Sometimes these days I feel like Alice in Wonderland — things are getting “curiouser and curiouser!”

A week or so ago I wrote about my little Finnish grandma, recounting her trip to America according to family lore. A few days later, after finding my grandfather’s name on the ship’s passenger manifest my grandmother was supposed to be on, I became very suspicious.

So a search through the passenger manifests of every ship that traveled from England to Canada in 1899 commenced. It didn’t even take an hour and I found grandma, her mother, her older sister and her younger brother.

The ship is the Numidian. They left Liverpool, England, June 29, 1899 and they, along with 257 other passengers, sailed eleven days until they landed in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Curiously, the passenger manifest records them as Sanna (mother), Sanna (11 year old daughter), Lisa (10 year old daughter—my grandmother) and Jakob (9 year old son) with a last name I’ve never heard spoken in this family.

But I remembered wondering about a family tree diagram Olavi (my dad’s Finnish cousin on his paternal side) had sent me. Olavi wrote that he’d researched Grandma’s side of the family a little and promised more. Sadly, he had a heart attack and died shortly after that. On that family tree of Grandma’s maternal side is the name Typpäle inserted as Great-grandmother Sanna’s (Susanna) married name.

Further, it appears that her maiden name was not Viitikko but, rather, Viitamäki.

Which begs the question, who is Mr. Typpäle? Or is that yet another name for Jacob (Alakosaari) Saari?

Inquiring minds want to know.

O Lord, You have searched me thoroughly and have known me. You know my downsitting and my uprising; You understand my thought afar off. You sift and search out my path and my lying down, and You are acquainted with all my ways. Psalm 139:1-3