Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta

MHSA Website - New Address!

The MHSA now has it's own domain name:

www.mennonitehistory.org

All the content is the same, links should continue to work... but if you find trouble - you know where to find me to complain:  "queries at mennonites.ca" (course you'll need the symbol for "at" and need to remove the spaces).

The old site for the MHSA will slowly be removed.  But, the www.mennonites.ca will continue to exist as the Mennonite Genealogy Data Index - the best and most comprehensive source of links to online Mennonite genealogically-rich data.

In kinship,
Judii

Immigration Records

It would be natural to think that immigration records are only available from Immigration offices, but that simply isn't so.  Once they are no longer operationally needed, in Canada, immigration records get deposited in archives.  After blackout periods to protect persons' privacy, they become available to interested persons.

The set that are most helpful to Mennonite researchers can be found, partially transcribed, at the Library and Archives Canada website.  Well, for 1925-35 anyway. 

Passenger lists from 1865-1922 can also be searched there, but only by details of the ship/passage - not by passengers' names.  The good news of this site is that the lists are actual images (not just indexes or transcriptions). Larger public libraries across Canada have copies of the microfilms as well - but using them requires painfully scrolling through them unless you have used the online resource to narrow your search or you otherwise know what port, ship, and date they travelled.

In addition to the above, Mennonites who immigrated in the 1920s have theCanadian Mennonite Board of Colonization records as well.  These are available on microfilm at the MHSA in Calgary and at the Mennonite Heritage Centre in Winnipeg as well.  Both of their websites contain an index of household heads that is reasonably complete and accurate. At the MHSA website, many of the records have also been transcribed, and some images (linked from the above MHSA index) have been placed online.

In kinship,
Judii

BMD Records in Western Canada

All the western provinces now have websites that offer assistance in finding vital records for Birth, Marriage, and Death (BMD) records.  The sites do vary considerably in how helpful/complete their indexes are and the price of obtaining the records referred to vary as well.

Here are some cursory details about each, as well as links to information on their websites

BC ($20-60)

• http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/services/servops/bcapricelist.pdf
• If uncertain of some details, a "package" must be purchased for about $60
• You can purchase a digital image (TIFF file format with a .tif extension) of the original registration document(s) of this record for $19.95

AB ($20+)

• http://governmentservices.gov.ab.ca/ra/Product_Catalogue.pdf
• Government charges $20, but since one obtains records through Registry office, they can apply a handling fee

SK ($50)

• http://www.health.gov.sk.ca/ps_vital_stats_fees.html
• $50/copy!

MB ($23-37)

• http://web2.gov.mb.ca/cca/vital/Query.php
• If you wish to obtain a certified copy of the original record for genealogical purposes based on a search you have done, the fee for each record is $12.00
• No refunds or replacement of documents will be given for copies of the records issued based on your search
• If you wish Vital Statistics to perform the search on your behalf, the regular fee of $25.00 will apply

ON ($22-37)

• http://www.forms.ssb.gov.on.ca/mbs/ssb/forms/ssbforms.nsf/AttachDocsPublish/007-11075E~3/$File/11075_July+14+2006.pdf
• $22 if all needed details are provided; if they need to conduct a search for the record,they charge $15/5year span searched

Mennonite Village Names

In the last post, I talked about online resources to determine the germanicized or russified equivalent of a great many villages where Mennonites lived in the Russian Empire.

What I didn't say is that there is a great book that focusses on the same villages, but introduces the architecture that remains and incoporates a historical narrative as well.  The book I'm referring to is Building on the Past: Mennonite Architecture, Landscape and Settlements in Russia/Ukraine* by Rudy Friesen with Edith Elisabeth Friesen.

Rudy's book is organized by colony, with each colony section introduced with an equivalency chart.  The Chortitza Colony section starts:

Village	a.k.a./Later Named	Today
Chortitza	Menpark/Kapustyanka	No longer exists
Burwalde (1803)	Baburka	Baburka
Chortitza (1790)	Khortitsa	Verkhnyaya
Einlage (1790)	Kitschkas/Neu-Kitschkas	Kitschkas
Insel Chortitza	Kamp	Ostrov Khortitsa

etc.

