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My great grandmother arrived in Quebec on 5 Jul 1907 from Finland.
The ships card showed that she was from Oulu Impijas Finland.
Does anyone know what parish to look for her baptism record in?
I got this record from the Family Search site under Vermont, St. Albans Canadian Border Crossings, 1895-1954
In the same set of records, is the ships records, and it also shows Oulu, Impijas, Finland
I have looked but not yet found her sister, Anna Niemi.
The place is Ii - one of the shortest place names in Finland! Therefore it was often expressed more clearly as "Iin pitäjä(s)" which means roughly "Ii's parish" or "Ii's socken" (see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socken).
It is easy to imagine that "Iin pitäjä" would transform to "Inpitaja" or Impitaja". The other forms "Impijas" etc. seem to be shortened from that.
Hilja Katariina Kaan was born in Ii on August 14, 1889. Her parents were worker Kaarle Kaan (born 10 Nov 1860 in Ii) and his wife Priita Liisa (Brita Lisa) Kokko (born 26 Sep 1850 in Ii).
The baptism and other records for Ii are available at the FFHA (Finland's Family History Association) site http://www.sukuhistoria.fi/sshy/index_eng.htm freely up to 1887, the later records (post 1887) required paid subscription. Note that Familysearch.org has records only up to about 1860.
The city of Oulu Finland is located in Northern Finland within the region of Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland.
I searched modern names of the different areas looking for "Impijats" "Impitaja", "Impijas" or something similar in different areas of the city, lakes, rivers and was not able to locate it browsing Google Maps of the city itself or the surrounding communities. I did note that most locations in the central city are prefaced with "Oulu" so that may help or it may just be a coincidence.
I did not see anything closely related to in the list of Parishes listed on FamilySearch for Oulu, Finland. The wikipedia page for the city also has some churches listed on it but none match the name or seem close to the hand writing.
The place is also not listed in the Parish maps of Finland on RootsWeb.
Nor reviewing the list of all modern street names of the city using GeoPostCodes.com but that is a place you could further look for further variations / pronunciation of Impijas or the name behind Oulu.
There is a possibility that the word behind the location of Oulu is not a location but an accompanying descriptor as well; but I do not know Finnish.
