I have written previously about the insights which historic travelogues can provide for family historians and others interested in Old World homelands. It is true that they may be partisan, and prey to a whole host of prejudices and received opinions about places and peoples. They may also be tantalising – one wishes that the author had dwelt longer on a particular subject, or written in greater detail about a place that is of especial interest to the reader but receives only a passing mention from the author. But by their very nature these books were produced by outsiders, and therefore tend to be detached and unsentimental; they are written with fresh eyes keen to see and to compare with what they know; and it is rare that ones come away at the end of such travel-writing without an enlarged sense of what the place was like in the past.
I have just finished reading Henry Fanshawe Tozer’s Turkish Armenia and Eastern Asia Minor, which was published originally in 1881 but is now widely available as a scanned print-on-demand volume (my own copy is from Elibron Classics, which has a nice range of historic travel writings). Tozer’s name alone is surely enough to identify him as a Victorian gent with an interest in the classics and antiquities. More specifically, he was a graduate of Oxford, a clerk in holy orders, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. His main intellectual sphere of interest was Greece and the decaying Ottoman Empire.
Turkish Armenia and Eastern Asia Minor was the fruit of Tozer’s travels from July to September 1879, in other words very shortly after the famine of 1874 and the Russo-Turkish war of 1877/78. His book is interesting from a number of different perspectives – as a testament to a type of 19th century English gentleman, now all but extinct, and their manners abroad; as a record of the distressed state of the region in the late 1870s; for its descriptions of places and peoples met along the way, including typical habitations and features of agriculture; and for oddities such as manna and fat-tailed sheep.
To me it is also interesting for its definition of Armenia. I have tended to use fairly interchangeably the terms “Anatolia” and “Asia Minor” (which may be regarded respectively as Turkish and Greek concepts) to represent the entire geographical area of modern Turkey. Not so Tozer. For him, Asia Minor or Anatolia has a clear meaning; at a certain point travelling west to east, it gives way to Armenia; just as the latter segues into Kurdistan to the south and what might be called Pontus running along the southern seaboard of the Black Sea. More specifically, what separates Asia Minor from Armenia is the mountain range called the Anti-Taurus, or Aladağlar in Turkish. On the western side lie towns such as Kaiserieh (Turkish Kayseri) and Sivas which, although having an Armenian population as well as Turkish and Greek, are not in Armenia. Once you cross the Anti-Taurus you reach Armenia – ergo, the towns of Kharput (Turkish Elâzığ), Mush (Muş) and Erzeroum (Erzurum) are in Armenia. This is not to say that the towns are exclusively Armenian, for they were not – indeed, in Kharput, for example, Tozer estimates that there were only 500 Armenian households against up to 4,500 Turkish households. Rather, the towns were the outposts and centres of Ottoman rule; while the countryside was predominantly Armenian (Tozer writes that “the villages in the plain are almost entirely occupied by Armenians”) and here as everywhere it is the country which defines the national character of a region. Incidentally, many American-Armenians have immigrant ancestors who give “Kharput” (or a variant such as Harput, Kharberd, Kharpert etc) as their place of origin on passenger lists and manifests, petitions for naturalisation etc – it is important to exercise caution and not to assume that the ancestor was from the town itself rather than one of the multitude of Armenian villages in its catchment area.
Even in Armenia by Tozer’s definition, the Armenians “do not form an absolute majority of the population”. As Tozer states, “bad government” has led to much emigration, amplified by the recent war which drove Turkish Armenians into Russian Armenia. Moreover, Circassians had settled in Armenia after fleeing the Russian Empire during and following the Russo-Circassian Wars, and Kurds were pushing north and occupying former Armenian villages, further affecting the balance of population. Nevertheless, by rights the Republic of Armenia today should extend west, a third of the way across eastern Turkey, to Kharput. That it does not is the fault of multiple factors, principle among them the 1915 Genocide but also including the successive abandonment of the Armenian people by all the victorious Allies and Soviet Russia after WW1.
23rd to 29th January 2012 was Holocaust Memorial Week. It is fitting that this week the French Senate passed a bill which will make denial of a different Holocaust – the Armenian genocide of 1915 – illegal in France.
Imagine if, more than 65 years after the fact, the German or Austrian state denied the Holocaust. It’s unthinkable. Although in neither case was the state apparatus entirely cleansed of Nazis and their sympathisers, responsibility for the Shoah was accepted, reparation was made, and laws enacted which make Holocaust denial a criminal offence (as the pea-brained British historian David Irving found out during his 13 months in an Austrian gaol).
Yet nearly 100 years have passed since the Turkish state, in its then guise of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, perpetrated the 1915 Genocide of the Armenians, and still the Turkish state, academia and society generally refuse not just to accept responsibility but even to acknowledge the historic fact of the Genocide.
The Ottoman Empire was corrupt and incompetent but at least it was multinational and, for the most part, despite systemic discrimination embodied in law, in practice it was not always intolerant of minorities and other races and religions within its borders. The modern Republic of Turkey, on the other hand, was built upon Turkish nationalist and supremacist foundations. Turkey has tried to cleanse its territory of other peoples, through violence, expulsion and coercion. After the Armenians and Greeks were neutralised in Turkey, the only really large minority group remaining on its territory are the Kurds, who retain their identity despite more than eight decades of Turkish state persecution. The Kurds do not yet have a state of their own, nor do they have influential friends in USA or elsewhere prepared to support their rights. However, one can expect this to happen in time and Turkey’s reaction then will be interesting. In the meantime, the centenary of the Armenian genocide approaches in 2015 and one can expect further and ever more strident denials emanating from Ankara.
To start the year, here is a selection of eight books recommended for family historians in the English-speaking world with roots in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus:
Armenia
The Crossing Place, by Philip Marsden, 1993. This is subtitled “A Journey among the Armenians”. Marsden travels across the Armenian communities of the Middle-East and Eastern Europe to the Republic of Armenia but it would be wrong to think of this book simply as a travelogue, as it is more a reflection upon the survival of Armenia and the meaning of Armenian-ness in the Old World. Of course it touches upon the 1915 Genocide but equally it highlights the determined persistence and endurance of Armenian life.
Bosnia
Bosnia: A Cultural History, by Ivan Lovrenović, 2001. Most English-language books about Bosnia tend to be written from an outside perspective and to pontificate about the 1992-95 War. This book is one of the refreshing exceptions to that trend and is recommended reading for anyone with roots, whether Croat, Jewish, Muslim or Serb, in this part of the continent.
Greece
Portrait of a Greek Mountain Village, by Juliet du Boulay, 1974. I like reading anthropological and ethnographical works for the insight they give into the everyday lives and mindsets of a people. This book covers every aspect of the lives of the villagers of “Ambeli” (a pseudonym), a remote hamlet on the island of Euboea (Evia). There is still continuity despite changing times, and this work will give the family historian a profound sense of the lives of their ancestors in rural Greece and, of course, of how their distant cousins back in the old land continued to live well into the latter half of the 20th century.
Latvia
Walking Since Daybreak, Modris Eksteins, 1999. This is a family story written by a Canadian Latvian academic but, at the same time, a history of Latvia in the first half of the 20th century and a rare view into the lives of the officially recognised Displaced Persons, those individuals and families who for one reason or another found their way into UN relief camps in Occupied defeated Austria, Germany and Italy in the period 1945-52.
Lithuania
The Lithuanians in Scotland, by John Millar, 1998. Unlike all the other books I have chosen for this list, this one is more about the lives of an Eastern European people in their host land than their native land. This book is an easy read and very good on the lives of Scottish Lithuanians and the difficulties they experienced in Scotland (such as anti-Catholic prejudice and being mistaken for Poles). As the title suggests, though, it will not give you much on the home country Lithuania (which was of course part of Imperial Russia at the time of emigration).
Poland
I might have chosen one of several works by the tremendous contemporary writer Andrzej Stasiuk. I have selected Dukla (1997). It’s imaginative non-fiction, reflections on the nature of being in the remote rural and mountainous Beskidy regions of Poland’s Podkarpackie province (once part of the Austro-Hungarian Galicia kronland). There are satellite dishes and there are motor cars, but there is also a strong sense that, beneath the superficial changes of modernisation and despite the impositions of the Communist era, peasant life in this part of the country at the end of the 20th century continued pretty much as was from previous centuries.
Russia
I couldn’t choose between two Great Russian Novels in the tradition of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. These are Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate (1959) and Vasily Aksyonov’s Generations of Winter (1994). The former is the greater work of art, but both cover a vast sweep of Russian history in the 20th century and capture the Russian experience in all its daunting multiplicity.
Serbia
A Serbian Village, by Joel M Halpern, 1956. This is subtitled “Social and Cultural Change in a Yugoslav Community”. While this might sound like a dry academic book, the author, an anthropologist, writes in fascinating detail about the particularity of daily life, culture and customs in the village of Orašac. Although by the 1950s life in the Šumadija region had already started to embrace modernity, there is still enough of traditional rural Serbia intact to make this book a great insight into the lives of peasant ancestors from continental Serbia.
I first read Russell Hoban in about 1982, at the suggestion of my English literature teacher. Hoban’s post-apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker is set in East Kent, where I grew up and was attending school, which fact no doubt played some part in the recommendation. Whether it was otherwise an appropriate recommendation for a teenager is rather doubtful (although no more doubtful than the early works of Ian McEwan and the complete oeuvre of Samuel Beckett, which were also on the list my teacher gave me to while away that particular long summer holiday).
