My DNA Was There

I recently joined the SGGEE – The Society of German Genealogy in Eastern Europe.  If you’ve been following along on my blog, you’ll know that on one half of my family tree, I’m descended from Germans who lived in Eastern Europe prior to emigrating to the United States.  There were many Germans in those areas more than 100 years ago.  Prussia had a lot of German settlers, same with Volhynia and Galicia and Russia.  These places are now included in modern Poland, Ukraine and Russia, and they bring their own set of genealogical difficulties.

These German settlers were ethnic minorities.  In some cases, surviving records can be hard to find.  When they are there, they might be in any number of locations, formats or languages.  And as you may have witnessed with me, the history of the area, while crucial to discovering your roots, can be hard to untangle.

The SGGEE is a great organization that helps organize various record transcriptions.  They also have a large collection of maps and a great knowledge base to help understand the history of the areas involved and how to search.

They typically have a convention every year, usually in a Northern US Midwest location or in Canada’s plains.  Most often in Canada.  This year it is being held in Edmonton. The information presented and the ability to do searches on their special databases and benefit from the knowledge of the rest of the members is very tempting.  I know that if I attend, I will learn a lot and I might finally be able to wrap my mind around the Flatts, Seibs, Matschenskis, and the rest of my German ancestors.

But it is expensive.  Airfare to Edmonton is $600.  When you add in the cost of the conference, food, and hotel, I’m spending over $1000.  Is it worth $1000 to better understand my German ancestors?  I’m not so sure.  I’m starting to think that my money might be better spent doing some other vacation for now, and then maybe next year or the year after that, if the convention is held in Minnesota or something, the airfare will be cheaper and I can still get the same benefit from it as I would this year – just a year later and a little bit less expensive.

I’m really torn.  I want to learn as much as possible as soon as possible so I can share it all with my grandparents and continue to use them to help fill in more gaps.  But if I just wait a year or two, I could probably get the same benefit for less money.

What would you do?  Have you ever gone to a genealogy conference?  How has it benefited you?

Ukrainian landscape

When I last posted, I realized that I must have some information wrong.  I thought my ancestors were Volga Germans, but I couldn’t find their Russian Village in any list of Volga German settlements.

So, I went back to what I knew.  The ship manifest states they were from Marienka Crest, Russia.  The 1930 census said that they were from Poland.  So I got out some maps and I read more about Germans in Russia.  And that is when it hit me.  Volhynia, now mostly in Ukraine, was a region in Russia settled by Germans in the 1800s.  It was part of Russia up until WWI or thereabouts, at which time western Volhynia went to Poland and eastern Volhynia remained with Russia.

Could the Russia/Poland inconsistency in the manifest and census be due to shifting borders?  I figured before I blow the Russia/Poland off as just a transcription error or misunderstanding, I should look into it further.  Continue reading Russia? Poland? →

Galicia and Volhynia

I’m back on the trail of my Russian German ancestors.  I think figuring out where in Eastern Europe they came from before emigrating to the United States is the best thing to do at this stage.  So I’ve been researching the history of the region and I realize that earlier in my research, I may have gotten some facts wrong.  It is important to know the history of the region so that I can guide my search in the right direction.  I may have been guiding it in the wrong direction before now!

There were several German migration waves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that went into Eastern European areas.  One wave emigrated to the Volga River region and became known as Volga Germans.  Another wave settled near the Black Sea.  There were also migrations to Prussia and Volhynia.  The map above shows some of the areas in Eastern Europe where Germans settled.

Why does this matter to me?  Why can’t I just do a surname search on a database and find them no matter where they lived?  There are a number of different websites, societies and organizations that focus on different Russian German settlements.  If I join one society for Black Sea Germans, with access to their database, experts and other researchers, but it turns out that my ancestors lived in Prussia, then I have wasted time and money going down this dead end.

Well, I am closer than ever.  I think my family came from Volhynia, and I may even know the village some were born in.  Next I’ll talk about how I came to this conclusion.