Interestingly, today I was looking through some early copies of Mennonite Life and discovered a curious article by Gerhard Wiens "Village Nicknames Among the Mennonites in Russia" (October 1970, pp. 177-180).  I knew that many Mennonites had Low German/Plautdietsch nicknames, but never that our villages had nicknames!

Gerhard indicates that he knew firsthand of his own Molotschna village's nickname, but over time had forgotten the others he'd heard of. So he published an article in Low German "and gave it a title which would startle any old-timer from Russia into reading it:  'Rollkoakeschluckasch, Piezjeriedasch enn Prachabraodasch'" (Der Bote, October 31, 1961). 

With that, he received many handwritten submissions.  One included no stories or names, but chided him that it really wasn't befitting a scholar to pursue such a subject!  However, to our amusement and for our benefit, he persisted and shared what he learned with the readership of Mennonite Life (ML). 

Without giving it all away, I'll list a few of the Chortitza Colony equivalents:

Village	Low German Nickname	Translation into English
Chortitza	Hunsjsbraode	Roast Dog
Einlage	Welsgnoagasch	Catfish Gnawers/Chewers
Kronsweide	Poggeleidasch	Frog Leaders
Neu-Chortitza	Aufjebroakne Massasch	Broken-off Knives
Neuenburg	Deiwschlappasch	Dew Draggers

etc.

To the best of his ability, Gerhard attempted to determine when the nicknames (Auch-Name) were established:  during Podwodentiet ("carting time"), that is, during the Crimean War. He explains that there was more regular travel between the villages at that time, while the young men/boys were delivering food to the Russian army. Friendly rivalries started up, and foolish names were part of that.

If you are interested, do pursue a copy of the four-page article. Back issues of ML are readily available from Mennonite historical societies, and Mennonite school libraries, including the MHSA.  Some back issues are online.  In recent years, ML has ceased to print a paper version of the magazine; circulation is now exclusively and freely available online.

* Available for purchase from MHSA

Geography

For some reason the term "geographic places is not used by the Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ (Mormons) in their pursuit of family information.  They use the term "localities".

But whichever way you say it, geography is important to genealogy, and specifically to Mennonites.  Our difficulty is that the geography ranges over various countries that change their names at a national level as well as every level beneath that. 

When the Mennonites migrated en masse in the late 1700s, they did so from Prussia to Russia.  But the Prussian landscape today is generally known as Poland.  And, for a long time the Russia where Mennonites lived was known as USSR.  Now we generally say they were from Ukraine.  Villages were germanicized (names were made to sound German) when the Mennonites settled them in Russia in the late 1700s and early 1800s Prussia, but after the Russian Revolution, they became russified.

Sometimes it was just a nuance:  Chortitza (germanicized) became Khortisia (russified).  Other times it's a lot harder to remember:  Einlage (germanicized) became Kitchkas (russified).

So, when you're looking at an old typeset or handwritten document, it can be tricky to figure out what you're reading.  To help with that, you can consult a number of web resources specifically for these kinds of Mennonite roots:

We've placed a complete listing of all the geographic place names in GRANDMA 3 online.  And, consult the extensive lists compiled by Tim Janzen (germanicized and russified equivalents), and maps (Bereslav, Crimea, Danzig, Ekaterinoslav & Odessa) on our site as well. 

In kinship,
Judii

GRANDMA

No, silly, this is not about your grandmother.  Well not exactly anyway. 

GRANDMA.  That stands for Genealogical Registry ANd Database of Mennonite Ancestry - now in it's fifth generation:  GRANDMA 5.

It's a database of over 940,000 genealogical records for Mennonites of so-called "Russian" ancestry.  (actually means that their ancestors lived for a time in the Russian Empire, any time from 1789).