It was only when Hoban died earlier this month that I realised that he was not an Englishman but an American, and in fact the American-born child of Jewish immigrants. In the 1930 US census, he appears as the five-year old Pennsylvania-born Russell Conwell (sic), and is described as being the nephew of the newspaper advertising editor Abraham Hochban and his wife Jennie, Yiddish-speaking Russian Jews from Volhynia (or “Poland, Voline”, as it says in the census return). Wikipedia states that Russell was the son of this couple and that Conwell was his middle name not his surname, so presumably there is a clerical error in the census and/or a mistake on Wikipedia.
Abraham or Abram Hochban had married Jennie Dimmermann in Philadelphia in 1915 and became naturalised as a US citizen in 1922.
He had arrived in Philadelphia on 30th November 1913, on board the “Frankfurt” from Bremen in Germany. He appears in the incoming passenger list as Avram Gochbahn, not Hochban or Hochbahn. It is always worth remembering when undertaking genealogical research involving Russian records that the Russian alphabet lacks the letter H and uses the G instead. It is therefore not unusual to find names which we expect to begin with an H to be shown with a G in Russian language records and in English or German language records for which Russian language documents have been the source (as is the case here). Avram is recorded as being aged 19 (i.e. born circa 1894), single, and a clerk; his address (and that of his next of kin, his mother) appears to be Warschau (i.e. Warsaw).
The naturalisation papers give his date of birth as 3 June 1894. The passenger list states that Abraham had been born in Ostrog in Volhynia (now Ostroh in Ukraine). However, the naturalisation papers suggest that he was actually born in “Orgeiw”, Bessarabia (today Orhei in Moldova) but had been resident in Ostrog before emigration. Where was he actually born? Research would be necessary to determine this but it may be that Orhei, which like Ostrog had a thriving Jewish population, is the better candidate. In this instance, the need for caution is thrown up by the discrepancy in the records but, even where records appear consistent, one should still be cautious – across the Russian Empire the names of towns were often also the names of provinces or districts, and it cannot be automatically assumed that the town itself is intended.
The latest Bluebird Research Google Map is a work-in-progress showing the location of the Yezidi villages of Kurdistan. At present, the map shows primarily those villages which are extant and were not destroyed during the post-WW2 era in Iraq, when Yezidis (and other Kurds and minority groups) were subject to periodic persecution, sometimes of genocidal ferocity, by the Baathist state in Baghdad.
Sites of destroyed villages will be added where they can be ascertained. These will be evident when the map is viewed at higher magnification – the settlement will often appear as if rubbed out and few if any traces may be visible on the satellite image.
In addition, the map shows some of the modern collective villages into which Yezidis (and others) were forced during the Baathist rule. Generally, the population of four or more villages were deported from their centuries-old traditional settlements in the mountains and rehoused in planned but usually poorly executed collectives on the plains. Sometimes the collective would be named after one of the source villages; alternatively, different quarters of the collective might be named after the razed mountain villages, with the former inhabitants of each living in the eponymous neighbourhoods.
The location of the Yezidi villages of the Republic of Armenia is shown on Bluebird Research’s Google Map.
Old and new names of the Yezidi settlements are given. Armenian script can be and is transliterated into the Latin alphabet in a number of different ways, and the map legend gives some variants as well the standard modern name form.
If a village is shown without comment, it means that it is understood to be a wholly Yezidi village, as is the case especially with the two clusters of villages in Aragatsotn province, respectively west of Talin and around Alagyaz.
Some of the ancient Yezidi places of habitation in Aragotsotn, especially those NE of Mount Aragats, have been claimed to date back to the 11th century (and certainly they date back to at least the 16th century). Others are of much more recent origin, having been settled during or after the second decade of the 20th century, when Yezidis fled oppression in Turkish lands in eastern Anatolia.
One old Yezidi village in the Marmarik valley has not been located exactly, nor its modern name ascertained. This is Soukh-Bulakh (or -Bulagh, the Turkic word for a spring), which appears in a 19th century Russian gazetteer as a small Yezidi settlement of 16 “hearths”. It is possible that the site has been abandoned. Please contact us if you know the location of this village.
Bluebird Research would be pleased to hear from any family historians researching Yezidi ancestry.
The latest in the series of Bluebird Research maps showing the location of Armenian communities across the Middle East is for Lebanon. This shows places of worship for all three Armenian confessions – Armenian Apostolic, Armenian Catholic and Armenian Evangelical (or Protestant). As well as identifying the churches, in addition the settlements and districts with a significant Armenian population are also displayed.
Click here to open the Armenian communities of Lebanon Google Map.
Bluebird Research has created a Google Map showing the location of the Armenian communities and places of worship in Syria.
The Armenian population of modern Syria is concentrated in Aleppo (Armenian Haleb) and in a long line of settlements just south of the Turkish border, stretching from Kesab and its satellite villages above the Mediterranean Sea, east along the frontier to Derik (or Al Malikiyah).
Hagop Goudsouzian is a Canadian-Armenian documentary film-maker and two of his works are of particular value to Armenians in diaspora interested in family history and questions of identity.
The first is Armenian Exile, instalment one of a three-part work-in-progress. You can read about (and, if interested, order a copy on DVD) here.
The second part of Goudsouzian’s trilogy is My Son Shall Be Armenian, which is available to view online or to purchase on DVD at the National Film Board of Canada website.
The final part of the trilogy is due out soon.
There has been an Armenian community in what is today Iran and what was formerly Persia for many centuries, and some extremely ancient Armenian Apostolic churches are to be found in the north of the country – for example, the so-called “black church” of Surp Tade Vank south of the town of Maku and the Surp Stepanos Maghartavank monastery in a gorge near Julfa which form part of a UNESCO-recognised world heritage ensemble of exceptional interest.
Armenians of the Ottoman Empire sought refuge in Persia at the time of the 1915 Genocide, while other immigrants arrived after the Russian Revolution, and the Armenian population of Iran may have risen to a million or more at its peak. Today, however, the community is dwindling due to emigration, although not on account of political or religious factors, as one might assume. While there is some inevitable discrimination given that modern Iran is by definition an Islamic state, a majority of those local Armenians leaving Iran are doing so for economic reasons and emigrating particularly to USA (rather than to the Republic of Armenia or Western Europe). Some of the traditionally strong Armenian communities, such as those in the New Julfa (or Nor Jugha) quarter on the south side of Isfahan and in the city of Tabriz and the vicinity of Lake Urmia, have seen significant drops in population. Although the actual figures seem to be unknown and the process of emigration is continuing, it is thought that the total Armenian population of Iran may have fallen to as low as 75,000 in the years since the 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew the liberal, westward-leaning Shah.
The Armenians in parts of Persia also had strong links with India and especially with the British in India, operating alongside (and often on behalf of) the Honourable East India Company along the overland trade routes to the subcontinent. This is why there are Armenian churches in various cities in India, even though the actual Armenian community is now greatly reduced in number. Armenian cemeteries are also important for those British researchers with East India Company connections, as the burials of the British usually took place in Armenian cemeteries where there was not a Church of England or other Protestant church. In Iran this practice remained prevalent until the end of the 19th century. A very good example of this is at the port of Bushire (Bushehr) in Iran. See the websites produced by Liz Chater and Abdol Rasool Shadman for some transcriptions and photographs of the cemetery.
Bluebird Research has produced a Google Map showing the Armenian communities and places of worship (not all extant today) in Iran. If you have Armenian roots in Iran, or experience of Armenian family history research in Iran, we would be delighted to hear from you and may be able to assist you with your genealogical research.
Bluebird Research has created a Google Map showing the location of today’s Armenian communities in Iraq.
The Armenian population of the country is declining – since 2003, many Armenians in the major cities have either moved to safer rural locations, especially in Kurdistan, or left Iraq altogether and emigrated to other lands in the Middle-East (for example, Syria) or to the Republic of Armenia or to Europe or USA.
Earlier this year there were reports that register offices and state archives in Belarus had started to take an uncooperative stance towards Belarusian citizens of Polish descent seeking to document their immediate ancestry. The number of applicants applying for documentary evidence of vital events – birth or baptism, marriage, death or burial – for their parents, grandparents and great grandparents had risen sharply. However, this was not due to a sudden interest in Polish family history in Belarus. Rather, acquiring such certificates proving Polish ancestry has the practical effect of enabling a Belarusian citizen to enter Poland without a visa, following a new law which took effect in Poland in March 2008.
Belarus under Lukashenko is sometimes described as the last Stalinist state in Eastern Europe. The general standard of living is low, unemployment high, and a number of basic freedoms taken for granted across the rest of Europe are denied. Movement across the border into Poland – a member state of the European Union and relatively affluent compared to Belarus – is therefore a potentially attractive option for Belarusians with Polish roots. Furthermore, the so-called Karta Polaka which is issued by Polish consular authorities to the Belarusian Poles entitles them not just to free movement into Poland but also the right to employment without a work permit and to receive some state benefits include schooling and emergency healthcare.
The Belarusian state regards the issuing of the Karta Polaka with suspicion and is attempting to stem the flow of its citizens into Poland by denying them the necessary civil registration or Roman Catholic parish register documents required to make the application to the Polish consular authorities.
