Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta

Postcards Update

This little project has taken off!  See: http://www.mennonitehistory.org/projects/postcards/index.html

As of today, you can find 17 very interesting postcards on the MHSA website.  They've been submitted  by persons in Kansas, Northwest Territories, and Alberta.

We've placed brief facts about each online (year, sender, recipient and theme), a thumbnail sketch and links to face and reverse.  If you want to be in touch with the submitter, e-mail addresses are available aside each submission.

The submissions are also organized into various thematic pages:

• Date (1900-09, 1910-1919, 1920-29, 1930-39, 1940-49)
• Commercial or Family Photo source
• Originating country  (Canada, Russia, USA)
• Submitter

So - use the link above, explore and enjoy!

Judii
for MHSA

Mennonite Historical Societies - Across Canada

Mennonite Historical Society of BC

• Resources:  reference library and archives
• Events: several public meetings a year
• Membership: $25
• Location: 211 - 2825 Clearbrook Rd, Abbotsford, BC
• Open:  Mon-Fri 9:00 am - 4:00 pm
• Web: www.mhsbc.com/

Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta

• Resources:  reference library and archives
• Events: Workshops, two membership meetings a year
• Membership: $20
• Location: 2496 - 32 Street NE, Calgary, AB
• Open:  Sat 10:00 am - 4:00 pm
• Web:  www.mennonitehistory.org

Mennonite Historical Society of Sasktachewan

• Resources:  reference library and archives
• Events: regular meetings
• Membership: $25 ($40/couple)
• Location: 900 - 110 La Ronge Road, Saskatoon, SK
• Open:  Mon 1:30-4:00 pm; Wed 1:30-4:00 pm and 7:00-9:00 pm
• Web:  www.mhss.sk.ca/

Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society

• Resources:  publishing Mennonite history books
• Events: Workshops, public meetings
• Membership: $25, couple: $40, student: $10
• Web: http://www.mmhs.org/

Mennonite Historical Society of Ontario

• Resources: Ontario Mennonite History (periodical)
• Events:  Workshops, Seminars, two public meetings annually
• Location:  Brubacher House, North Campus, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON
• Location:  Detweiler Meetinghouse, 3384 Roseville, Road, Ayr, ON
• Membership:  $15, family: $20, student: $5
• Web: http://www.mhso.org/

In kinship,
Judii for MHSA

Postcards - Another Window to the Past

Leann Heinrichs has posted a few postcards to her Blog and is inviting participation in translating them. Does anyone have interest in helping with translations?

see: http://ksborn.blogspot.com/

Meanwhile, I’m sure all of you will enjoy looking at them. Leann plans to upload a few at a time and apparently has quite a few.

Such cards are the sort that I mentioned in a recent MHSA Newsletter.

If you have postcards of this sort, please consider donating them to the MHSA for the development of a collective understanding of what kinds of postcards were in use in Canada/Germany/Russia – and what was conveyed on them.

It is particularly interesting that Canadian Mennonite used postcards so freely, when one thinks about the fact that communication from Russia in the form of letters were censored in the last century.

The face and back of one in my collection appears to the right.  It is written in gothic Germn (Schrift) by P. Froese with wishes for a good new year.  Just click the images to enlarge them.

See the first documents in our online exhibition at: www.mennonitehistory.org/projects/postcards/

In kinship,

Judii for MHSA

Giving Visual Voice to the Past

Two new websites have come to my attention just recently.  They are all the more powerful because they are artistically beautiful virtual exhibits of the horrors of the Stalin-era Gulag.

See the Gulag Museum's http://gulagmuseum.org/museums/museum_07/index_eng.htm for the Museum of the History of Political Repression (in English, German and Russian).  the navigation of the website is a bit confusing - but it's very much worthwhile looking through the photographs at this link, then returning here http://gulagmuseum.org/museums_eng.htm to select other online exhibits for viewing.

For a portrayal from the Mennonite point of view, see Ruth Derksen Siemens' exhibit http://www.gulagletters.com/ that complements a documentary, book and speaking tour that will all become available in 2008.

