Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta

GRANDMA 5.04 Available in Mennonite History Centres Near You

GRANDMA 5 – you all know who “she” is – the Mennonite matriarch who holds so many Mennonites bound together in a relational database that can be viewed, edited and added to by Brothers’ Keeper 6.2  (software developed by John Steed).   The MHSA bookstore  www.mennonitehistory.org/publications/index.html  is one of the few sources for the CD ($45 + S/H).  GRANDMA

Well, post-publication GRANDMA (version 5.04) now has over a million in her kinship charts;   1,009,320 to be precise.  Jay Huebert, the magician who takes submissions from Mennonites around the globe and weaves them together for GRANDMA has just released this unpublished update to Mennonite historical societies for access in their reference rooms. 

It is available for use at the MHSA.  There is no word yet on when GRANDMA 6 will be available for sale, but I’d guess it will be a year or two.

MHSA will be open 10-4 on the following Saturdays in December: Dec 1, 8, 15, and 22. 

We’ll be closed December 29 and then reopen on January 5.

In Kinship,

Judii Rempel

Church Registers - First Mennonite Church, Vauxhall-Grantham, Alberta

Several years ago, Anne Harder wrote a short History of the Vauxhall Mennonite Church and the MHSA published it in 2001. And, an even shorter account appears as an entry in the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encylopaedia Online (GAMEO).

Among the holdings of the MHSA are a number of records from that church - all of which have some value to genealogists (Vauxhall Mennonite Church fonds).  More work is planned, to get the information publicly available, but at this time indices to the Birth and Marriage records and a full transcription of Burial records has been placed on the MHSA website.

We hope to get information from the Church Register in shareable form before long.  Inquiries are welcome.

In kinship,
Judii for the MHSA

New Genealogy Resources for Sask

Mennonite Historical Society of Saskatchewan (MHSS) has had a limited web presence for a number of years - the Saskatchewan Mennonite Cemetery Finding Aid developed by Al Mierau for the MHSS.

But it was just this summer that the MHSS finally got a comprehensive site online.  It still has a few bugs in it - but it's worth a visit.  Not only do you find out about the organization, but they've already committed to putting more data indices to various Mennonite obituary sources.

In kinship,
Judii for the MHSA 

Immigration of Mennonites to Canada

Between the following websites, the immigration picture for Mennonites coming to Canada is getting more and more complete.

Passenger Lists - 1865-1922 (Library & Archives Canada)
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/archivianet/passenger/index-e.html

• not searchable by name
• full images are online
• no fees to view

Passenger Lists/Immigration Records - 1925-1935 (Library & Archives Canada)
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/archivianet/immigration-1925/index-e.html

• searchable by name, year, etc.
• visitors are directed to use details in index to consult images on microfilms in major Canadian libraries
• no fees to view

Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonizations (1923-1930) (Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta)
http://www.mennonitehistory.org/projects/cmboc/index.html

• searchable by household head's name
• visitors are directed to use details index to request digital copies of records for a $10/record fee
• personalized service
• index to be expanded in the next few months to include other household members and birth years of immigrants
• we can already conduct broader and finer searches for household members and links between records
• index and records also available at Mennonite Heritage Centre, Winnipeg

Passenger Lists departing from United Kingdom (1890-1939) FindMyPast (commercial site)
http://www.findmypast.com/passengerListPersonSearchStart.action?redef=0

• searchable by name, year, etc.
• - visitors can get a shortlist of hits that includes full name, age, gender, year of departure, destination country/port for free
• visitors are directed to two links for each: one to transcript and one to image
• each type of link has a different fee
• indexing work continues and current plans are to complete up to 1960 before long; they're making good progress

In kinship, Judii for Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta

Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization Records

Have you wondered whether it's worth pursuing CMBoC records for your family research?  Well, here's an opportunity to take a close look at a front/back that's particularly rich.

It shows Kornelius Peter Rempel (b 20 Jan 1864 in Rosenthal), Katharaina Jacob (b 21 Aug 1864 in Gruenfeld), Jacob Rempel (b 7 Feb 1902 in Gruenfled), Katharina Rempel (b 12 Jan 1904 in Gruenfeld, Maria Rempel (b 15 May 1906),  Helena Rempel (b 24 Feb 1840 in Kronsweide).  All these villages are located in the Chortita settlement in what is Ukraine today - just west of Zaporozhye.

