Johan Erik Sten & Johanna Israelsdr Bromans 148th Anniversary

One of the branches of my wife's family comes from Finland. I don't have as much experience doing genealogy research from there so it can be frustrating sometimes. Even though I can't speak Dutch, I feel like I am not bad at doing research on my Netherlands branches. But Finland is a little harder...

First of all, it seems that my relatives were Swedes living in Finland, so they spoke Swedish. Some documents are in Swedish and some are in Finnish. They have some of their parish records available online as indexes, but they are not even near complete, and they are kind of hard to search. And in those indexes it seems that there are villages within the parishes, and within the villages there are farms that seem to be associated with the family names. But the names seem to change and I don't know if that means that they are just showing which farm they are living on, or if they are using that name as a family name, both or neither. Also, the regional names have changes so many times that they don't usually include that in a place name, the would just say Petalax, Finland. Petalax is in a region called Ostrobothnia, or it was. I think it might have changed. I have made some inquiries on how it works on some message boards and I have received a few answers, but it still is a little confusing. If you care to read some of it you can here.

All that to say, I began to piece together some of the Swedish line in our family, and today marks the 148th anniversary of Johan Erik Sten and Johanna Israels Bromans. They were married in the parish of Petalax (or in Finnish - Petolahti) on 15 January 1864. They would be my wife's Great Great Grandparents. Here is the index reference to their marriage I found in the HisKi project on Genealogical Society of Finland's website.

Petalax - Petolahti - married
Announc:
Married: 15.1.1864
Man: Bson Johan Eric Ericsson Åmåsa
Village:
Farm:
Wife: P. Johanna Israelsdr Bromans
Village:
Farm:

I believe that this is basically saying that Johan was the son of Erik, and lived in the farm of Åmossa, and his wife was Johanna the daughter of Israel. I know Åmossa looks like Johan's last name, but his name is Sten and I think that Åmossa is really the farm. As I did more searching in this index I found that that name changes and is never in the farm heading. I think they might not have made their family names official until the early 1900's? Again another point I'm not sure of. There is also a farm named Sten in the town of Malax which is nearby, so why did that one stick and Åmossa didn't? One of the interesting things is that Åmossa shows up on Google maps near Petalax.


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Together, Johan and Johanna had 9 children that I can document:
1. Johannes Sten b: 20 NOV 1864 in Petalax (Petolahti), Ostrobothnia, Finland
2. Karl August Stenström b: 15 DEC 1865 in Petalax (Petolahti), Ostrobothnia, Finland
3. Wictor Sten b: 29 JUL 1867 in Petalax (Petolahti), Ostrobothnia, Finland
4. Abraham Edvard Sten b: 6 MAY 1869 in Petalax (Petolahti), Ostrobothnia, Finland
5. Alfred Sten b: 4 OCT 1870 in Petalax (Petolahti), Ostrobothnia, Finland
6. Alfred Leonhard Sten b: 8 JUN 1872 in Petalax (Petolahti), Ostrobothnia, Finland
7. Albert Leonhard Sten b: 4 SEP 1874 in Petalax (Petolahti), Ostrobothnia, Finland
8. Erick Reinhold Sten b: 21 FEB 1876 in Petalax (Petolahti), Ostrobothnia, Finland
9. Maria Sofia “Mary” Sten b: 21 JUL 1878 in Petalax (Petolahti), Ostrobothnia, Finland

I am still trying to confirm when Johan and Johanna died, but that info is not on the HisKi site yet. I believe he died in 1921 and she died in 1925. I was able to find there grave, but as you can tell it's not really giving me any solid answers either.