Belarus is of course not the only state affected by the Polish state’s extension of certain privileges to ethnic Poles outside its borders. The same law applies to all citizens of the successor states to the former USSR. While this has limited applicability in, for example, Estonia, where there are few Poles, it has potentially significant repercussions to states on Poland’s eastern border (Lithuania and Ukraine as well as Belarus) and to those more remote former Soviet republics to which many victims of the periodic purges and repressions of the minority nationalities of the Soviet Union were deported (for example, Kazakhstan).
The Karta Polaka has excited much interest and there are reports of hundreds of thousands of applicants at Polish consulates in such places as Ivano-Frankivs’k, Luts’k, L’viv and Vinnytsia in Ukraine, as well as Grodno and Brest in Belarus.
As the Karta Polaka is only issued to citizens of the former Soviet states named in the Polish legislation, it is unlikely that access restrictions to family history records will extend to genealogists in the worldwide Polish diaspora. However, these recent developments are likely to fuel the general nervousness and suspiciousness of some civil servants – both registrars and archivists – in Belarus and we may find that the level of cooperation and speed of service is affected when undertaking genealogical research in Belarus.
Traditionally a Muslim marriage in rural Bosnia was primarily a matter of fulfillment of local social customs, not of formal recognition by the state or the Islamic authorities. In fact, nearly always such temporal or spiritual validation of a union merely sealed a fait accompli. In the former Yugoslavia, a couple, once wedded according to local custom, would attend the relevant municipal register office of their district and there obtain a marriage certificate; the civil ceremony was short and required only two witnesses, there were seldom guests present and the couple was simply meeting the legal requirements of the secular state. An Islamic ceremony might then follow in the groom’s home (not the mosque) with the hodža (or imam) blessing the marriage, but a great many couples dispensed with this religious ceremony.
Before WW2, some Muslim couples in Yugoslavia did not bother with the civic ceremony and therefore their marriage was not legally recognised by the state. Instead they would register their marriage with the kadi for the district, who would issue them with an Islamic marriage contract.
The genealogist might wish to note that a Bosnian Muslim marriage might not be legalised until weeks, months or even a year or more after the event (for instance, at the same time as registering the birth of the first child of the marriage, especially when the couple’s village was some distance from the municipal register office).
There was seldom a long engagement. The ideal wedding according to custom would be one at which there was a procession, a communal feast and an elaborate exchange of gifts, and of course this required careful planning which might well extend the engagement period. However, for reasons of expediency and economy, a significant number of brides were married swiftly “through the window” rather than through the door. What this idiom means is that the couple eloped, although not as the term is usually understood in, for example, Western Europe or North America. Often the elopement was an open secret in the village, and the groom’s family and not infrequently the bride’s were aware of the plans; the stylised elopement simply enabled the wedding to take place without the grand fuss of the feasting and the ritualised and expensive gift-giving. In the cases of genuine elopement, the groom would come to his bride-to-be’s bedroom window in the evening and she would steal away into the night. The couple would not be absconding, though – instead, they would go straight to the groom’s family home. The traditional residence pattern in rural Bosnia was heavily patrilocal, meaning that upon marriage the bride immediately took up residence in the groom’s house, which usually meant in her mother-in-law’s house (until such time as the groom had funds to build his own house). After the elopement, male kin of the groom would then visit the bride’s household, bearing gifts, to make peace.
Another facet of Bosnian Muslim relations in rural areas is a customary prohibition against marriage within nine degrees of kinship (this was true of Bosnian Christians as well). Of course not everyone had such an in-depth understanding of their ancestry or the often complex network of inter-relationships in the village, and the prohibition might be more observed in the breach. Nevertheless, the practical effect of this, in combination with the patrilocality, was that in small rural communities most women married outside their native village into the village of their husband. What this means is that the men in a small village tended to be native to it, while a majority of the married women came from outside. This is another feature of Bosnian Muslim life in the smaller rural communities which it is worth bearing in mind when researching your family tree.
The Banat is one of the regions of Europe known as contact zones, where peoples of different ethnicity, religion and language co-existed, and to an extent still co-exist – sometimes harmoniously, sometimes uneasily, as is the case the world over.
Imagined as a Venn diagram, the Banat is perhaps a natural intersection for the Serbs to the west (who had pushed north to escape the Ottomans) and the Romanians to the east. However, there is also an artificial historical factor, caused by the ruling Habsburgs’ intervention and planned settlement of the land in the 18th century and more natural immigration of Imperial subjects in the 19th century. The majority of these were German speakers – they became known as Swabians, although Swabia was only one of various German regions from which they came. In addition to the Germans, the Banat received, among others, Bulgarian, Croat, Czech, French, Hungarian, Italian, Slovak, Spanish, Swiss and Ukrainian settlers – mostly but not exclusively Catholics (there were also Protestants of different persuasions, among them again many German settlers). And further broadening the mix of peoples in the area were Jewish merchants and professionals, Austrian civil servants, and Gypsy (locally Tsigani or Ţigani) settlements.
Resources and professional genealogical research services for those with German Banater ancestry are well-established. In the wake of WW2, rightly or wrongly, the Germans in Yugoslavia and Romania became persona non grata. The descendants of the Banat Germans now live in Germany, in Canada, in USA and elsewhere and, like all displaced and diaspora peoples, show a keen interest in their roots (roots which, of course, pass through the rich black soil of the Banat and extend beyond it to Baden and Lorraine, Westfalen and Württemberg).
However, Bluebird Research, as well as undertaking German genealogy in Serbia and Romania, can assist with your genealogical research in the Banat whatever the nationality or religion of your ancestors. We work in both Romania and Serbia; we are just as interested in the cultural and social history of the Hungarians and the Slovaks of the Banat; we have a special interest in the Jewish communities, now mostly lost; and in the Serbian Orthodox families, many of which can trace their histories back to “continental” Serbia (for instance to Šumadija), or to Herzegovina, or to Montenegro.
If you have ancestors from the Banat, and would like professional assistance with your family history research, please get in touch with us for a free assessment and estimate of costs. Research is affordable and success rates are generally high.
Montenegro, Crna Gora, may well be the most beautiful land in Europe. Everywhere you encounter startling and dramatic natural landscapes. Furthermore, with the exception of certain stretches of coastline which have been despoiled by development – by ugly and insensitive recent hotel and villa building – and the sprawl around the capital Podgorica (late Titograd), the built environment is of great attractiveness and interest.
A journey south-eastwards on the southern side of Lake Skadar is a lovely illustration of this. As you leave the lakeside village of Virpazar where the Crnojević river enters the lake, the road starts to ascend and wind its way slowly up the mountainside; these hairpin bends continue as the narrow road pursues its path high above the lake through rocky terrain and ancient chestnut forests towards the Albanian border.
From the start one can see the old Serbian Orthodox monasteries on the islands which dot the lake margin on this side – Manastir Starčevo, Beška, Moračnik. The siting of monasteries on these rocky outcrops would have served two purposes – both a spiritual retreat from the secular world, and a hope of protection from the periodic threat of the Turks. Tiny single-cell Orthodox or Catholic churches are to be found around the Montenegrin villages on this side of the lake, frequently planted on the tops of peaks or in otherwise seemingly barely accessible defensive and visually arresting positions – every one demands a photograph. As you continue south-eastwards, in the distance across the lake on the Albanian side one can see the city of Shkodër, while here in Montenegro churches start to be interspersed with the modest mosques and delicate white minarets of the local Albanians; soon, these start to be preponderant. The villages of the Rumija mountains that overlook the stillness of Skadar Lake are little more than hamlets, yet each one, Christian or Muslim, has its own rightness and sense of belonging to the landscape.
It is with disappointment that the journey ends; a viewpoint is reached near the international border with Albania, after which the road turns sharply back on itself and heads inland towards Vladimir and ultimately the port of Ulcinj.
The modest population of this corner of Europe has survived the centuries in situ, eking out a slight existence and a still essentially unchanged way of life, despite the modern horrors of politics and nationalism. Some villagers will have made their way out, maybe to other parts of the former Yugoslavia, or across the border into Albania, or to find work in Germany, or perhaps even to USA. Bluebird Research can undertake professional family history research across Montenegro but, if we are honest, we do not expect ever to have a case from Rumija and perhaps that is how it should be.
Bosnia and Herzegovina – BiH – is one of the few remaining places in Europe which are uncharted and unfamiliar to family historians in diaspora. It is also little travelled by tourists, at least beyond Sarajevo and Mostar and the important Catholic pilgrimage site at Međugorje. Visually the country is immensely stimulating but not immediately understood – it takes a few days to gather and process impressions and thoughts and make some sense of what you are experiencing.
Earlier this month I travelled from the Montenegro border crossing at Šćepan Polje, via Brod, Kiseljak and Vitez to Travnik, then back east through Zenica, Visoko, Sarajevo, Rogatica, Višegrad and beyond to the Serbian border at Kotroman. The most striking visual element is of course the prominence in the landscape of mosques (or džamije in what some guidebooks now euphemistically call “the local language”) and Muslim cemeteries. The latter are often sited on hillsides. The slim white grave-markers or nišani are elegant and, while many are simple and unadorned, others may be topped with a stylised representation of a turban or some other symbol such as a coffee pot. Islam requires prompt burial of the deceased and four or five sample grave-markers often lean together outside the cemetery ready to be purchased and put to use. The clusters of sleek gravestones reminded the childhood reader in me of the Hattifnattar in Tove Janson’s Moomin books.
