The Planting Family Tree

The Planting branch has been generally difficult to seek out as there just weren't that many of them here in the USA. We do know that they were originally from Finland, most likely the west, though what part exactly is still unknown. During the 1700's, Finland was ruled by a Swedish king and was being settled by Swedish farmers. During the 1800's Finland was annexed to Russia and became, The Grand Duchy of Finland.

By the end of the 19th century, most Finnish people worked on farms or plantations owned by the richer aristocracy from Sweden or Russia that had migrated over their borders. As opposed to American slaves that took on the surnames of their, "owners", Finnish workers -not slaves, mind you -took on the surname of the plantation they worked on. As much of agriculture is seasonal, it is highly probable that a person had a few different names throughout their life as they moved on when the seasons changed.

Here we have the first record (that has been found yet) of our Plantings in the United States, in the 1910 Census of Astoria, Oregon.

Click On the image to see the entire census, and scroll down to lines 23 and 24.

This small sliver shows us the newly wed couple of John and Hilda Planting. It also shows that John, who went by Fred his entire life, was born about 1887 in Oregon (15 December, 1887 in Pendleton to be exact), but he has yet to be found on the 1900 census records. The son of unknown Finnish immigrants, John was an "operator of Linotype Machines". In today's terms, he was a newspaper printer or pressman. Below is a photo of him standing against his press, curly hair and all. Fred is on the left.

John and Hilda Planting lived in Astoria, at 524 Franklin Street in 1910, and became a trio when their only child, Merwyn Frederick Planting, was born on 8 November, 1911. (right photo)

It seems as if everything sailed relatively smoothly up to 1920 when the family is again found on the Astoria census records, though this time they lived at 392 17th Street. Merwyn is now 8 years old, and interestingly not listed as having an occupation. Most children are said to be scholars or students. We know however, that he did go to school, and graduated high school in 1906 from Astoria Public Schools. Below is his graduation certificate.

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