Well, may I add my two Cents' worth here?
i) Genealogy, as any other form of science, comes with certain uncertainty that one jus must tolerate.
ii) This is particularly true given when it comes to women, because often times they were not recorded to begin with. Jully Ramsay is one less than great example of this. As far as the Juusten daughters are concerned she omits number of them, then writes about some of the male Juustens, that "they had daughters who got married" but then does not say how many there were, what were their names or with whom they were married.
- To sum this up is, back in the day the females were much too often neglected. That results in uncertainty.
- In terms of the number of kids, I would be amazed if there were only two. There was no contraception. If I had to bet they probably had rather 12 kids than just 2.
- In terms of the - age - of having kids, Geni often alerts that "she got married when she was 13" or "had kids when she was 13". Those alerts reflect current standards. Back in those days if you were not married by the age of 15, you were at risk of becoming "damaged goods."
iii) Lots of data has been lost in the wars with the Russians burning everything down. Particularly when Viipuri is concerned. In this case we could start of the Great Northern War of 1700-1721 (Russians took over Viipuri in 1710) and all the subsequent wars up until 1944. Lots of data were lost. But you can hope, one never knows, if there's data that have been saved by the Russians, and may at some point be recovered.
iii) I prefer constructive approach to the tree over the destructive approach. I am not in favor of cutting lines because of the absence of "definite" evidence from people who lived on the 16h century. Circumstantial evidence is sufficient for a working hypothesis. The approach should be "I'll try work with this" instead of "let's cut all the branches." While data has been lost that does not equal that the books are closed. New - old - data are recovered from different archives all the time, and posted to the web. Cutting branches just for the sake of cutting is no a fruitful approach.
iv) There's been dispute over this / these profiles prior to this. Unfortunately they took place in forms of threads, and while I could still have those threads somewhere, finding them would at this point be in vain, for none of that was "hard" evidence but for the most part debugging flaws in the Halonen family book by Lehtovaara.
v) One should bear in mind that the focus of the book was the Halonen family, and no the Juustens. For one, it contained unfounded claims of somebody having stolen Anna Juusten's inheritance when who inherited and what has been well-documented. (G. Sarva, Tietoja Anna Juustenin jälkeläisistä (uppgifter om Anna Juustens ättlingar), i Geneal. Samfundets i Finland årsskrift XII, 1928 (tr. 1929), pp. 272–282).
vi) Another example I provided was the family Couper. There has to be a note of it in some of the profiles. In some profile it was stated that the family was from Scotland. But at the time there were variants of the name Couper which sounded more Dutch than Scottish. Indeed, I looked into this, and in Otto Donner's book "Scottish Families in Finland" (1884), Otto Donner reviews families, but not just of Scottish origin. On page 7 he lists families from "The Low Countries" and in there the name "Cuyper" comes up. That aligns with he former variants of the name, such as Kuyperthen or something like that which lead me to assume Dutch origin. And while there is Lowlands in Scotland, too I turn to translate The Low Countries to "Netherlands" because of the context - The name Cuyper appears among the Dutch families, such as De Geer, Thysen, De Besche, Unbehaven etc.
So if there was true interest in the origins of the Coupers, a logical thing would be to see what the Dutch files say. Maybe they tell it all. Contact some Dutch Geni curator, ask for advice. But nobody seems to be willing to do that. Yes, insisting on cutting branches, destruction, involves less work than getting into researching it, construction. I have given the notes how to proceed time and time again.
I can't possibly review this all here. To understand all this requires understanding the whole scene in a context. It's not just anybody who got to marry Juusten daughters to begin with. I have a theory on the origin of the name Juusten, but that aside one must have understanding of Viipuri of the times, the families who lived here, and how they were interconnected - or enemies. Things have to make sense.
Fast forward to Halola. On 1999 this plate of the tree was released in Halola: https://maakirja.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Pit%C3%A4j%C3%A4kirjan+valmiit+kuva...
It does not say Juusten for the name died out soon, but the names Tawast (the bishop line) and Schmidt (the mayor line) are mentioned. So if these names from Viipuri, Karelia, and tightly connected to the Juustens (and Carstens), find their way all the way to Halola in Maaninka in Northern Savonia - then there is a reason!
Bishop Tawast had no offspring (that we know of). Mayors of Viipuri, Schmidt (Hans Sr. and Jr.), did. Those were businesses that ran in the family.
Sister to Bishop Tawast, Ragnhild Tawast is the fourth great grandmother to Catharina Hansdotter Juusten. And while Bishop Peter Juusten (my 12th grandfather) was the first Bishop of Viipuri, Catharina Hansdotter Juusten is a mother to the 10th Bishop of Viipuri Abraham Thauvonius (my 9th grandfaher). His successor, the 11th Bishop of Viipuri Henrik Carstenius (also my 9th grandfather) was not a Juusten, but his second wife Catharina Hansdotter Schmidt was. Her father was Hans Hansson Schmidt, Sr. was the Mayor of Viipuri, as was his brother, Hans Hansson Schmidt, Sr.
So now there's some data, and some context.
To understand, then decipher, and deduct, you need to have both. Failing that I would not resort to any harsh measures.
Now I have provided some platform from which to build. If you want to do justice and get to the bottom of the issue of Couper / Cuyper whatever the name.
Consider it as a challenge. A puzzle to solve. That would be constructive, and I guess that's the idea of genealogy. To build, not break. If there is a question mark somewhere, the proper attitude might rather be, "I'll solve this" than "I don't want to do any work to solve his so I want to nuke this".
Problem with this page?
