Roots of the family name Pahapill / Notes on the Pahapills.
Known roots of the
family name PAHAPILL reach back to 1645 (ref. Note 1 below), when a man named TÕNNIS lived near the northern coast of Estonian
island of Saaremaa, some 20 kilometers off the west coast of Estonia’s
mainland, on the eastern part of Baltic Sea (Balti Meri). A birds-eye view of the region is provided
by the two mini-maps posted below; for larger-size maps, “click” on the
mini-maps or open the websites listed below the maps.
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Baltic Sea region: Root-home of the Pahapills pahapill.ca/baltics_map.gif |
Map of Estonia |
Around the
homestead of Tõnnis developed a village called "Pahapilli küla" –
village of Pahapill. The village has retained its original name to this date
and can be found on various maps of Saaremaa, e.g. the Tourist Map of Mustjala
County (vald) – where the “Pahapilli küla” is located in the central section of
county’s northern shores, about a kilometer south of points 6 and 7 noted on
the map – a part of the map is posted below, for larger view, just “click” on
the map or open it trough the website listed below it.
Tourist Map – partial, for full size map, open: pahapill.ca/mustjala.htm – of Mustjala County.
In the early days of
life in Estonia, the indigenous people had no family name. A person was known
by his or her first name and the name of the homestead or farm where he/she had
been born, or by the name of his or her father. The process of giving family
names to people in Estonia, as elsewhere at the time, took almost a
couple of centuries and was completed in the last half of nineteenth century.
Usually, the lord of the manor – where the man was working – gave him his
family name. Here, it should be pointed out that, at the time, much of the land
in Estonia was "owned" by foreign landlords – called “ mõisnik” in
Estonian language – usually Baltic Germans, in some areas the Danes.
How the family name
Pahapill came about is not fully known, but according to some word-by-mouth
accounts (Note 2),
it is derived from the German-Estonian word PACHKPILL, the name given to Tõnnis
by his manor-lord (mõisnik) in appreciation of a whistle, called
"pill" in Estonian, that he made for the mõisnik. The
"pill" had been carved from a knot (or gnarl) of birch-tree – called
"pahk" in Estonian, "pachk", as local Germans wrote the
word at the time. In its genitive form, the word becomes “paha” in Estonian, so
the name given to Tõnnis soon became PAHAPILL in Estonian (also listed in some
records as Pahhapil, Pahhapill, Pahapil).
How long was there
Pahapills living in the village that bears their name is not known either (when
asking the locals about it in August 2003, they indicated that no Pahapills
have been living there for some time). However, quite a few of them live in a
number of other villages of Mustjala and neighboring counties, some in
Kuressaare – capital of Saaremaa, others in various cities and villages on
Estonian mainland. A number of Pahapills now live outside of their
root-homeland – in Sweden, Canada, USA and England, perhaps even elsewhere in
the wide world! For notes on how one of the Pahapill-clan branches – that of
Tehna Julius and Heleene (here, “Tehna” denotes the name of the farm where
Julius was born – in the village of Võhma, Mustjala county – ended up in
Sweden, please refer to an article about their 1944 wartime escape – on website
pahapill.ca/sweden.htm or its Estonian-language version on pahapill.ca/rootsi.htm .
From Sweden, the
"Tehna Julius” branch of Pahapills immigrated to Canada in 1951. They
settled in Toronto, Province of Ontario. Of the original immigrant-family of
seven in Canada, the group by now (mid-2009) numbers 62 in North America,
including spouses; of these, presently 47 live in Canada – in Ontario, mainly
in the Greater-Toronto and surrounding areas, 7 in USA, eight have passed away.
Some of the Pahapill
family members living in Canada can be seen on a photograph taken at the Julius
and Heleene summer-home at Lake Simcoe, on Thanksgiving Day 1979. The picture
can be viewed by opening the website pahapill.ca/family-at-lake-simcoe-1979.jpg
– a copy also posted on next page. The names of those in picture are from left
– sitting: "Mamma" Heleene with Fors's daughter Lena,
"Papa" Julius, their son Fors (Forselius); standing: Anne's daughter
Lisa, Fors's daughter Lori, Fors's wife Kristi, their daughter Leigh-Anne,
John's wife Kristi, their son Carl, Raimund's daughter Erika, son Raimund,
visitor from Tallinn – cousin Jüri, Fors's son Thomas, John's son Eric,
daughter Anne, Fors's son Tim (Timothey), Carl's wife Jennifer. Missing from picture are: Raimund's wife Ivi
and their sons Alar and Peter, Anne's husband Dennis and their son Duane, son
John (Johannes) – taking picture with Jüri’s camera; also missing is son Aare
and his family – who were living in the USA at the time.
Some (actually most!)
of the “Tehna” Julius and Heleene Pahapill family at their
Thanksgiving
Day (1979) get-together at the family cottage, at Lake Simcoe, Ontario.