Based on patterns observed from a LOT of these records, it's clear to us that Kornelius and Katharina  are husband and wife; Jacob, Katharina, and Maria are their children.  Helena is likely the mother to Kornelius - based on her age and surname.   The marginal annotations show the names of spouses to Jacob (Helena Plett) and Maria (Joh. H. Thiessen) and cross-reference codes that lead us to the records for their spouse's CMBoC records.

The family last lived in Gruenfeld, but departed from Chortitza (the village) on 13 Jul 1923, arriving in Latvia on 234 Jul, departing from Latvia on 27 Jul, arriving in Libau on 28 Jul 1923 and departing from Libau on 28 Jul.  Their journey to Southampton, England on the SS Bruton began on 2 Aug and they left on 4 Aug (again on the SS Bruton).  They arrived in Quebec City, Canada on 17 Aug, intending to settle in Herbert, Saskatchewan.

The bottom area of the record is not completed because no family members were detained in England for any reason.

Pretty useful, yes?  So - look over your files and see if one of these records might shed new or confirming light on information in them. An index to household heads can be found online.  If you can't determine which is the correct household for the family you're pursuing, let us know and we can do some additional checking for you.

In kinship,
Judii for Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta

Vital Records Availability - Canada and USA

Vital records (birth, marriage, death) as issued by provincial or state governments are very useful to the family historian.  They may not always be accurate (in time of grief do you really think the informant can necessraily remember the maiden name of her mother's mother?), but they are an official source so folks are less likely to deliberately mis-state the truth.

After seeing FamilyTreeMagazine's very handy chart of the availabilities of American BMD records as they're called, I thought I'd put something together that's useful for Mennonite families in western Canada (BC to ON).  It includes initial year just like FTM's, but it also includes the privacy blackout period when the public are not able to acquire the records unless they can demonstrate close kinship with the person in the record.

The following chart shows the first year for which Vital Records were officially kept by the various Canadian provinces. In all cases privacy legislation keeps them from being freely available, so the parenthetical period indicates the age of the record that may be acquired/purchased by the general public. Records that are more recent may also be acquired/purchased, but proof of close kinship is generally required.

	Birth	Marriage	Death
BC	1872 ( 120 yrs)	1872 ( 75 yrs)	1872 (20 yrs)
AB	1850 ( 100 yrs)	1890 ( 75 yrs)	1890 ( 50 yrs)
SK	? ( 100 yrs)	? ( 100 yrs)	? ( 70 yrs)
MB	1882 ( 100 yrs)	1882 (80yrs)	1882 ( 70 yrs)
ON *	1869 (100 yrs)	1869** ( 75)	1869 ( 65 yrs)

Permanent links to these resources can be found on our companion website, the Mennonite Genealogical Data Index under USA, and the specific Canadian provinces.

In kinship, Judii Rempel - for Mennonite Historical Society of alberta

Surnames - Another Resource

I've written about surnames on a few occasions, and pointed to the MHSA website where an origins of surnames  page has been begun www.mennonitehistory.org/projects/surnames/, but I just added a few notes to it this week.  Turns out that Glenn Penner has been quietly publishing articles in the Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society's newsletter, Heritage Postings, for a number of years.  As far as I know, those have not been digitized, but you can find references to his articles by the respective surnames on the webpage.

The articles I just discovered speak to the Prussian records related to:  Gerbrandt, Groening, Hoeppner, Schroeder, Teichroeb, & Wieler.

Other Prussian sources are:

• listed in our Mennonite Genealogical Data Index (choose "Prussia" from the picklist on the left side of www.mennonites.ca,
• Schapansky, Henry (2006). 
  Mennonite Migrations (and the Old Colony) (available for purchase from the MHSA bookstore)
• van Beuningen, Konrad.  (1991).
  Buch der Menno-Gemeinde Danzig (available in the MHSA library)

In kinship, Judii - for the Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta

Mennonite Obituaries

GEDCOM of 27,199 Obituary Index Entries!

May 4 and 5 I drove the three hours north from Calgary to Edmonton to participate in the MHSA Annual General Meeting and associated workshops. 

While I was there, I had the opportunity to meet up with Al Rempel (no kinship that we've determined), who has recently done an amazing job of developing a Composite Mennonite Obituary Index for 27,199 obituaries published in four Mennonite periodicals and one community newspaper:

• Canadian Mennonite
• Der Bote
• Altona/Red River Echo
• Mennonite Brethren Herald
• Mennonitische Rundschau.