If, like me, you found yourself wondering about the exact meaning of "Gulag" as you read the above, the Encyclopaedia Britannica depicts it in a powerful narrative definition:

System of Soviet labour camps and prisons that from the 1920s to the mid-1950s housed millions of political prisoners and criminals. The term (an abbreviation of the Russian words for Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps) was largely unknown in the West until the 1973 publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago.

The Gulag consisted of hundreds of camps, under the control of the secret police, where prisoners felled timber, worked in the mines, or laboured on construction projects. At least 10% died each year from harsh working conditions, inadequate food, and summary executions.

The Gulag reached its height in the years of collectivization of Soviet agriculture (1929 – 32), during Joseph Stalin's purges (1936–1938), and immediately after World War II, shrinking only after Stalin's death in 1953. An estimated 15–30 million Russians died in the camps.

Judii for MHSA

THANK YOU!

For all those who monitor this blog, visit the MHSA, donate records, cash or time - thanks!

Do remember the MHSA in the many ways you can support us:

·         Buy your Mennonite publications from us

·         Collect your congregational bulletins and meeting minutes and donate them for our preservation vault

·         Donate a copy of your family history for our library shelves

·         Volunteer some time to help us keep up with our library cataloguing and records processing (help!  Can anyone give us a bit of assistance with printing labels in MS Access?)

·         Make a financial contribution to help us buy an additional bay of mobile shelving ($2500), pay for our insurance (about $900/year), archival safe folders (50 cents per folder), archival safe boxes ($9.50 per box).  Our annual donation budget has been roughly $10,000 but we haven’t met it in 2007

We support you:

·         through the e-connections we make here

·         looking up records for you

·         helping you out with research strategy ideas

·         developing two major meetings a year

·         being open one day a week

·         two newsletters a year

·         membership is stable at $20/year for many years now

·         Major websites:  MHSA (www.mennonitehistory.org), Mennonite Genealogical Data Index (www.mennonites.ca), and the tips and tricks blog at http://mennonites.typepad.com/mennonite_historical_soci/

And, join me in thanking those who have helped keep MHSA operating this past year:

·         Irene Klassen (Calgary) – book and membership sales, archival records processing, and generally the “second in command”!

·         Margaret Kent (Calgary) – accountant, wrestling with our resources and invoices

·         Dave Hildebrand (Calgary) – always available to troubleshoot with “facility issues” and looking out for ways to add value to the MHSA reference area

·         Dave Toews (Edmonton) – enthusiastic newsletter editor, bringing humour to research

·         Henry Goerzen (Didsbury) – continuing his connections between the Mennonite Church Alberta’s historical needs and preservation of their records for the MHSA

·         Archives Advisory Committee (Ted Regehr, Calgary; Jim Bowman, Calgary) – Helping me make best practice decisions with our records

·         Board members who plan our major events:  Vince Friesen (Chair, Edmonton) , Colin Neufeldt (Vice Chair, Edmonton), Margaret Kent (Treasurer, Calgary), Dave Pankratz (Secretary, Ft. St. John), and Members at Large:  Henry Goerzen (Didsbury), Itrene Klassen (Calgary) and Dave toews (Edmonton).

·         Area Representatives:  Irene Klassen (Calgary), Colin Neufeldt (Edmonton), Rosemary (Mary Burkholder), Carstairs/Didsbury (Harvey Burkholder), southern Alberta (Hilda Heidebrecht).  Tofield and northern Alberta representative roles are presently vacant.

In kinship,

Judii Rempel

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 Census Records in the Future

The problem is that we have now denied to our descendants the same right to history that we grant ourselves. For 44 per cent of Canadians, information from the 2006 census will not be available in 2098. Why? Because, in complying with an act of Parliament in 2005, Statistics Canada included in the 2006 census a question asking whether respondents would consent to public release of their personal information after 92 years. Just 56 per cent of Canadians agreed.

So reads part of a story located in a Globe and Mail article this week (www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070912.wcomment0912/BNStory/National/home, emphasis mine).

This was one of the prices paid for our ability to publicly access the 1911 Census, says Lois Sparling, the lawyer who acted on behalf of family historians and academic historians across the country.