Click HERE and see many interesting old photos and stories!
My husband`s grandfather is on the photo with his good race horse.
I apologize a poor quality of this photo, but it is taken about 1910, when he has been participating in a harness racing event.
His name was Gustav Adolf Schön, but he - as many, many others - change their names into Finnish name before Finland got it`s independent 1917. Our history is written briefly HERE
Schön was a soldier name given 1600s.
What a great photograph. The horse looks HUGE! And beautiful.
ReplyDeleteIt's a wonderful photo. The fade just makes it more authentic.
ReplyDeleteWe don't realise the difficulty of taking photos back then.It surely wasn't easy to keep the horse from taking off and he may have had a hard time getting just the right shot.
Lovely. A great memory!
I love horses and this is a great photo, but I'm also intrigued by the name change (and a little confused by it). Was Schon the original name and it was changed to something Finnish, or is Schon the Finnish name? (Sorry, if it's explained in the Wikipedia article.)
ReplyDeleteKat
Nancy
ReplyDeletethank you! This horse is Finnhorse, which is also very good working horse for instance in the snowy forests.
Crystal Mary
thank you!
Poetikat,
when I said "our history" I meant the history of Finland, sorry.
Finland has been a part of Sweden for 500 years and 1809 it became occupied by Russia until 1917.
All this explains something also a history of our names. Names were Finnish before all that, then Finnish men were in the wars with Swedish men and they had to change
their names, because Swedish officers could not pronounce Finnish names ;)
Complicated history anyway :)
I enjoyed this photo, just this morning riding my bike around the fair groundsin Illinois where we are with our RV for the rally I stopped to watch the silky's, horses like this pulling small carts around the track; and here you have a post from so long ago, but today at least here in the states they use Arabians mostly. I also was engaged by the history of Finland, learning something new to me.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful photo and amazing horse. I am also curious about the name change. What did it become in Finnish? Was it a translation or something completely different? I think of how the Battenbergs became the Mount Battens.
ReplyDeleteGreat family history picture.
ReplyDeleteIn looking at the history link you posted, I got an idea why we seem to "click" or just really understan each other. My family all came from Sweden and perhaps even from Lapland. So maybe some place way back we "knew' eachother....
Pat,
ReplyDeletethank you so much for your words!Arabians are most beautiful and fast, but they could not manage to work in the -30 degrees Celsius/-22F and deep snow :)
Thank you also for your interest in our history.
Christine,
some of those names are translations, some the old ones, which the families had before Swedish name and some are taken from places, where they lived. Many of Finnish surnames are related with a nature somehow.
Warm thanks for your comment, Christine!
Sue,
this is so delightful thought - why not :)
I think, Finns went mostly in Minnesota and Michigan - where lakes and forests are and conditions were a little like in Finland - familiar.
Now my cousin is living in Washington married in US citizen.
Do you have old photos in your family albums?
Thank you for your coming by and commenting, Sue.
No need to apologise for that photo it is an excellent one : perfect Sepia Saturday material. Isn't it strange that, if you go back far enough with these old photographs, all our relatives begin to look the same no matter which part of the world they come from - a point you quite correctly allude to in your comment on the SS Blog.
ReplyDeleteI do enjoy old photography and the history which goes with it.
ReplyDeleteThis is a beautiful picture
Leena, I do have lots of old family pictures in albums I got when my parents passed away. I must scan them sometime so I have another record. Thanks for reminding me to do that.
ReplyDeleteWhen my Grandparents imigrated from Sweden they made their way to Minnesota and lived there their entire lives. My parents left Minnesota and moved to California in 1940 or 41. I hardly knew any of my relatives. We never had enough money to make many trips across the US to visit. I'm sorry now that we didn't have stronger ties.
Thanks for the trip back into my past.