Back to the clan's
early years. Available records indicate that, in the mid-1700s, there was a
farm (“talu”) in the Mustjala County – then Mustjala Parish of the greater Paatsa
County, the same county where Tõnnis’ era “Pahapilli küla" is situated –
with the twin name of “Aadama / Pahapilli talu”, indicating that the farm had
been founded by, or owned earlier by a man called Aadam, probably born at a
homestead named “Pahapill” or “Pahapilli”. The “Aadama / Pahapilli” talu was
situated – and is presently there but it is now called “Aadama talu” – in the
village of Võhma, a few kilometers south of Tõnnis’ home in “Pahapilli
küla” in the mid-1600s, as is discussed above.
The records
also show (ref. Part II of Note 4) that the name of the owner of this
farm in the mid-1700s was a man called “Pahapilli Jüri” (Jüri of the farm
Pahapill). Later, his son Laas became the owner of the farm; between them,
they owned and worked the "Aadama / Pahapilli" farmlands
for better part of the second half of 1700s, well into the 1800s.
However, Laas and his wife Mare had no children, nor did his father
Jüri leave other surviving descendants. Laas, who died relatively young, left
his widow Mare to own and look after the farm – with outside help, of
course.
After her husband’s
death in 1819, Mare – at this point sole owner of the Aadama /
Pahapilli farm – married in 1820 KARL of Kure (from the village of Tõru in
neighboring Elme manor ("mõisa") district. Through his marriage to
Mare, Karl – son of “Kure” Peeter (1768-1815) – became owner of the
farm and was soon thereafter given the family name of PAHAPILL. Thus, members
of the present Pahapill clan are descendants of the “Aadama” farm
owner Karl Pahapill (1789-1831) and his wife Mare (1786-1866). Even
though blood-link between the present-day Pahapills and descendents of
Tõnnis Pahapill of the mid-1600s seems to have been broken in the early 1800s,
their family name appears to have originated from that era – from the early
owners of the “Aadama / Pahapilli talu” (farm).
“Aadama” Karl Pahapill
and his wife Mare had two sons: JÜRI (1825~1900) and LAAS (1828-1880). Being
the custom at the time, his elder son Jüri stayed at home, married and brought
his wife there, and their children were born at his birth-home. Eventually, he
inherited the farm. “Aadama” Jüri Pahapill and his second wife Reet Muld have
six known descendants – they and their descendants are included in the present
Pahapill Family Tree and Family Book – in Chapter 6, parts 6.1, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5,
6.6 and 6.7. We have no records of descendants, if there were any, from his
first marriage – that with Reet Tarvis.
Jüri’s younger brother LAAS moved out of his birth-home, to marry
Reet Trepp (1834-1880) of the nearby TEHNA farm, situated a few kilometers
south of the Aadama / Pahapilli farm. Tehna is in the heart of Võhma
– a village that is found on the previously noted and posted Mustjala County
map – around the points 3, 4 and 5 on the map. In due course, “Aadama /
Tehna” Laas inherited the Tehna farm; he and his wife Reet have a large
number of descendants – most of them are included in the present Pahapill
Family Tree, and in Chapters I and II of Pahapill Family Book.
For more information on the descendents of “Aadama” Jüri Pahapill
and “Tehna” Laas Pahapill, please refer to the Introductory Notes of Chapter I
of Pahapill Family Book found in http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/p/a/h/John-Pahapill-ON/
– “Related Links, The Pahapill Family
Book, Chapter Summary, Chapter 1”. (a simpler way for reaching the Pahapill
Family Tree website is through the website of http://pahapill.ca
and then selecting the “Family tree /Sugupuu” line in its second part.
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Sources of information used in preparing the present
Notes:
1.
"Eesti
Entsüklopeedia" 1994, part 7, pg. 139.
2.
From
my memory – based on discussions with my late father a few years prior to his
passing away. Also, from my discussion
with Meinhard Pahapill (a descendant of my great-uncle "Ilpama"
Toomas Pahapill (of the “P2.3” base-branch of “Tehna” Laas Pahapill stem / fork
“P2” of Pahapill Family Tree) in Tallinn, Estonia in the summer of 1996.
3.
In
General: From various discussions with my public school classmate Evald Alt,
grandson of "Tuiu" Aadu Pahapill (of the “P1.3” base-branch of “Aadama” Jüri stem / fork “P1” of the
Pahapill Family Tree), at his family summer-home in Järve, Kaarma, Saaremaa –
around the mid-summertime in 1994 and 1995. Also, from my notes taken when
viewing some of the available files on the Pahapills in the Registry Office at
the Saaremaa “Perekonnaseisuamet” (family registry office), Kuressaare,
Saaremaa, Estonia in August, 2004.
4. Part I – the 11.11.2004 Research
Report by "Eesti Isikuloo Keskus" (Estonian Biographical
Centre), Tartu, Estonia. Part II – the 06.05.2005 follow-up report to the
Part I research report.
Prepared by: John Johannes
Pahapill,
Eldest grandson of "Tehna"
Taavi Pahapill and Mare Ang Pahapill,
Great-grandson
of Taavi’ s father "Tehna" Laas Pahapill and Reet Trepp.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada – May 31, 2005
(revised and updated July 18, 2009).