Using German War Records (Part II)

In Part I of this series, we explained how to search the German war records called EWZ for Mennonites.  Hopefully you have gotten one or more files that interested you.  Now we'll dive into the files.

The files generally contain three types of documents.  The first one gives the personal details of the applicant.  Below we are looking at the file of Katharina (Fast) Warkentin, who was the actual applicant for citizenship in the Jakob Fast file that I mentioned in part I.

Personalblatt (Personal Page) for Katharina (Fast) Warkentin, 27 October 1944, National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, Record Group 242, Records of Einwandererzentralstelle, File #762268, Microfilm Publication A3342, Series EWZ-50, Film I088, Frame 0558 from Mennonite Historical Society of British Columbia, Abbotsford, British Columbia.

With just rudimentary German, you can see that it gives a birth date (Gerburts) of 2 February 1901, and a birthplace (Ort) of Hamberg village and a marriage date (verh.) of 10 September 1922.  Searching in Grandma using her maiden name and birth year reveals that she is #1014733.

Immediately following on the page is the information about her parents:

This gives her parents' names, birth places, birth dates, death dates, and religion (Mennonite).  If we compare to GM, we see that her father Jakob Fast's birth date there is 7 Nov 1867, which makes more sense than 1887, since he would have been only 14 years old when she was born in 1901 if he were born in 1887.

But it gets better.  The next information is her grandparents' names.

Her paternal grandfather was Klaus Fast, and this information is not in GM, so we should submit it as a correction.  The main record database from this time period for Molotschna colony is the school records, so let's search those for a father Klaas Fast and a son Jacob Fast, using the index compiled by Tim Janzen.

In the 1873-1874 school records, we find a Klaas Fast in Ladekopp, and he has two daughters Helena (b. ABT 1863) and Eva (b. ABT 1865).  This is probably the same family, but our Jacob is likely just a year too young to be attending school.  Unfortunately, the family is not listed in any of the other school records, and I can't find Helena or Eva in GM.

Klaas Fast household, school attendance record, Ladekopp, Molotschna, South Russia, 1873-1874, Odessa Region State Archive, Odessa, Ukraine, Peter J. Braun Collection, Fund 89, Inventory 1, File 2184, index compiled by Tim Janzen.  Accessed at http://mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/school/1873-74b.htm on 22 January 2017.

We can't yet say for sure whether the Klaas Fast who is the father of Jacob in the EWZ records is the same one as the Klaas Fast who is the father of Helena and Eva in the school records.  What if there were two Klaas Fasts about the same age both living in Ladekopp at the same time?  I've seen more than one such situation.  Fortunately, there is a list where we can check.  In the fall of 1863, many of the Molotschna villages had a bad harvest, so the villages loaned seed grain to their residents.  The landowners in the village had to sign to authorize the loan and the recipients (landowners and non-landowners alike) signed to receive the grain.  Presumably the lists include all the heads of households in the participating villages, and Ladekopp was one of those villages.

Extract of grain loan records, Ladekopp, Molotschna, South Russia, 22 October 1863, Odessa Region State Archive, Odessa, Ukraine, Fund 6, Inventory 4, File 21178, Pages 55-56, accessed at http://archive.mennonitehistory.org/projects/residents/grain_loans.html on 24 January 2017.

There were only three Fast heads of households in Ladekopp in 1863, which is ten years before the school records above.  And only one of them is named Klaas Fast, so we can be fairly confident that there was only one Klaas Fast in the village and that he was the father of all three children, Helena, Eva, and Jacob.  We should also note the column that indicates "both" - meaning that he both signed the grain loan documents as a landowner and as a recipient.  Since he was a landowner, his tenure in the village would be much more stable, and he would not be as likely to move as non-landowners.

I'm going to submit this information to GM as a correction.

The next question is who were Klaas Fast's parents.  I have a good candidate, but I haven't found sufficiently strong evidence yet, so that will (hopefully) be the subject of a future post.

I hope these two posts have given you a sense of the value of the EWZ records, how they can be used to research Soviet-era Mennonites, and how they can be combined with earlier records to research imperial-era Mennonites as well.

Going to the Courthouse - Other Records

There are many more minor groups of records in courthouses that can still be of great interest to genealogists.  You may not be able to find all of these in all counties, but they are all worth pursuing.

Cemetery Records.  Most courthouses have a list of cemeteries in the county, including small and private cemeteries and single burials, most commonly in the county clerk's office.  Don't miss the chance to find your ancestor's grave.

School Records.  As recently as half a century ago, counties were blanketed with rural school districts.  The county clerk may have records from these school districts, including censuses of school-age children, board meeting minutes, and even children's grades, although many have been lost or destroyed.  Was your ancestor on the school board?  You'll need to find a map of school districts for the county to figure out which school your ancestor attended.  Here is an example I found when my grandmother Elisabeth (Suderman) Fast was listed among the school-age children of Paris School District #23 in Harvey County, Kansas, in 1898.

Census of School Population, 30 July 1898, Paris School District #23, Harvey County, Kansas, Register of Deeds, Courthouse, Newton.

This school census showed that the Suderman family was still living in Kansas in the middle of 1898, even though their father had bought land in south Texas in December 1897.

Criminal and Civil Court Records.  I suspect that far more of our ancestors were involved in criminal and civil cases than we realize today.  Occasionally these records are indexed, but far more often they are unindexed and located in dusty volumes in a vault.  If there is an index, I always check it for my ancestors.  On the rare occasion that I know that they were involved in a case, I will search for it, but this is usually a hard set of documents to search.

Vital Records.  Sometimes counties kept vital records of births, marriages, and deaths before the official state-mandated recording began; so these may be the only official source for these events.  For example, I found the marriage license for my great-grandparents Heinrich F. Reimer #317342 (1856-1923) and Katharina Barkman #317343 (1856-1943), who were married on 5 February 1880.  Nebraska did not keep state marriage records until 1909, but Jefferson County started in 1864.

Marriage license of Heinrich Reimer and Catharina Barkmann, 5 February 1880, Jefferson County, Nebraska, No. 473437, County Clerk's Office, Courthouse, Fairbury.

This document gave me the date and place of their marriage, their parents, the witnesses, and the minister who performed the wedding.  And it was issued by the county a full twenty-nine years before the state required them to do so.  Writing to Lincoln would not have produced this gem.

While you are in town, make sure to visit the genealogy room at the city or county library and the local historical museum.  They may have city directories, farm directories, newspaper clippings, town and county histories, family histories, collections of local letters and diaries, photographs, and much, much more.  Go to the church where your ancestor worshiped to look at their records.  If you still have relatives, even distant cousins, in the county, connect with them as they may have valuable records and stories that need to be written down as well.

By now you should have at least a week's worth of research to do in any county where your ancestor lived.  Good luck and happy hunting!