Tips & Tricks to Track Your German Russian Ancestors...Tip # 3 Sources, Sources, Sources in Russia...Organizations & Societies

Besides books, there are historical societies, organizations and individuals who have obtained records from Russia. All have excellent sources.  I can't cover everything each group has to offer, but here are highlights you won't want to miss.  Check out these focal points, but be sure to visit the entire website for additional outstanding information.

At the Center for Volga German Studies, there is a list of all of the Russian Censuses. The index listed below provides a Combined Surname Index to All Volumes compiled by Brent Mai.

And, then by village, there is a list of censuses that have been obtained, and who has the census.  Here are examples of 3 villages: Mariental, Rosenfeld am Nachoi and Rothammel.  This makes it easy to figure out how you can find a copy. New records are being published daily, however these volunteers do a great job of keeping up with many of the latest publications.

Every census provides great information, but if you can obtain an 1874 Family List (rewritten in 1896 with additional information), you have struck a gold mine of information. This time frame matches when many of our ancestors left Russia for the Americas, so this can help you build the link back to the original village settlers.

At the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, there is plenty of good information...especially under the village and research links.

Under the village link you can read about your village history and connect with your village coordinator for the latest updates on your village's content.

As you drill into the research link, you can see from the drop down on the picture below that there are a multitude of options for continuing your search.  You will want to check all of the levels here, however, I wan to show you specifically the German Origins page.

Under the AHSGR German Origins Project is a wonderful compilation listed alphabetically by surname and village which links your family back to the place of Germanic origin. Here you might find your original settlers before you are able to connect directly by each generation through the census or other records. And, that's OK because sometimes you have to work from both ends of a situations to get to the middle!

I mentioned earlier that it will take a few posts to get through all of the sources we need to explore, and the organizations and societies postings will continue soon.

©2019 Anna Dalhaimer Bartkowski

Tips & Tricks to Track Your German Russian Ancestors - Tip # 2 - Choose Your Path

As you become a genealogy gatherer, you need to make a choice. How are you going to track your family history and research? It's a key decision.

There are plenty of software programs such as:

• Legacy
• Roots Magic
• Family Tree Maker
• Roots Web
• Family Historian
• Microsoft Excel
• Ancestry
• Family Search

Whatever your choice, tracking your progress is essential.  If you are like me, you start your research with passion, but then life gets in the way....and later, when you find a stretch of time, you wonder, "Where did I leave off? Where are all of the loose ends on which I wanted to follow up?

The syndrome, from which I suffer, is known as ADGD...that is

"Attention Deficit Genealogy Disorder... 

It's when you start researching one ancestor

which causes you to bounce around to different ancestors 

only to end up doing a lot of work with very little to show for it."      

If you want to suffer from ADGD, recognize it is a choice. But, there is a cure...and it goes beyond your choice of software.  I prefer to track my discoveries on a research log.  A research log is essential to organized success. I like the one shown above from my Legacy software. It's easy to use, you fill in the blanks, cite your sources, dates found, and add your follow up notes all on one form.

As you start to track your discoveries, slowly ou can build your family tree like the one below.

One word of warning, as you research,  you will see lots of family trees online.  Some are extremely well done, others not so. To build as accurate a family tree as possible, "Make sure you're doing the research and not just sticking anyone into your family tree."

Stay tuned for Tip # 3 coming soon. 

©2019 Anna Dalhaimer Bartkowski

Hometown:Cemeteries

After our stop at the Calvary Cemetery in Sheboygan, we drove around Kiwanis Park to the entrance of the Lutheran Cemetery, the resting place of the Herzogs and Reimers.

Many of the Germans from Russia who chose to live in Sheboygan were from the villages of Reinwald, Schaefer, and Schwed.  Most of them are buried here.

We parked and quickly located my great-grandparents headstone.  As I look at the stone, memories flooded back to me of all of the research I still want to do on the lives of Philip and Anna Maria Reimer.  The Reinwald Censuses of 1850 and 1857 opened many avenues for further exploration of their lives.

My grandparents, Fred and Sophie Herzog,  are near. Cousins from this side of my family still reside in and around Sheboygan.  They maintain and clean the areas around these plots as evidenced by the hosta plant behind my grandparent's stone.  I like how it has filled in the space and I hope the hosta Ashley and I planted will do the same at John's grave.

Fred Herzog remains my mystery to solve. I believe his family moved to Rosenfeld am Nachoi as I have found a number of Herzogs in the 1862 Census.  This census could be the link to pulling the family tree chart  back to the original Settler's list.  Yet, there are so many Fred's and misspellings and date contradictions, I need to cloister myself and submerge into the documents again before I can confirm my findings.

This visit I located my Mom's brother's grave.  The last time I was here with my cousin Charlotte, we could not find the stone. When I talked with Charlotte, she told me that her daughter found  the stone, but it had sunk so far into the ground, most visitors would not have seen it.  It has been raised again and it now visible.  A beautiful green plant grows behind the stone.  Fred died at 29 years old after a car accident on 8th Street during a snow storm.

Before we visited the Lutheran cemetery, we drove past my grandmother's house on St. Clair Ave and circled the block to check if my cousin Charlotte was home. She was sitting in the yard and we had a wonderful unexpected visit.

Hometown: Cemeteries

I love to visit cemeteries. I always have.  As a little girl, I always helped my Dad plant geraniums at grave sites on Memorial Day.  It was our way to remember.