It comes zipped in Brothers Keeper 6 and Legacy software formats, and accompanied by a shareware copy of Brother's Keeper.  Available in Canada from the Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta (publications page).

Prepaid orders are recommended. An order form is linked from the publications page.

Let's say you don't think you have Mennonite ancestry - don't be so sure.  It documents Bart Simpson's creator (Matthew Groening, whose father is Homer and mother is Margaret Wiggum), Nickleback's lead musician (Chad Kroeger), Calgary Flames hockey player (Robin Regehr), and others.

For other "famous" Mennonites, see James N. Weber's site - and track the ones with "Russian roots" in GRANDMA.

In Kinship,
Judii

FindMyPast

Persons with UK backgrounds have been using 1837online.com for a long time - it offers finding aids to genealogical data and links to image sources for same.

They've now reinvented themselves as FindMyPast and they have something of help to Mennonites.  Go to their passenger lists (eventually to include all passengers leaving UK 1890-1960) and you may turn up something of help to your ancestors. 

A search for "Rempel" didn't reveal a lot, but looking at the fine print, the site notes that so far they only have data online for the first years in their plan (1890-1899).  That explains it - the 19th Century Mennonite emigration flow was over by then and it preceeds the next big one of the 1920s. 

However, "Stobbe" sure worked for me.  Of these hits, Heinrich and Maria are mine.

STOBBE	C		1892	Liverpool	USA	New York
STOBBE	Heinrich	M	1892	Liverpool	Canada	Quebec Port
STOBBE	Maria	F	1892	Liverpool	Canada	Quebec Port
STOBBE	Mary	F	1895	Liverpool	USA	New York
STOBBE	Sarah	F	1895	Liverpool	USA	New York

From there, I purchased "units" that can be used to pay for 'views' of these records.  The rates are hard to find ahead of time, so I'm reproducing their current fees here:

£5 for 50 units @ 10 pence valid 90 days

£25 for 313 units @ 8 pence valid 1 year

£60 for 810 units @ 7.5 pence valid 1 year

£120 for 2400 units @ 5 pence valid 1 year

£240 for 4800 units @ 5 pence valid 1 year

When I'd paid for some units and clicked on Heinrich Stobbe to see the transcript as appears in the screenshot to the right.  This cost 5 units ($CDN 1.15).

Then, to view the image, I had to download LizardTech's freeware viewer, DjVu (that only took a a minute or so on a high speed line).  I know LizardTech's work from other genealogy websites that employ its tools, so felt confident in simply "running" it, rather than first saving to my hard drive.  Then, as they suggest, I "tested" the viewer and it worked just fine - even popped up with some tips on using it effectively.

Getting the transcript cost me 5 units; viewing the image another 15 units ($CDN 6.91), for a total of $CDN 8.06.  Not exactly sure why, but now that I've viewed one of each, I have 15 units left when by my calculation I should have 30 units left. 

But, here's what I got - a clear colour image of the passenger list:

And scrolling down, I found my great grandparents:

For what it's worth, this matches up well with what I'd found on the passenger lists on microfilm at the Calgary Public Library.  But the search for them on the CPL films took a very long time.  This 'hunt' took less than 10 minutes, including the first-time-only exercise of downloading and installing the LizardTech viewer and paying for units.

Try it or not - but now you have an idea of the process, what kind of information you can obtain, how much it costs. 

I've subscribed to their newsletter/reminder service and should be able to report when additional decades of data go online.  Meantime, there's always the larger public library branches for the old-fashioned microfilm/crank option (very time consuming) and the Library and Archives Canada website for immigration information from 1925-35.  Don't know about that one?  I'll tell you next time. (grin).

Copyright Law for Family Historians

The Alberta Family Histories Society (AFHS) welcomes visitors to its February program meeting where the featured content will be Canada's Copyright legislation. 

Marion Peterson indicates that Martin Kratz is the featured speaker.  Lois Sparling (AFHS member, lawyer who successfully brought the 1911 Canadian Census to the public from Statistics Canada) writes: 

This promises to be the state-of-the-art and most advanced presentation on Canadian copyright law as it applies to family history ever. Mr. Kratz is in charge of the Intellectual Property division of a big law firm and an experienced lecturer (to lawyers and law students)."

