Russia? Poland?
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.
When I shifted my focus away from Volga Germans, I found the Society of German Genealogy in Eastern Europe. Through this organization’s resources, I found the town that they most likely came from – Marinkow (and several spelling variations). I also found other people who had researched some of the same surnames!
Unfortunately I didn’t find anything new on Adolph Flatt. But I did find out Lydia Matschenski’s parents and siblings, and I have some clues to guide my direction in further Adoph Flatt research. I was even provided a scan of the birth registry where Lydia Matschenski appears!
I’ll be joining the SGGEE to gain access to member only resources. I also need to order the Adolph and Lydia Flatt naturalization and other domestic records, and exhaust more online databases and organizations for Volhynia records. If I still fail in finding Adolph’s parents after trying all these things, I might need a more radical approach – a look at all of the families in their Volhynia village and Michigan town in order to try and find some connections there, discover family and migration patterns and hopefully find my way back to more Flatt ancestors.
If you are interested in what resources I used to determine what village they came from, you can check my Links page within my Resources. There are many links that indicate Volga Germans or Russian Germans. I also read up on the history of Volhynia, Prussia, Pomerania and Galicia on Wikipedia. Ultimately, the SGGEE, their databases, mailing list and the links on their website were the most helpful to me and I would recommend that as the starting place, for anyone interested in Russian Germans but not necessarily Volga Germans.
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