Those individual indexes appear in various print and screen locations already, but now you can conduct a simple or advanced search on all at the same time. 

Al's commitment to personal privacy is such that the index covers "only" those who were born 100 or more years ago and who have been deceased 20 or more years.

You can find it at Rootsweb.

15 July Update ... Our collection isn't 100% complete, but if you need a copy of an obituary, the MHSA has a sizeable collection of periodical issues for all the above (except the Echo) and many more. For a small fee ($10), we'll look up a specific record, scan it and send it to you. (If we don't have it, there will be no charge and we'll refer you to other possible sources.)

In kinship,
Judii

Digitized Online Resources - Now, Full-length Books

There are several kinds of ways that one can place information about rich data resources (essentially what archivists call "finding aids") online. 

• Indexes are the quickest approach.  For genealogists, indexes that include surnames are critical.  When they have additional details such as birth or death date, geographic location of birth and death, names of spouse, children or parents - all make them increasingly useful.  cemetery indexes are a good example. 
  
  With the index that includes an individual of interest, it's just a matter of tracking down the document that is being indexed - to get the richness that can be so helpful.
  
  See MHSA's Name Index to B. H. Unruh's book, Die niederländisch-niederdeutschen Hintergründe der mennonitischen Ostwanderungen im 16., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert.
  
• Transcriptions are much more work and tend to eliminate the need for genealogists to track down the original document.  Transcriptions are distinguished from indexes in that they capture much more - if not all - of the content of a document.
  
  See MHSA's transcription of Peter Riediger's 1872 immigration to Canada journal entries.
  
• Extractions, in fact, are much more common.  These are more than indexes and less than transcriptions.  They are the transciption of limited content from an original document - the genealogical-relevant contents from the are accounts
  
  An example of this can be found on MHSA's website for Children Vaccinated Against Smallpox, Chortitza Colony in South Russia, 1809.
• Digitized Books - In recent years, there are more and more genealogically-rich projects of a fourth approach - the digitized book.  Not only are the scanned and placed online, sometimes they are fully searchable.
  
  The most important for my own research has been Peter D. Zacharias' 1976 local history for Reinland, Manitoba. Reinland: An Experience in Community. But, there are many many such books online.  Increasingly there are ones with content relevant to Mennonite family history.
• Others just recently found online are:
  
  Gerbrandt, Henry J. (1970). Adventure in Faith: the Background in Europe and the Development in Canada of the Bergthaler Mennonite Church of Manitoba. Altona, MB: DW Friesen & Sons.
  
  Derksen, Seymor A. (1980). My Father's House. Langham, SK: Author.
  
  Epp-Tiessen, Esther. (n.d.). Altona: The Story of a Prairie Town. Altona, MB: DW Friesen & Sons.
  
  Friesen, Rhinehart, Friesen. (1988). A Mennonite Odyssey. Winnipeg: Hyperion Press, 1988.
  
  Zacharias, Peter D. (1976). Reinland: An Experience in Community. Winkler, MB: Reinland Centennial Committee.

For links to all of these kinds of projects for your research, see the Mennonite Genealogical Data Index for links to projects being placed online from all over.  MHSA's own work in this area can be found as linksfrom our MHSA Projects page.

In kinship,
Judii

Canadian Board of Colonization Records

The Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization index on the MHSA website is new and improved - after a GREAT DEAL of work by Al Rempel and myself.

The last version had many typos in it and hundreds of of missing household heads.  So if you looked and could not find someone, this is the time to look again. 

Because of increasing concerns with protecting privacy and minimizing the risk of identity theft, we have removed the record images from the website.  But, this doesn't inhibit us from making individual records available to specific researchers.

Because we have spent so much time organizing not only the index but the images as well, and it takes time to retrieve them - the board has given us direction to collect a $10 search fee for every successful record that we find and deliver by e-mail attachment. 

If you come to the MHSA and do your own searching (we'll give you tips), there will only be photocopying charges (.25/sheet).

Now - if you're still stymied by the index.  You just KNOW your family arrived in Canada between 1923-30, we have other indexing tools that are still in development that allow me to dig deeper than the online index.  Let me know who you're looking for and we may be able to find that wife, daughter, son, or great grand uncle who came with an unknown household head. 

In kinship,
Judii