The country is now divided into different entities, with Republika Srpska largely Serbian and the Federation segmented into a number of different cantons which are predominantly Croat and/or Bosniak (or Bošnjak – as most Bosnian Muslims prefer to be known since the War). However, it is incorrect to think of the country as having been neatly partitioned along religious or ethnic lines, and there is still much more mixing of population than media reports tend to suggest. The notion of cantons has been foisted upon Bosnia as if this borrowing from Switzerland could magic up the many privileges of the Swiss with their Catholic and Protestant religious, and French, German, Italian and Romansh language, harmonies, and their laissez-faire affluent burgher lifestyles. Reality in Bosnia is more complicated and not amenable to facile solutions imposed from outside.
But there is of course much ongoing outside influence. In predominantly Bosniak towns, the flow of money from Turkey and Saudi Arabia is apparent in the form of banks, airline advertisements, and investment in new mosques and medresas. Bosniaks have become re-Islamicised; or, rather, the young are embracing a Muslim identity that would have been foreign to the majority of their parents, grandparents and great grandparents in Tito’s Yugoslavia and even before WW2.
Meanwhile, in most towns in Bosnia the locals seem to have arrived at a pragmatic accommodation with one another’s faiths and nationalities. Mixed marriages were common throughout the former Yugoslavia and the bigger the town the larger their proportion. In the small town of Vitez, the population of which is roughly evenly balanced between Croats and Bosniaks, I ate lunch at the home of a Croat who had married a Slovenian and whose half-Russian aunt had married a Serb. This is the complex reality of Yugoslavia then and of BiH still.
The prospects for genealogical research in Bosnia and Hercegovina vary by place. If records survive, and were not destroyed during the various conflicts of the 20th century, it is usually possible to research Bosnian genealogies if one’s ancestors were Croats, Serbs, Sephardic Jews or, for that matter, Austrian Germans or other Imperial staff resident in Bosnia-Hercegovina during the period of Austro-Hungarian rule. The situation with respect to Bosnian Muslim ancestry is less straightforward, while Gypsy family history is regarded as all but impossible – registration of vital events by Gypsies was rare before the mid- or late 20th century and is unlikely to be complete even today.
Bluebird Research may be able to help you if you are in need of professional assistance with your family history research in Bosnia and is always pleased to hear from those investigating their ancestry in Bosnia. Please feel free to contact us for advice or an opinion on the prospects of success and the likely costs of research.
Sasun (also Sasoun or Sassoun) is both a village and the name of the eponymous district in Western Armenia, now Sason in Turkey. Like the surrounding region of the Ottoman Empire – the Anatolian towns of Bitlis, Diyarbakir and Mush – it was ethnically cleansed and systematically depopulated of its Armenians by the Turkish state forces and irregulars. Massacres occurred during 1893/94 and its aftermath, and again in 1904, before the 1915 Genocide and the Great War finally eliminated the Armenians from the land.
Those local Armenians, or Sasuntsis, who were not killed or converted under duress to Islam, went into hiding or fled Turkey. In 1917/18, many of the remaining local families accompanied the withdrawal of the Russian troops from Turkey, some not simply crossing the Russian border but continuing refugee journeys on to Tiflis, to Vladikavkas and to Armavir (the Russian town near Krasnodar which had been founded by Cherkesogai Armenians in the early 19th century). Their descendants are now either in diaspora (for instance, in Russia or having left via Batumi or some other Black Sea port for America) or in the modern Republic of Armenia. In Armenia, they settled especially in villages in the Talin area of Aragatsotn province – places such as Mastara, Nerkin Sasunashen and Shgharshik.
What this small story illustrates is that while it is true that few Armenians in the English-speaking diaspora have roots (= ancestors born) within the current borders of Armenia, it is likely that a significant number have distant relatives living there today. These kin – cousins two or three or more times removed – will be either the descendants of Armenians who fled Turkey directly into Russian Armenia, or returnees (hayrenadarts). Returnees or repatriates are Armenians who emigrated to Soviet Armenia, usually not having been born in the territory, so that the return or repatriation is emotional rather than literal. They came at various times but especially in 1931-33 and again during the 1946-48 Nerkaght or Homecoming. Most had been born, or would have had parents born, in Ottoman Turkey but they came to Soviet Armenia from Cyprus, Egypt, Iran and Syria and also from further afield, from France and Greece and America. Many, especially those tempted by Soviet propaganda, may have been disappointed with conditions upon arrival in Armenia but nevertheless made a life in their adopted homeland.
This week the family history website Find My Past has published the central index to the register of merchant seamen on British vessels. The original record series was created by the then Registrar General of Shipping and Seaman (part of the Board of Trade). It is now held on microfiche at The National Archives in Kew, England and can be seen under shelf references BT348, BT349 and BT350.
The resource takes the shape of record cards which form a central index to seamen registered to serve on British-registered vessels within the period from approximately 1918 to 1941.
What makes the Central Index Register cards interesting from an Eastern European genealogical research perspective is that many of those employed in the British merchant navy were engaged at overseas ports. For example, there are large numbers of records relating to Estonian, Greek and Latvian sailors. Additionally, there are smaller but still significant quantities of seamen from Cyprus, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine and the former Yugoslavia, and even some from landlocked Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Some of these men may have settled and even become naturalised in Britain but presumably a majority remained citizens or subjects of their country of birth.
The front and back of each index card have been scanned and an online index published so that the records of individual merchant marines can be searched for and located. Two, three or more cards of different dates exist for some individuals.
The cards evolved a little over time, from CR1 to CR2 to CR10 types, and the details recorded changed too. However, the basic format remains the same, as does the core detail of name, year and place of birth, rating, Discharge A Number, ship name and/or official registered number, and date. Some cards give physical descriptions, while others sport a black and white passport-style photograph and signature.
The data is handwritten onto the printed index cards. The handwriting is not always legible and may be faint or contain abbreviations. The place of birth information on the cards will reflect the date at which they were created and the spellings current at that time, sometimes anglicised or misspelt. For example, the Estonian islands of Hiiumaa and Saaremaa often appear as Dagö and Ösel respectively (typically minus their diacritics), being their old Swedish names, and similarly the Saaremaa capital Kuressaare is often given as Arensburg.
This online collection is not a complete record of those sailing on British merchant vessels between the Wars. The majority of cards dating from 1913 to 1921 are known to have been destroyed in 1969. Moreover, a fourth record series at The National Archives (shelf reference BT364) is not being published, on account of data protection and personal privacy concerns. The series BT364 also covers the period 1921 to 1941 and was extracted from the materials that now comprise BT348 to BT350 inclusive. It remains possible that this series, which has also been scanned and indexed, may be released too in due course.
A final note: while some of the individuals contained within these records will have seen service additionally in the Royal Navy at some date, it must be emphasised that the majority would have served only on British merchant vessels and were not in the armed forces.
Imagine. Millions of individuals are researching their ancestors. Hundreds of professional researchers have come into being to assist in the reconstruction of these family histories. Original registers are being imaged and indexed to broaden access and facilitate the process of research.
No, not 2011 in North America or Britain or Australia, but the mid-1930s in Nazi Germany.
From April 1933, all citizens in Germany were required to research and document their family tree, at least back to the level of their grandparents, and to obtain as evidence the corresponding certified copies of entries in birth and marriage registers (while SS officers had to zealously research their pedigree back to 1750 and other high level Nazi Party functionaries had to go back to 1800).
The reason for this rush of interest in genealogy was, of course, to validate one’s Aryan credentials, or determine one’s degree of Aryan purity, as the case may be. And one’s genealogy had grave consequences, for those who were non-Aryan (by which was meant Jewish) and for the great many who were Mischlinge or of mixed blood – at the very least, discrimination and persecution. Determining the status of each individual was not as straightforward as one might now think, and such factors as Jewish conversion to Lutheranism or Catholicism, or dropping out of the Jewish community without conversion to Christianity (Austritte), or illegitimacy, or disputed parentage, meant that the state had to interpret and decide upon tens of thousands of moot cases.
Various official Nazi bodies were involved in the process. Foremost was the Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung (the “Reich’s Centre for Genealogical Research”). Once the necessary tree had been recreated and register entries had been found and authenticated, the documentation had to be submitted to the Reichsstelle, where bureaucrats would then rule as to whether one was Aryan, three-quarters Aryan, half-Aryan, quarter-Aryan or non-Aryan.
In 1934 the Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung embarked upon an ambitious project to microfilm parish registers, both to preserve the originals and to make the material more readily available to the state. Accordingly, registers were called in from the churches to a central micro-reprographics studio in Berlin. A copy was returned to the incumbent of the church, and the master held in the Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung archives.
The Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung also created a massive central card index system for ease of reference. This comprised abstracted births and baptisms, with particular attention paid to the baptisms of converted Jews, from which it constructed its own handy Jüdische Personenstandsregister. This Register comprised the so-called Judenkartei, the index cards relating to Jewish converts. In fact there were two copies of these particular index cards. The original Judenkarte remained in the Reichsstelle’s archives, while a copy was gifted to the Evangelical Lutheran Church – the latter is now housed at the Evangelische Zentralarchiv in Berlin.