Kratz' profile is available at Bennettjones

Mark your calendars and bring your questions regarding copyright.

• Date/Time: Monday, February 5, 7:00pm
• Location: First Christian Reformed Church (3818 14A St SW).

For those interested in the other AFHS event available that evening, Jim Bowman of the Glenbow Archives will speak about their holdings from 6:30 to 7:00 pm at the same location. (Jim Bowman has recently agreed to be my mentor for difficult archival records processing decisions.  Early in his career Jim was also a volunteer at the Mennonite Historical Society of British Columbia.)

Mennonite Historical Society of Canada comes to Calgary

The MHSC and MHSA are having a combined public evening that everyone in the Calgary is welcome to attend.  Local arrangements chair, Peter Penner writes that "the purpose of this evening is to extend our knowledge of the people doing Mennonite history in the provinces".  This will be a great opportunity to learn about the Global Anabaptist and Mennonite Encyclopaedia Online (GAMEO), a project of the MHSC that MHSA is actively involved in. 

Representatives from many other Mennonite history organizations will be with us - from British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario.  And, Dr. Arthur Kroeger will speak on his family history just published by University of Alberta Press and launched this eveniung. Dr. Kroeger’s book will be available for sale and autographing.

Come early to get a good seat!

• Location:  First Mennonite Church, just West of Crowchild Trail and south of 26 Avenue SW, Calgary
• Date:  January 17, 2006

Program:

• Welcome from MHSA (Peter Penner) and First Mennonite Church (Marwin Thiessen)
• Corpus Christi Male Chorale
• History Society Reports from MHSA (Vince Friesen), GAMEO (Bert Friesen), and MHSC (Ken Reddig)
• Corpus Christi Male Chorale
• Offering for MHSA
• Congregational Song
• Speaker: Dr. Arthur Kroeger, Ottawa, author of Hard Passage: A Mennonite Family’s Long Journey from Russia to Canada, introduced by Ted Regehr, Calgary, First Mennonite Church
• Corpus Christi Male Chorale
• Expression of Thanks and Invitation (Dick Neufeld) to Reception (First Mennonite Helping Hands)

"Separatists" in Russia

Just yesterday I heard from Volker Haufler of northern Germany who had been exploring our the finding aid online for the MHSA's Odessa State Archvives microfilms in our archival vault.

He wrote:

My own ancestors, although not Mennonites, emigrated to that part of Europe, too, at about 1812 to the Molotschna colonist district (Prischib, Rosental, Alt-Montal). Their family names were Wagner, Gallauner, Jekel and Klein.

In 1819, my ancestor Johann Gottlieb Haufler emigrated from Grunbach/Wuerttemberg via the Molotschna colonist district to area near the Azow Sea where he was one of the co-founders of Neuhoffnungstal in 1822. These three colonies (Neuhoffnung, Neuhoffnungstal, Rosenfeld) and Neu-Stuttgart (founded about 1832) were all Separatist colonies that had close connections with the Mennonite colony of Molotschna. Around 1880 my great grandfather moved to the Crimea and was a co-founder of the daughter colony Hebron, parish of Schoenbrunn.

As you may know, there are practically no church records available for Separatists which makes it quite difficult to research them and to follow their traces...

Now - we've written back and forth and I've gotten him connected with what he was looking for. But, it begged the question - who were the "Separatists"?

Until this point, I'd generally only had the Quebec context for the term "Separatist", though I had heard of non-conformists (e.g., Quakers) in the United Kingdom as well.

Separatists, in this context, were highly religious Lutheran Protestants who didn't feel well within the big and bureaucratic official church in Germany. Therefore they stepped out and organized their own divine services with, however, pastors educated by the Lutheran Church. In Russia they lived in the four so-called Schwabenkolonien near Berdjansk; and succeeded to be independent until about 1890.