As an adult, I attended a few Feng Shui classes and vaguely recall that our ancestor's burial ground has links to our lives.  When I googled this topic, I found this interpretation:

Death is just a transition point. If the human remains are interred at a good location at the correct time (time being the heavenly component of the Heaven-Earth-Man trinity), then a chain reaction will be set off in which the earth’s productive capacity is modulated by the human qi interred, and a ‘signal’ of sorts is generated. The deceased person’s descendant's have an affinity, or linkage, with this ‘signal’. We can think of it as a ‘DNA signature’ of sorts. Only the descendants having the same ‘DNA signature’ will be able to pick up this ‘signal’, in much the same way that only a specific tuning of the radio will be able to receive a specific broadcast frequency.
If the burial site is good, the ‘signal’ generated will be positive and the descendants picking up this ‘signal’ will be blessed with good health and good fortune. Conversely if the burial site is bad, a negative ‘signal’ is generated and the descendants will be impacted negatively. http://www.absolutelyfengshui.com/library/yin-house-feng-shui-intro-1.php

I realize my ancestors never studied feng shui.  And, they may not put any value in this assessment.  But they did respect and care for the burial sites.  Despite that I live in Arizona, I respect and want to care for the burial sites, too. Especially since the last of the Dalhaimer family recently moved to Illinois.  I felt this pang of regret last Memorial Day when I realized for the first time since the 1940's there was no Dalhaimer relative in town to tend to the sites. I committed on that day that when I visit, I would continue the care.

Why is this so important? Perhaps it is due to "feng shui" or maybe it is simply my upbringing. My ancestors who stayed in Russia more than likely did not receive a proper burial.  My grandmother made my father promise to always tend his brother John's grave. My Dad and I visited and cared for the site every Memorial Day.  After my grandmother was buried next to John, we tended to both graves for years.  When I moved my Mom and Dad followed this pattern for years. When my Dad moved to Oregon, he asked his brother Fred to tend the sites.  Fred immediately understood and did so every year until this past May.

On Saturday, August 19, my daughter Ashley and I made the trek to Calvary Cemetery. We stopped at the cemetery to check the stones, then headed to Shopko for plants.  It was a bit too late in the season for geraniums but we found good substitutes. We came back to the cemetery, washed, cleaned and planted our selections...hosta and pink begonias, pink because it was my grandmother's favorite color. We did our best.

Our next stop was the Lutheran Cemetery.  Stay tuned.

Scenes from Calvary Cemetery

Hometown

When I tell people I am from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, some laugh, some sigh and others completely understand how wonderful it was to have grown up in this city.

I go there whenever I can when am in Wisconsin and last August was no exception. My daughter and I headed out of Milwaukee around 7:30, caught I-43 north and drove the familiar route along Lake Michigan to exit at Hwy 23 east.  A few of the sights have changed as the old Ponderosa/Sizzler  is now Luigi's Italian Restaurant, but there were no issues finding out way around this quaint lakeside town.

Breakfast was the first stop and we were delighted with our choice of Field to Fork Cafe. Located in the heart of downtown on 8th Street, this restaurant and small grocery store satisfied our hunger.  I chose the biscuits and gravy, while Ashley had the frittata. The biscuits were outstanding and, although the frittata did not look like a typical frittata, the flavor was delectable.

After breakfast, we drove past where my parents attended school. Central High School, I was happy to discover, is now in service as a charter school.  The building looked better than ever and I was pleased the halls were alive again with students.

Next stop, the Lakefront, one of my favorite stops in Wisconsin.  I hope the pictures speak for themselves.  Gorgeous serenity.

We were at the lake shore at approximately 10 a.m. Yet there were extra stops to make including the cemeteries.  Sheboygan, Wisconsin is much more than one imagines when hearing those two words. Stay tuned. Plenty more to come.

Avoiding Mistakes in German Research....

I decided to stay put for Baerbel's second session. The first one was so good and I managed to maneuver my way to a front row seat right next to the projector. My view and elbow room has improved significantly.





To truly avoid mistakes, in German or any other genealogical research, be sure to realize:

• You need to research the whole family, no shortcuts, no generation jumping


• Document, record, cite, document, record, cite, document, record, cite....


• Other people's written and Internet information can be wrong because people submit what they have, can be duplicates, and submissions are not verified, use with discretion.


• Same name never means same person


• Age is flexible and spelling doesn't count


• Wild card search functions can be lifesavers

Baerbel shared a number of examples of people with conflicting dates, names and places yet were the same person. And, another example of four different man who share the same name in similar locations with at least two wives. Check twice, at a minimum. Use the "Thomas" principle. Evaluate the quality of the source. Just because someone is not listed in a book, does not mean they were not there. Review introductions and explanations of what each book offers.

If there are several sets of records, be sure to review each one. Mistakes can be picked up and someone may have read Maria when the real name was Catharina. Who says penmanship doesn't count?

Always work with a good map as jurisdictions in the Germanic states changed often. Be sure to complement your research by studying geography and local history. Also, read the notes in the margin, it could lead you to other church records. Extract all records with the same surname.

Baerbel shared humorous anecdotes about research and how easy it is to be led astray.

• Did you know in Mecklenburg, people are given two or three birth names and often use them interchangeably throughout their life. And, if an uncle dies and the individual liked his name, he might well go by his uncle's name for the rest of his life!
• Patronymics, where the son is given the father's first name as his last name, was used until the mid 1800s.
• In Westfalen, farm names were used as surnames and if someone moves to another farm, they change their last name.

"Technical difficulties" include:

• Books can be scanned and put back together out of order
• If there are several children in the same family with the same name and that does not mean the older ones died.
• If an ancestor is not in a book they should be in, verify it with the original document

There are lots of false assumptions out there, so be careful, verify, check and double check. Just because it is written down, doesn't mean it is correct.

#fhexpos, #fhexpo, #genealogy, #familyhistory