During the meticulously orchestrated Kristallnacht pogroms in November 1938, the Nazis not only razed or damaged synagogues, smashed Jewish property and assaulted Jews, but also carefully removed Jewish vital records from the synagogues, so these could be put to use by the state. Likewise, in 1939, the Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung took over the Jewish genealogical record collection of the Gesamtarchiv der Deutsche Juden. The Gesamtarchiv had been collecting original birth, marriage and death registers from synagogues across Germany for over 30 years, held vital records for hundreds of local communities across Germany and had also created a card index of Jewish births in Berlin (where the sheer size of the community and number of synagogues made it difficult to find a particular record unless one already knew the exact place of registration).
Within seven years, mandatory genealogy had affected the lives of millions in Germany and, of course, impacted in particular upon the lives of the hundreds of thousands of German Jews. Today we do genealogy for a different reason, to affirm identity and heritage, but it is perhaps wise to remember that genealogy can also be put to sinister uses in the hands of eugenicists, racial supremacists and ultra-nationalists.
This blog article owes much to Prof Deborah Hertz. For further information on the uses to which the Nazis put genealogy, see Prof Hertz’s 1997 article “The Genealogy Bureaucracy in the Third Reich” published in the periodical Jewish History (Vol 11, No 2).
The Austro-Hungarian, or Habsburg, Empire, also known as the Dual Monarchy, collapsed and fractured during WW1 and new nation states emerged from its ruins, including of course the modest Central European state of Austria itself.
It is difficult to argue against today’s received opinion that empires are bad things and that it is wrong for one people to rule over another. In practice, though, the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire was largely benign. It is true that from time and time, and perhaps particularly although by no means exclusively in areas under Hungarian rule, emerging nationalisms were suppressed; sometimes this was by show of force, but by the late 19th century the Empire had become largely a bureaucratic organism.
The great elegist of the Empire, Joseph Roth, does not attribute the collapse of Austro-Hungary to the rise of Yugoslav and Romanian and Czechoslovak nationalism, but to the overweening pan-Germanic nationalism which was to have such devastating consequences for Europe.
In his 1938 novel The Emperor’s Tomb (translated by John Hoare, pub Granta, 1999), the character Count Chojnicki — a cipher for Roth himself — prophesied before the outbreak of WW1 that “Austria will perish at the hands of the Nibelungen fantasy”1. “It is the Slovenes, the Poles and Galicians from Ruthenia, the kaftan-clad Jews from Boryslaw2, the horse traders from the Bacska3, the Moslems from Sarajevo, the chestnut roasters from Mostar who sing our national anthem “Gott Erhalte”, while the Germans in the Empire sing German martial and chauvinist tunes. Similarly, the narrator and protagonist, Trotta, writes of the “tragic love which the Crown Lands4 bore to Austria”:
“The gypsies of the Puszta5, the Huzulen6 of Subcarpathia, the Jewish coachmen of Galicia, my own kin the Slovene chestnut roasters of Sipolje, the Swabian7 tobacco growers from the Bacska, the horse breeders of the Steppes, the Osman Sibersna8, the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the horse traders from the Hanakei9 in Moravia, the weavers from the Erzgebirge10, the millers and coral dealers of Podolia11: all these were the open-handed providers of Austria.”
After WW1, reflecting on the demise of Austro-Hungary and the mediocrity to which defeated Austria had sunk, Chojnicki bemoans “the fatheads from the Alps and the Sudeten Germans, those cretinous Nibelungen… It was not our Czechs, our Poles, or Ruthenians who betrayed us, but the Germans, only the Germans, at our very heart.”
- Nibelungen: mythological nonsense popularised by Wagner
- Boryslaw: Boryslav, a small town now in Ukraine
- Bacska: properly Bačka, a region now largely in northern Serbia
- Crownlands: provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
- Puszta: the steppes of the Alföld, the great Hungarian plain
- Huzulen: the Hutsuls, a Ruthenian or western Ukrainian people
- Swabian: 18th century German settlers in the Banat in northern Serbia and adjacent Romania
- Osman Sibersna: a phrase not properly translated into English from the original German language die osmanische Sibersna but presumably referring to Ottomans of Bosnia-Herzegovina
- Hanakei: the Moravian people of the Haná region around the town of Olomouc, Czech Republic
- Erzgebirg: the Krušné Hory mountain range, also now in the Czech Republic
- Podolia: here western Podolia is meant, being the region around the city of Ternopil‘, now in Ukraine
Bluebird Research has created a Google Map which shows the Armenian Apostolic (Gregorian) churches in Constantinople (Istanbul or Bolis, “the city”), Turkey for which there are surviving historical parish registers of use for Armenian family history research.
Note that churches for which there are no known surviving historical parish records are not shown.
Similarly, Armenian Catholic churches are not depicted on the map.
If you have Constantinople (Bolsahye) roots and would like professional assistance with your Armenian genealogical research, please feel free to contact Bluebird Research for a detailed free assessment.
Among the aristocracy of Imperial Russia, as of course among the landed gentry in other places, some men of title fathered children by mistresses, of high and low birth, and by female serfs in their households and on their estates in accordance with the droit du seigneur. Those of the illegitimate children recognised by the father, and perhaps supported by him, would sometimes take a truncated version of his surname (as well as his patronymic) so as to acknowledge paternity but at the same time prevent confusion with the legitimate bloodline.
It seems that recourse to the dropping of the leading syllable of the surname was the practice most often adopted. For example, the surname Pnin, today most associated with Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, was borne by the poet Ivan Petrovich Pnin and was an abbreviated version of the surname of his father the statesman Nikolai Vasilyevich Repnin.
Similarly, the 18th century educationalist Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy was the illegitimate son of Ivan Yurievich Trubetskoy. Other examples include Golitsyn shortened to Litsyn, and Putivlev to Ivlev.
The Jews of Belgrade were largely exterminated by the Nazis and their local accomplices between October 1941 and May 1942. The Nazis declared the city Judenfrei by August of 1942. Of course, as elsewhere in Serbia and throughout Europe, this was seldom entirely true – individual Jews managed to go in to hiding, or were concealed and protected by kind neighbours, or left Belgrade for the relative safety of an obscure village in the countryside, or fled while there was still time with view to returning later. Nevertheless, the great majority of the pre-War Jewish population of Belgrade was destroyed.
The Jews of Belgrade were both Ashkenazic and Sephardic, with the latter in the majority (as tended to be the case throughout the former Yugoslavia and the Balkans), forming approximately 80% of the overall community. Before the Shoah there were four functioning Sephardic synagogues and prayer houses in Belgrade. However, families were not necessarily religious – the Jews of Serbia were usually assimilated and often upwardly mobile and, as well as merchants and craftsmen, there were many shop salesmen and clerks, professionals and intellectuals.
Although the community was destroyed in 1942, there are excellent surviving records covering the period from the turn of the century up to the Holocaust. These are not online but in some cases have been digitised and can be interrogated locally. Other and frequently more informative paper files have to be called up in the traditional way in the municipal archives. If an individual or a family was established in the city, especially in the Stari Grad (“old town”) neighbourhoods such as Dorćol, we can usually find a very good paper trail for the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s up to 1941/42, detailing dates of vital events, occupations, residential addresses and so on. Such records often indicate connections elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia or abroad – a sojourn in Croatia perhaps, a wife born in another city with a thriving Sephardic community, or a parent from Sofia in Bulgaria.
If you are interested in Jewish family history research in Belgrade, Bluebird Research would be delighted to assist – please email us for an assessment and estimate of costs.
How a society disposes of its dead is one of the most interesting and often distinctive outward signs of its culture and values. When travelling abroad it is invariably an illuminating experience to pop into some cemeteries and take a look around.
Earlier this month I was in Russia. It is foolhardy to even consider generalising about a country the size of a continent so I should stress that I saw only small pockets of the Leningradskaya oblast in the NW.
The oldest graves I saw were not in graveyards at all but were kurgans, or barrows. You could be forgiven for overlooking these burial mounds, as they could be mistaken for natural features until you notice their placement and disposition – in this case (near the village of Staraya Ladoga in the Volkhovsky raion), commanding a sweeping panoramic view over one of those broad slow-flowing rivers that wind their way through and are so evocative of many parts of European Russia. Of course these are no ordinary graves but the final resting places of prominent chiefs of what in Russian are called Varyagi, or Varangians, the Vikings who traded with the early princely states of northern Russia. These particular kurgans probably date to between the 9th and 11th centuries. Today they are over-run with meadow flowers and grasses and their original purpose has been obscured, but they remain an outstanding feature of the local landscape.
