I’ll start with what I know about the Pietoff family. There - it’s a beginning to the story! As I mentioned, one of the main characters I want to tell stories about is Anton Alfred Pietoff; he was born here in 1888, to Alexej and Ida, who had ten children who survived to adulthood, fourteen children in total. These two seem to be characters of their own, certainly. Let’s go off on this tangent first.

Depending on the relative telling the story, Alexej was a very industrious man, a bit stubborn, willing to travel, and an entrepreneur. Alexej was born near Lake Tuoppajärvi, also known as Lake Topozero, in a region called Far Karelia, or East Karelia.

For those unfamiliar with the geography, the main peninsula of Scandinavia holds what is now Norway and Sweden, mainly separated from the mainland of Europe by the Baltic Sea. The Gulf of Bothnia further separates Sweden and Finland, and there is also a bit of present-day Russia on the eastern portion of the overall peninsula. Karelia has had various subdivisions, but generally the area between the Gulf of Finland north and east towards the White Sea, the inlet of the Barents Sea which is surrounded to the north by the Kola peninsula, is considered Karelia. (Thanks to the Nations Online project that makes the map below available for educational purposes.)

So Karelia, generally, is the area over what is now the border between Russia and Finland - but that border is barely over a hundred years old. And borders and control in Scandinavia have changed a LOT over time. So understanding regions and the movement of people becomes important when we are looking back over generations in this area. (Ok, quick segue before the beginning of my story.)

During the Iron Age, there were several cultures in the area. Many will have heard of the Sami people who are indigenous to the northern parts of this region, especially those familiar with Norse sagas; Tavastians were another historic people with roots further inland in southern Finland; and the Karelians lived in the area we’ve already covered.

From about the 13th century (post-Northern-crusades), Finland was part of the Kingdom of Sweden, until the Grand Duchy of Finland was ceded to the Russian Empire in 1809. Then in 1917 Finland declared independence, creating the borders we know today. And given all that, the geography of Karelia is actually the easiest to explain. There are many subdivisions I haven’t touched on, and then there is the political and cultural history which continues to unfold and I’m sure I’m unaware of much of it.

So, back to my timeline and my great-great-grandfather Alexej: the best I can do is point at a lake.

Valasjoki (or in Russian, Valasreka), near Lake Tuoppajärvi (or Lake Topozero), where Alexej was born, is in present-day Russia, just west of the White Sea, about the same latitude as Kuusamo in Finland on the map above.

Now I’ve got some names for his parents, thanks to my own father’s sleuthing and excellent record-keeping. Jakob (Yakov) and Ekaterina, the Pietoff name is definitely the “Russian-ized” version of the name. Spelling was a bit loosie-goosie back in the day, plus any English spelling is likely being translated from the Cyrillic alphabet, so it’s been spelled a few ways. Some other forms I’ve seen are things like Pyattoyev, so that gives you a gist of pronunciation. There may be some luck in searching for a more Finnish version of the name, which would likely be Pietola. This turns up a fair number of results, which might be a lead some future researcher might follow.

I also have notes from my father that he obtained through the LDS Family History Library, that Jakob and his wife were Old Believers, commonly called Raskolniki - a group who resisted reforms of the Russian Orthodox church in the mid-1600s. Raskol is from the Russian word for schism or split, and -niki refers to the Patriarch Nikon who instigated the reforms. These records also note in Alexej’s birth record in the Kesten’ga parish that Jakob was a peasant. So…, that tracks.

I have a letter from a sister of Anton, named Margareta, who remained in Finland, written to her niece, Ruth. This Ruth is my great-aunt.

Margareta was the eighth of the (at least) ten children born to Alexej and his wife Ida. She was born in 1897 which makes her about nine years younger than Anton. She composed the letter I have in April of 1983; it was translated to English from Finnish by her granddaughter.

In it, she says “Jakob had a ‘transport-agency’” - those quotation marks are in the letter - “with horses and drivers communicating between St. Petersburg and Moscow. This was before there was the railway.” I’m just going to point out that the region we’re looking at in Karelia to St. Petersburg is about 1,000 kilometers or 600 miles, which is a rough two weeks in a horse and carriage! St. Petersburg to Moscow is 700 kilometers or 435 miles. After Jakob died at the age of 45 during an epidemic of typhus, his two teen-age sons, older brothers of Alexej, attempted to take over the business, but they didn’t speak Russian (the family spoke only Karelian Finnish) and were not successful.

The letter goes on to say that “one of the agency’s business associates … helped the brothers to open a little shop for ships at Lappvik on the southern coast of Finland.” Alexej was just four or five when all this happened. However, a couple of years later, his mother sent him alone on the long journey from Valasjoki to Lappvik.

Alexej came to the southern-most part of what is now Finland when he was six or seven. It’s worth noting that this distance is also about 1,000 kilometers or 600 miles, which again is a rough two weeks in a horse and carriage! In another 19 years, by 1877-1878, Alexej bought the shop from his brothers. And in 1884 he married Ida Tennberg, whose family was from Tenala, just 27 kilometers from Lappvik.

Alexej continued to run his shop in Lappvik, as there was a larger harbor there. He later also owned a small food shop and a wine shop in the town of Hango.

I have more details and more letters from other relatives about Alexej and Ida, which I will include next time. In the meantime, check out my sturdy ancestors - this picture makes me question whether I really have to track every bite I take in order to maintain a healthy weight due to the 21st century reliance on processed foods…, or whether I might be fighting genetics a lil bit?

In all seriousness, these people obviously had to work harder than I’ve ever imagined.