunen births in these two counties for 1870-1895 from LDS microfilms of birth records. From Minnesota naturalization records, volunteers have been submitting copies of Juntunen records. We have also discovered many Juntunen obituaries and biographies from various sources in a variety of places. The information found in these sources will be published in Volume I of the North American Juntunen Journal.

Juntunen family-branch genealogy data, photos, & stories submitted by the end of 1999 will be included in Volume I. Information and terms for ordering the North American Juntunen Journal will be posted on our Website as soon as possible when we have a definite publication date and price.

It has been very exciting and gratifying to establish contact with Juntunens from coast to coast in North America. Word is spreading here about the Project and many more Juntunens are learning about Juntunen research. Among family descendants, we are now experiencing a growing interest in collecting and sharing Juntunen family lines in North America. Many people have expressed hope to connect to their Juntunen roots in Finland.