Was He Really Born There?

When you find an early location for someone, it's tempting to think he was born there and always lived there. But it's not always true. My great-grandfather Gerhard T. Siemens #6463 (1834-1908) is an example.

The 1835 census of Molotschna colony, Russia, records the infant Gerhard Siemens in his grandmother's household at Rosenort #14.

Source: Katerina Simens" household, 4 February 1835, 8th Revision of Census of Russian Empire, Rosenort village, Molochanskii Mennonistskii Okrug, Melitopol'skii Uezd, Tavricheskaia Guberniia, household #14. Found in Odessa Region State Archives, Odessa, Ukraine, Peter J. Braun Collection, Fond 89, Inventory 1, File 357, p. 263R-264. Accessed on microfilm from California Mennonite Historical Society, Fresno, California.

The translation of the Russian text is, "Gerhard Klaas' son Gerhard, born after last census, 1 year old." Young Gerhard was born on 9 May 1834 (O.S.), and the census was taken on 4 February 1835, so he was almost ten months old. It would be easy to assume that young Gerhard must have been born in Rosenort village where he was enumerated so shortly after he was born. I did, but I was wrong.

Gerhard's son Abraham K. Siemens #117129 (1880-1948) was the family genealogist, and he wrote a careful obituary for his father Gerhard after he died in 1908. He stated that his father was born "in Neuendorf, der Alten Kolonie, Südrußland" (in Neuendorf, Old Colony, South Russia). BTW, "Old Colony" was a nickname for Chortitza because it was the first Mennonite colony founded in Russia.

Source: A. R. Siemens [Abraham K. Siemens], Letter to the Editor, Mennonitische Rundschau Scottsdale, Pennsylvania 9 December 1908: 12. Original held at Mennonite Library and Archive, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas.

 

I was surprised to find this birthplace because it matched nothing that I knew about my great-grandfather. I've searched all the Chortitza colony records, but I cannot find any connection to the "Old Colony." Perhaps his father was working as a laborer in Chortitza. Or maybe he was a school teacher there. Maybe they had relatives there whom I don't know about. At this point it is all speculation. But I am sure that his son Abraham was correct because the other details in the obituary are correct and because I know from my mom that he was very interested in family history.

Not only did I learn my great-grandfather's correct birthplace, but also I learned a valuable lesson not to make assumptions.

Analyzing the 1776 Census

For the last several months, I've been working on this huge project to analyze all the Fasts in the 1776 census of Mennonites in West Prussia.  My goal was to try to identify the parents of Gerhard Fast #660202 (1739-1828), my 7th-great-grandfather and earliest known Fast ancestor.  Since his oldest known sibling was born in ABT 1737, I realized that his parents would probably have been in their early 60s in the 1776 census.  Thus it is likely that one or both of them were enumerated in that census; but of course without knowing their names, they could be listed in plain sight and wouldn't even know it was them.  So my plan was to find out as much as possible out each of the 31 Fasts in that census to try to identify his parents.  I didn't identify either parent, but I was able to eliminate most of them as possible candidates.

I chose the 1776 census because it was only of Mennonites in West Prussia, so I didn't have to worry about sorting out people who had "Mennonite-sounding" names.  Glenn Penner has already identified quite a few people in it, so a good start has been made.  Finally, I have scans of all the originals for the 1776 census.  I decided against the 1772 census because it included everyone in West Prussia - not just the Mennonites.  Very little work has been done on it, and I have only about half the scans for "Mennonite" villages in the Gross Werder, and ordering them from the Geheimes Staatsarkhiv in Berlin is slow and expensive.

Glenn Penner's extraction of the 1776 census is found here.  He (and perhaps others) had already identified 11 of the 31 Fasts with Grandma (GM) numbers.  I added 10 more during my project, so 21 of the 31 are now identified in GM.

The results of my efforts can be downloaded from Google Drive.  A few comments about the spreadsheet - the names and dates that I added are in red.  On a few people, I just looked them up and found the family in GM, just waiting to have a GM number associated with them on the census spreadsheet.  Others took a lot more work to research.  And a few were not in GM at all.

I started by looking for the head of household in my giant spreadsheet of Fasts that I have extracted over the last few years.  Any time I looked at church book or microfilm, I put all the names of Fasts (and in-laws) into a giant spreadsheet - even if I wasn't interested in them at the time.  Now I could just look at it and see all the records, for example, for Claas Fast, even if they were scattered among different sources.  Many times a family would come together just like that.

The sources that I checked included

• Prussian Mennonite church books (Tiegenhagen, Ladekopp, Rosenort, Bärwalde, Montau, Tragheimerweide, Heubuden, Danzig, etc.) - I used the extractions at MennoniteGenealogy.com, Andreas Riesen's extractions, and the originals at Bethel College's Mennonite Library and Archives
• Lutheran/Evangelical church books (Jungfer, Fürstenau, Neuteich, etc.) - Mostly from LDS microfilms
• West Prussia Censuses - 1772, 1776, 1789, 1793 (Danzig), 1811 (Elbing)
• Russian Censuses - 1806, 1808, 1811, 1835
• Property Records 
• Emigration Records - BH Unruh, Peter Rempel, MennoniteGenealogy.com

The key to successful genealogical research in West Prussia is to combine all the sources.  There are lots of West Prussian records, but most of them are fragmented  - there are only a few Mennonite Familienbücher where the entire family is listed together and most of these are fairly late.  Most West Prussian records give one data point, e.g. a certain child was born on a certain date and his father was a certain man.  If you pull everything together, suddenly the whole family pops into view.

To handle all this data, you need several things:

• A method to store and organize all the data - such as my spreadsheet of Fast extractions
• Access to all the records - online, microfilm, orders from archives
• Research collateral lines - With fragmented data, researching siblings of your direct ancestor helps to pull everything together.

 I would encourage you to try the same thing for your surname.