Week 2 of the National Family History Month blog challenge, and this week I’m writing about “family”. Family for a family historian is such a broad topic. Do I write about an individual, or a family? A recent story or an old one? So. Many. Choices. And surprisingly it’s taken me a while to narrow it down.

Reunions are a place where ‘everyone’ is family, so it seems appropriate to write about big a big family reunion one of my family’s had … the Kelly Family Reunion.

31 December 1938 was the date chosen as it marked both 100 years since the arrival of William Kelly and his second wife Jane (nee Caley) in South Australia from the Isle of Man, as well as 50 years since the death of William.

The reunion was held at the Kelly family property, “Sulby Glen”, in the tiny country town of Cudlee Creek, South Australia, the drew 300 of the 400 descendants, with quite a number making the trip from interstate.

The article in the Advertiser, dated Monday 2 January 1939 writes …

Never has the old Sulby Glen property at Cudlee Creek seen so many visitors as passed through its beflagged entrance gates on Saturday morning, when almost 300 of the 400 descendants of William Kelly, from the Isle of Man gathered together to pay homage to his memory and to commemorate the centenary of his landing in Australia. The gathering was certainly unique as far as South Australia, is concerned, and one of the very few of its type ever held in the Commonwealth. The day was also the 50th anniversary of the day of his death.  Sixty cars and a large motor bus brought the visitors, who came from New South Wales, Victoria, and Western Australia, and from many parts of South Australia … [read the full article here]

It really was a big do. Even making the South Australian newspapers. Being such a big event, I’ve often wondered if anyone had any movie footage of the day, alas to date I’ve never heard of any in existence (but you never know) … and that would certainly be amazing to see.

However one thing we do have is a group photo that was taken on that day. Click on the photo below for a larger image.

For more about the 1938 Kelly family reunion, see an earlier blog post that I’ve written about it here.

Previously I wrote about my day in Finland in an overview form, but reality I glossed over the best parts because I was saving it for this post.

First off, let me start by telling you my connection to this country comes through my great grandfather, Otto Rafael Winter who was born in Helsinki, Finland in 1880.

The third of six children, he was the son of a cigar factory worker, and in 1902, 22 year old Otto left Finland to become a seaman. After sailing around the world for five years or so, he jumped ship in Queensland (Australia), and over the course of the next few years he made his way down to Sydney, before making his was to Adelaide, which my home city.

It is here that he met the love of his life, Irene Daley. And it is here where they settled. I won’t go into detail about his life as I’ve written about him before, but needless to say that while he did write to his family back home, he never actually saw them again.

So now on with my story …

Sunday, 19 July 2015
Sunday, 19 July 2015 is one of those dates for me. You know the ones I mean. A day when something significant happens (good or bad), but either way it is memorable, and that date just sticks with you.

This date was significant for me, because I FINALLY got to Finland. To say that this has been on my bucket list forever is an understatement. So just to get there was exciting. But while we (my parents and I) were there, we also met a number of relatives – the living ones as well as the dead, walked the streets of Helsinki, shopped at the markets, ate fabulous cake from a coffee shop, AND was shown an old family photo album. And really didn’t want to leave to go back to the ship.

Seriously this day goes down in history – for me anyway!

After making it off the ship we were met at the port by Bengt Winter (my 3rd cousin once removed), who then drove us to the cemetery nearby to see the graves of some relatives.

The Helsinki cemetery is gorgeous. It’s incredibly serene, and I could have stayed there all day as it was so peaceful. We first saw the grave of my 3x great grandpa (Gustav Wilhelm Winter), and then found the gave of my 2x great grandparents (Otto Edvard and Hedvik Karolina Winter) and some other relatives. Oh boy … can you feel my excitement??

Meeting the relatives
Next stop was Bengt’s place in Helsinki city, with other relatives meeting us there. This was so exciting, finally meeting people that I had corresponded with of a number of years

The group photo at the top shows us all together excluding Bengt’s wife, Lotta who kindly took the photo.

I am indebted to my relatives, Bengt and Lotta Winter for their kind hospitality and for organising the family get together … and for the other relatives to travelled to Helsinki to meet with us for part of a day. I was thrilled to finally meet my 3rd cousin Ari and his gorgeous wife Heidi-Maria in person. It was exciting to meet Jüssi, who has been corresponding with my grandma for many, many years, and to meet up again with Glen and his wife Tuovi who I had met in Australia previously.

Having a one day stop-over, which in reality turned out to be more like 7 hours simply wasn’t enough time. Still 7 hours was so much better than none at all.

But for this this get together was one that has taken 113 years for our families to reconnect.

Souvenirs
I went prepared having filled my suitcase with Aussie souvenirs for my extended family – soft toys, Australian flags, Vegemite, Tim Tams and Fruchocs – all good Aussie stuff. What I didn’t expect was that I would be given gifts too. I was totally spoilt, and went home with far more than I gave, so I did have to do some creative packing to get everything home.

The Photo Album
While there Jüssi, who is my 2nd cousin once removed, showed us an old family photo album, which we didn’t know existed. This was choc full of the old cabinet style photos, and fortunately a number of them are even named. Gold!

Fortunately I had packed the little Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner that I had borrowed for the day (as I didn’t have room to bring my own), as we were able to scan them.

This album has photos of my great grandpa, his mum and her mum as well. Incredible. Then there’s various siblings as well. Ones that I’d never seen photos of before. A true treasure.

Helsinki
With a few hours till I had to be back on the boat, we decided to wander Helsinki and see what we see.

Apart from some beautiful buildings, we saw an archery competition that was going in their city square, the markets, and we stopped in at a cafe for some afternoon tea.

It truly was a day to remember, so much better than I could have ever imagined it. Meeting my extended family (which I guess you’d call a mini family reunion) was awesome. And before I was even back on the ship, I had decided that I want to (and need to) go back. So now I had better start saving my dollars, as this could take a while!!!