On Vasilyevsky Island, one of the various islands which compose St Petersburg, I visited the Smolensky Cemetery or, to be more precise, the Russian Orthodox section of it (as opposed to the Lutheran and Armenian portions). Although not dating back to the founding of the city, this is at least 270 years old and still going strong, although a passerby might be forgiven for believing they were passing by a walled forest – the graves, along with bush and shrub, form the dense undergrowth of a mature woodland. The graves are packed in with a rich exuberance and a modicum of natural chaos, the antithesis of, say, the neat and orderly, regularly spaced stark white headstones of a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Flanders. Mid-18th century graves sit alongside those of the casualties of an early 21st century air crash. There are Orthodox crosses of iron and wood and stone; stone tub type graves from the 1920s; headstones featuring a photograph of the deceased in ceramic or in carved relief; and grandiose mausoleums. And all types of beautiful Cyrillic script, in pre- and post- spelling reform alphabets, with the otchestvo or patronymic helpfully (for the genealogist) identifying the father of the deceased. Unidentified passerines sing high in the canopy and flit in the shadows; speckled woods spiral in the sunlight; a red squirrel peers round the side of a tree trunk; and believers in head scarves follow a path through the forest to the chapel of Saint Blessed Xenia of St Petersburg, where they kiss the icons and press their foreheads to the cool outer walls.
By the Aleksander Nevsky Lavra monastery on the SE side of the city, there are three separate cemeteries. Two are closed for burial and managed by the State Museum of Urban Sculpture; one is under the aegis of the monastery. The state ones are the Tikhvin (or Necropolis of the Masters of Arts), which is arranged much like an outdoor sculpture park in leafy surroundings and where one can pay homage to Dostoevsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky et al; and the older, largely 18th century Lazarevskoe, which has a mad profusion of funereal hardware, with frankly bizarre and idiosyncratic symbolism adorning some of the monuments. The third cemetery, the one in the grounds of the monastery proper, is in a state of some disrepair but also of incongruity – there is a tall modern memorial to the Orthodox clergy who were persecuted under Communism, but there are also both early and late Soviet graves. The later Soviet gravestones show the dead hand of the system that smothered Russia, bearing the likenesses of stolid stony-faced time-serving apparatchik and nomenklatura men. But the Soviet headstones from the 1920s make prominent use of the red star (bringing to mind Krzhizhanovsky’s “red metal stars on thin wire stems fidget[ing] nervously in the wind”*), eschew religious symbolism and sometimes attempt radical redesign; from the names one can identify Armenian, Central Asian and Jewish as well as Russian Bolsheviks who died prematurely in that first decade of the new post-Revolutionary era; and one can sense that sense of promise and hope that was dying unfulfilled with them.
*”The Thirteenth Category of Reason” in Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated by Joanne Turnbull (NYRB, 2009)
Zhytomyr, or Zhitomir (also Shitomir in German), is a Ukrainian provincial capital, seat of the Zhytomyr oblast, but is of immense significance for family historians with German-Ukrainian roots and specifically for those from Ukrainisch Wolhynien. This is the region of Volhynia to the west of Kyiv formerly dense with German settlements and colonies founded during the 19th century. The German population was particularly concentrated in the triangle between the towns of Zhytomyr, Novohrad-Volynskyi (or Nowograd-Wolhynsk, previously known as Zwiahel or Swehl) and Korosten.
Ukraine operates, in theory if not always in practice, a 75-year “modern era” closure period, meaning that records from before 1936 (at the time of writing) should be on open access in state archives rather than closed, for reasons of data protection and personal privacy, in register offices (known by the acronym RAHS and administered by the Ministry of Justice).
The state regional archives in Zhytomyr are one of the most efficient and cooperative in Ukraine. Among their holdings is an important collection of German Evangelical Lutheran parish registers for Wolhynien. These vital records all date from before 1936, of course, and are particularly strong for the period from about 1900 to 1920. The collection is not complete but includes, among others, births/baptisms, marriages and deaths/burials for the parishes of Emiltschin, Heimthal, Radomysl, Tutschin, Shitomir itself and Nowograd-Wolhynsk. There are also name indexes in the archive and a collection of police files which contain biographical information on individual inhabitants.
The same archive also houses a number of records of interest to those with German Baptist roots, e.g. in Tutschin.
Bluebird Research offers research services at Zhytomyr state archives and is also able to assist at other locations which hold Wolhynien Lutheran records, such as the St Petersburg archives which hold the bishop’s transcripts for the years 1836-1885 (the original parish registers being lost, only these contemporaneous copies survive).
Please contact us for a free assessment if you are interested in professional family history research assistance in Ukraine or Russia.
The very nature of the trade of a professional genealogist is to undertake research into someone else’s family history. As a genealogist, one is accustomed to researching one’s own tree and generally feels reasonably confident when visualising the past and imaginatively reconstructing the lives of one’s ancestors, based upon what one knows of local history and culture, the places where they lived and what they did for a living. At least that is certainly the case when one’s ancestors come from the same country and, as in my own particular case, the same county and often the same town.
It is of course different if you live in diaspora, if you are, for example, a resident of North America or Australia or South Africa with ancestors back in the unfamiliar old world of continental Europe. When, as a professional genealogist, one conducts investigations on behalf of such individuals into their family background in Europe, one brings to bear the wide experience of one’s previous research across multiple cases, the knowledge derived from reading and, in many instances, from travel; but most of all one has to have what Keats called negative capability. This is the ability to suppress one’s own personality and to project oneself into the lives of others, to try to think and feel the world through their eyes. One might argue that this is largely spurious but I do not think it impossible to gain practical insights into avenues of research from this kind of imaginative or lateral thinking. Certainly, one often finds that one becomes preoccupied with particular individuals or lines of a family being researched, as one wonders about their lives, their motivations, what prompted them to emigrate, for example, or how they managed to survive adverse circumstances.
David Albahari published in 1998 a book called, in English translation, Götz and Meyer*. His book is an essay in negative capability, an attempt to come to terms with the experience and unknowable inner life of participants in the terrible drama of the extermination of the Jewish community of Belgrade once Serbia had been forced to capitulate to Nazi occupation. Between April and July 1941 almost 9,500 Belgrade Jews had to register with the authorities. The Jewish men of Belgrade were mostly shot in October 1941, but the women, children and elderly were taken to the Sajmište concentration camp (in the grounds of a former trade fair on the outskirts of the city) in December 1941. The protagonists of the title are Wilhelm Götz and Erwin Meyer, NCOs of the Nazi SS who operated the gaswagen (or dušegupka in Serbian) that liquidated the Sajmište camp Jews between March and May 1942, using the truck’s exhaust fumes, on daily or twice-daily trips (excepting Sundays) out towards Jajinci. What can one know of Götz and Meyer? Albahari presents them not as callous or psychopathic but as normal men carrying out a perhaps unpleasant but necessary duty for the greater good. Gradually over the course of the book they are used as a means of teasing out the last days and demise of the family Albahari doesn’t know, those lost in the Shoah:
“When I first tried to sketch out my family tree, it looked like… a blade of grass, like a bare tree, without leaves.”
He interviews an ailing elderly relative living in care but still able to record the names of multiple uncles, aunts and cousins, whose lives Albahari then researches as best he can using the surviving vital records of the Jewish community of Belgrade:
“My family tree now looked quite different, it had filled out with leaves and branches, and it was sturdier… I ought to have had 67 relatives, some of them close, others more distant… in fact I had only six, including the cousin in the old people’s home.”
The cousin passes away shortly after. The other five kin, “the last kernels on a gnawed ear of corn”, lived in Argentina, Australia, Israel and USA. Their average age was 80 and all were childless.
“I was an ear of corn with nothing but a few loose kernels left on it… when all of us died off, when our kernels fell into the washtub of time, nothing would be left from my parents’ families.”
Although ironically, perhaps, the book is an easy read – you can read it in two sittings – it is a serious and sobering reflection on persecutor and victim, as well as a personal journey in discovering and attempting to come to terms with the past and realising the significance of memory. It also makes one start to think about the ones who got away, and how; what role was played by chance or luck or circumstances, and what part by the initiative, or sheer determination, or instinctive will to survive of those Jews of Belgrade who somehow came through the Holocaust years alive, against all the odds.
*published by Vintage, 2005, in translation by Ellen Elias-Bursać
Czesław Miłosz relates the story of an independently wealthy Warsaw Jew named Felix, who had taken up residence in Vilnius’s Hotel Europa*. In 1939 Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia had discovered just enough friendship for one another to partition Poland between them along the euphemistic “peace boundary” (or Molotov-Ribbentrop line), and Felix was now seemingly trapped in Vilnius within an enlarged Soviet Union. Moreover, in the summer of 1940 he was relieved of his moveable assets by a duplicitous lawyer acquaintance. However, Felix found a way out by Trans-Siberian rail across the continent-sized USSR to its Far-East border with Japanese-occupied Manchuria. This was even less feasible than it may sound, as the Soviets permitted such travel only to those with a Japanese visa – and by mid-1940 it was no longer possible to acquire such a visa legitimately.
However, in Vilnius lived a rabbi named Silberstein with preternatural gifts of prescience: while exit visas were still to be had, he had done the rounds of the overseas consulates and filled his passport with as wide an array of stamps as possible. There also existed in Vilnius at that time extremely gifted illustrators, graphic designers and printers. Rabbi Silberstein’s Japanese visa therefore served as a template and could be duplicated as needed but, as Miłosz writes, “it was marked by one defect: no one in the city knew the Japanese alphabet, and therefore could have guessed that each visa contained the name of its first owner. When the five-hundredth Silberstein passed over the Manchurian frontier, the Japanese began to worry…”
Whether this part of the story is apocryphal in whole or in part, Felix did escape to Shanghai and thence via Australia to USA, only to be killed in a motor vehicle accident in Hawaii.
It is also likely that the good rabbi’s original bona fide visa was one of those issued by Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese Vice-Consul in Kaunas in independent Lithuania, and one of the Righteous Among The Nations. His story can be read on Wikipedia.
*see the essay collection Proud To Be A Mammal: Essays on War, Faith and Memory, pub Penguin, 2010.
In the 1881 census for England, a five year old girl named Flora is to be found residing with three sisters, her mother Sophia and her father, the curate, Samuel Dickson Sandes, at The Rectory in Monewden, Suffolk. The living for the rural parish of St Mary’s was valued at £265 in 1868. The National Archives’ handy currency converter tells us that this sum would be worth about £12,110 in today’s money – not much but then it was a small and obscure parish. By the time of the 1891 census, the family has moved a little cross-county to The Rectory in Marlesford.
At the next decennial census in 1901, the family is living in suburbia, at St Paul’s Road, Thornton Heath, Surrey. Rev Sandes, now 78, is recorded as “living on own means”, so one assumes that he has retired from the curacy of Anglican souls. Flora is still at home, a 25 year old spinster, described, like her sister Fanny, as a correspondent. In 1911, the most recent census of England & Wales currently publicly available, the family is still at St Paul’s Road. By this date the Rev Sandes, aged 88, is describing himself as a “retired parson and barrister”. He may have become curmudgeonly with age, or perhaps was registering a minor objection to the exclusion of women from the franchise (in tune with the “No Vote, No Census” protest): either way, the census return, which is neatly completed in most respects, records against the Ages of Females simply “full” against his daughter Flora and the other women in the house (excepting his wife Sophia, who is an acknowledged 78). The census enumerator, one William Warman, has pencilled in the remarks “will not give ages” and “refuses to give ages and any further information”, his irritation almost audible.
And as for Flora herself, the column Personal Occupation says: None. Yet five years later Flora Sandes was a Captain in the Serbian Army.
Flora volunteered for overseas service immediately upon the outbreak of WW1 in August 1914. She was rejected by the Volunteer Aid Detachment but got in to the American Mabel Grujić’s Red Cross Unit on a temporary three-month stint and headed to Serbia. She then returned home to fund-raise before returning in 1915 to join the Serbian Red Cross. She served in Niš, caught typhus in Valjevo, was attached to the Serbian Second Army, and worked as a medical orderly in Salonica and Monastir before making the transition from nurse to soldier. Commissioned as an army officer, she fought at Kajmakčalan before accompanying the retreating Serbs on their long winter march across Albania to safety in Corfu and Bizerte (Tunisia).
After the War, Flora Sandes lived in Yugoslavia and married a White Russian officer named Judenič (later imprisoned and killed by the Nazis), before returning to England in her sixties.
Flora Sandes was one of hundreds of British women who volunteered and served as nurses in Serbia during WW1, at places such as Kragujevac, Mladenovac and Valjevo. Some served under the aegis of the Red Cross, others as part of the independent Scottish Women’s Hospital for Foreign Service. Most came from relatively comfortable and privileged backgrounds and the contrast between their early life experiences and those of the war must have been acute and unimaginable.
For those researching an ancestor or family member who was one of those women, there is a significant collection of records in the archives of the Imperial War Museum in London.
The former Russian Empire gubernia or province of Volhynia, part of the region which Poles know as kresy, was divided at the Treaty of Riga in 1921. The western side was joined to newly re-independent Poland, while the eastern side became part of the Ukrainian SSR. Towns such as Lutsk and Rivno became officially Polish Łuck and Równe; Zwiahel and Żytomierz became formally Ukrainian Novohrad-Volynskyi and Zhytomyr. In the Imperial Russian era, Poles had made up a minority of the overall population across Volhynia but held disproportionate influence, usually forming the local elite in both town and country areas.
The situation on the ground was not so straightforward, however. Volhynia was an ethnically mixed region, home to Germans (for whom it was Wolhynien), Jews (who called it Vohlin in Yiddish), Poles (who called it Wołyń) and Ukrainians (Volyn), with a corresponding mix of religions. Even this does no justice to the granular complexity. For example, Roman Catholics, unless they were German, were usually regarded as Poles, even if they spoke only Ukrainian; but it was a moot point as to whether they were Poles who had lost their mother tongue over time, or Ukrainians whose ancestors had converted due to Polish landowner or clerical pressure. Moreover, while the population may not have been especially literate, many peasants and other villagers were bilingual.
Furthermore, there was little national consciousness. Just as in neighbouring Polissia immediately to the north, also split after WW1 between Poland and, in this case, the Belarusian SSR, the peasantry identified themselves primarily by their religion or by their social estate as peasants: many, when questioned by early Soviet ethnographers, stated that they were “locals” and spoke the “local” language.
Of course the Soviets, having gained formal control over Ukraine at the Treaty of Riga, sought to modernise and develop what was still a largely traditional society, religious, insular and self-sufficient. The Soviets wanted the backward periphery to acquire the new forward-looking Soviet consciousness. One way in which the USSR of the 1920s and early 1930s tried to achieve this was through recognising and encouraging national minorities. This involved tidying up the particularities of “local” cultures – for example, Poles had to be Poles and, if they were not sufficiently Polish, they must be polonised, meaning that Ukrainian-speaking Roman Catholics were classified as Poles and encouraged to learn proper Polish. Each national minority was acknowledged and appropriate local administrative structures were put in place to develop and of course to try to Sovietise each national group. Within Zhytomyr okrug, a special Marchlevsk Polish Autonomous Region (Marchlewszczyzna in Polish) was set up in 1925, centred around the Polish village of Dołbysz (re-named Marchlevsk after the Polish activist Marchlewski), during this phase of Soviet enthusiasm for the minorities. However, this was not to last.
The Soviets found that the local population in Marchlevsk and elsewhere in Volhynia was not compliant. The locals were averse to collectivisation, they failed to fulfil command economy quotas, they persisted in their old ways of life, preferring to remain upon their scattered homesteads and in their small hamlets rather than congregate in efficient centralised nuclear villages and towns. The experiment in encouraging national minorities backfired, not on the Soviets but on the minorities themselves. Increasingly they began to be seen as wreckers, saboteurs, conspirators, collaborators, spies; not good Soviet citizens but consciously or subconsciously working for capitalist Poland or Nazi Germany.
Volhynia didn’t really have any fat exploitative kulaks to purge but, nevertheless, in 1930 some 15,000 “kulaks” and “enemy Poles” were identified. In 1935 the Marchlevsk polraion was dismantled. Some 35,000 Poles were deported to eastern Ukraine, and 4,000 volunteer eastern Ukrainian families brought in to take their place. In the following year, 1936, there were mass summary deportations of approximately 70,000 Poles and Germans from Volhynia to Kazakhstan. In 1937/38 an estimated 56,000 Poles and German were arrested, charged and then imprisoned or deported.
The deportees became so-called special settlers in the remote semi-arid northern reaches of Kazakhstan. By 1945 the number of national minority special settlers in Kazakhstan had reached 900,000, including minorities from Karelia, the Caucasus and the Russian Far East as well as from the kresy. They were expected to cultivate the previously uncultivated steppe grazing lands of the Kazakh nomads (who themselves had been deprived of their traditional manner of life, forced into collectivised or urban existences). The new special settlements each comprised a founder population of 1,500 people, and initially were simply numbered rather than named. Later, the settlers named them, often reflecting their places of origin (such as Podilske or Volynka). The conditions imposed on the special settlements were not entirely punitive but there were restrictions upon travel and a requirement to register monthly with officers of the NKVD, the state apparatus which managed them. Special settlers were not in receipt of internal passports – from 1932, when they were re-introduced by the Soviets, until reforms in 1956 during the post-Stalin thaw, these were granted only to Soviet citizens in towns or working on state farms, not to peasants or collective farm workers.
The national minorities were encouraged to assimilate and to become Homo sovieticus. Mixed marriages were commonplace. Native language fluency diminished at the second or third generation. A new Soviet identity was forged. Today one must expect there to be a resurgence of interest in roots, in ancestry and in the historic homeland, among these peoples who were made to colonise Kazakhstan, just as, in an entirely different context, the growth of identity politics since the 1970s in the melting pot of USA has led to an increased desire to understand one’s family history and the specificity of its immigrant experience.
*This blog owes much to Kate Brown’s A Biography of No Place (Harvard University Press, 2004), to which the reader is referred for more on Marchlevsk Polish Autonomous Region and also on its German equivalent, the Pulin German Autonomous Region.
“Until not long ago, family histories were something to hide… Everyone had scars on their family tree, a repressed father, an exiled aunt, someone with a prison record. It was better not to pass that information on to the children. So now people don’t know anything about where they come from or who their family members were. They don’t even know recent family history… On my father’s side, I know seven generations back, but on my mother’s side I couldn’t even give you the name of my grandparents.”
Gennadii Romanovich, archivist at State Archives of Zhytomyr Province, Ukraine (quoted in Kate Brown’s A Biography of No Place, Harvard University Press, 2004)
Who was recruited?
In the early 18th century, the expectation was that one man would be enlisted into the army from every 20 families within a community each year. All social estates, high and low, were liable for military service. However, over the decades many privileges and exemptions were granted so that by 1858 an estimated 20% of the otherwise eligible male population of the Empire was in fact exempt – this included landowners, members of merchant guilds, those with a higher education and the like, but also all those living in specific regions of empire such as Bessarabia. The burden of “other ranks” military service therefore fell heaviest on the peasantry and the urban poor.
How were recruits selected?
In rural Russia, the peasant community itself – the mir – was responsible for putting forward a list of candidates. While the mir or commune probably knew who among its members was eligible for the draft, the undertaking of the Russian censuses, producing the periodic but somewhat irregular revision lists (now of great value to family historians with roots in the former Russian Empire), formalised the process by identifying and recording the population. Unlike censuses in Britain, for example, which were used solely for social planning, the Russian revisions were used explicitly for taxation and conscription purposes.
Each year, the commune produced a shortlist of potential recruits which was then submitted to an army induction centre set up temporarily for the purpose in the nearest town in the volost or uezd (or district). The requisite number of men would then be conscripted into the army, while those not selected could expect to be put forward again the following year. Of course, some men were rejected by the army for not meeting its physical criteria and would unlikely to be conscripted in any year. Others, such as those with disabilities, were deselected by the commune itself and never made the list. To a certain extent, both the commune and the army were sensitive to the fact that each conscript was a lost worker and a lost taxpayer, with the peasants knowing that someone else would have to make up the deficit in labour and money. This meant that there was usually a conscious effort to spare only sons, or only working males in families. In a household of many brothers or sons, it was almost inevitable that one or more would be drafted. However, it was also possible for wealthier farmers to use influence or to purchase a surrogate from a different community to take the place of their brother or son who had been placed on the shortlist. Finally, commune members perceived to be unproductive, or exhibiting anti-social behaviour or committing petty crimes, would be sure to top the shortlist.
While therefore the commune exercised a measure of influence over who was recruited and who not, it is easy to see that the whole process of conscription was a source of stress and tension within each community. This was particularly the case as army service was neither short nor sweet…
How long did a soldier serve in the army?
- Before 1793, a soldier could expect to serve in the Russian army for life.
- From 1793, this was reduced to 25 years.
- From 1834, military service was reduced to 20 years.
- From 1874, the term of service was reduced to 18 years, of which initially the first 5 years were to be spent in the regular standing army and the subsequent 13 years in the reserves. However, later this was changed to 3 years in the army and 15 years in the reserves.
What happened to a new recruit?
Enlistment into the army was a transformational experience. Not only would the recruit very probably leave the vicinity of his native village for the first time but he would be unlikely to return for many years, if at all. Instead, he would be swallowed up into the army corpus, be billeted upon unwilling householders and endure all the hardships of army life which were severe even during peacetime.
However, something else rather peculiar immediately happened to a new recruit. His legal status in Russian society changed. That change was a form of emancipation, albeit deferred until such time as he was discharged from the army. Upon joining the army he ceased to be exposed to any of his former tax or labour obligations, whether to state, church or landowner. Effectively, he was now a free man, just a free man conscripted into the unfreedom of army life.
What about soldiers’ wives and children?
If a recruit was already married, with or without children, the usual scenario was long term separation. There was no easy mechanism for wives and children to go upon the strength, although some managed to continue to cohabit with their men when they were stationed in garrisons or fortresses. Instead, the recruit’s family was subject to great uncertainty and potential hardship. Wives, too, became legally free when the soldier attested. This meant also that they were entitled to an internal passport granting freedom of movement and employment. However, a disproportionate number of wives either drifted into prostitution in towns, or had illegitimate children; some remarried bigamously.
Soldiers’ children were a subcategory in the system of social estates. Sons, including until 1856 the illegitimate children of soldiers’ wives (where the soldier was not himself the father), were registered and expected to enter military service when they came of age.
In Imperial Russia, the status of women and children was determined by that of their husbands or fathers. This is why a soldier’s wife became free when he was recruited. However, this also meant that a soldier’s widow who remarried could become a serf or a peasant owing normal dues once again, and similarly a soldier’s daughter who married a serf lost her free status and became herself enserfed (until emancipation).
Unmarried recruits were of course strongly discouraged from marrying.
What happened to a soldier once discharged from the army?
If a soldier survived the hardships of a full term in the army, he would be discharged to enjoy for the first time and as best he could the freedoms he had acquired when he was recruited. Now he had theoretical freedom of movement; he was exempt from taxation; he did not have to labour for the landlord. However, at the same time he received only a small lump sum and had no immediate means of support. Therefore he was also free to become jobless and hungry and poor. In these circumstances, it was not unusual for a discharged soldier to have to live upon charity, or to become a hawker or a casual labourer, or to struggle to ply a trade. Other old soldiers entered state service as messengers or guards, or in the police or fire services. Additionally, until reforms in 1867, significant numbers of retired soldiers were settled in so-called veterans’ towns or on virgin lands owned or claimed by the state, often in frontier situations.
Others where they could returned to their native village to farm the family plot if it still existed, or to buy a new plot if they had the money. In fact, the 1867 returns henceforth required discharged soldiers to return to the community from which they had been recruited, at least partly to prevent the social problems associated with ex-soldiers which were a growing cause for concern in cities and towns.
In May 2001 I visited Trakai in Lithuania. A mini-bus took me and a handful of Japanese tourists the 30 or so km from Vilnius bus station and dropped us off outside the major tourist attraction, the restored Trakai Castle situated romantically in lake Galvė. While the others headed across the footbridge to the castle with their cameras at the ready, I wandered by myself the length of the little town to see what I could find of the Karaim.
Karaism is a non-Talmudic Mosaic faith and the Karaim, or Karaites, are a dispersed people with what are generally regarded as Turkic but sometimes as Jewish roots, living in scattered communities across the former Soviet bloc.
Historically in what is today Ukraine, Karaim lived in the towns of Lutsk (inter-War Polish Łuck) and Halych (after which the former Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia is named). In addition, communities were to be found in the Crimea in towns such as Bakhchisaray (Bağçasaray), Feodosiya (Kefe) and Yevpatoria (Keslev). One of the best-known traditional centres of the Crimean Karaim was Chufut Kale (Çufut Qale) but this was abandoned during the 19th century. The Crimean Karaim often lived by trade and therefore sometimes had mercantile links and family outposts in Black Sea ports (e.g. Kherson and Odessa) and the Eastern Mediterranean (e.g. Egypt and Constantinople).
The Karaim in Lithuania arrived at some date before the end of the 14th Century, almost certainly as officially invited and privileged settlers involved in defence. It is not clear whether the original settlers came from the Crimea or from Lutsk. In any event, while military service may have been the prime mover behind their arrival in Lithuania, soon many Karaim were involved simply in agriculture or in trade.
The most well-known settlement in Lithuania is that at Trakai but smaller communities survive in Panevėžys and Vilnius. There is a Karaim cemetery in each of these three places. The one in Trakai is disappearing amid meadow and woodland on the other side of lake Totoriškiai facing the town – inscriptions are mostly in Hebrew but with some Latin script. Karaim places of worship – prayer houses known as a kenesa – survive at Trakai and Vilnius but that in Panevėžys was destroyed in 1970, a victim of the atheist communist state and probably also the declining local population and the ongoing process of assimilation. Other Lithuanian Karaim communities such as the one in Biržai have become extinct or, like Naujamiestis, all but died out with only individuals or solitary families surviving. The Lithuanian Karaim population is now very small and dwindling: officially 423 in 1959, 388 in 1970, 289 in 1989 and 257 in 1997. Assimilation and out-marriage are serious issues for the survival of the community, which traditionally was endogamous and sometimes had to resort to sourcing marriage partners from Lutsk or even Crimea.
Another distinctive feature of the Trakai Karaim settlement is its vernacular architecture. The typical Karaim wooden cottage, sometimes painted in pastel or brighter shades, sits with its gable end with three ground-floor windows facing on to the street; the entrance is on the facade round the side.
One reason why the Lithuania Karaim community survives at all today is the official recognition it gained in 1863. In that year, they successfully asserted themselves as a Turkic people in contra-distinction to the Jews, with whom they had previously been associated in Russian Empire. The unforeseen consequence of this was that they were largely spared the fate of the Lithuanian Jews during the Holocaust.
Bluebird Research undertakes professional family history research across Lithuania and can help you with your genealogical research, whether your ancestors were Karaim, Jewish, Lithuanian or Polish. Please contact us for a free assessment.
Records of interest to family historians can be found in unexpected places.
Researchers with experience of Central and Eastern European genealogy will know that records are often to be located outside the borders of a country, due to the complex history and shifting political map of the region. For instance, in Poland there are vital records for western Ukraine; in Germany there are records for some of the German communities of Romania; and in Austria there are army records for soldiers from the successor states of the Habsburg Empire.
For those with a family history rooted in the British Isles, the primary source of information for the British overseas is the General Register Office’s various series of indexes to armed forces, consular and maritime birth, marriage and death registers. They cover events relating not just to English and Welsh but also to Irish, Scottish and doubtless Manx and Channel Islander individuals. These are widely available online and have recently been fully name-indexed by Find My Past.
At New Register House in Edinburgh, the records of the births, marriages and deaths of Scots abroad are to be found among the statutory registers. These are also searchable online on the official Scotland’s People website, where they are called “minor records”. It is likely that there is some (possibly considerable?) overlap with the records held by the General Register Office of England & Wales described above.
Less well-known and rather surprising is the fact that the Catholic Registers on the Scotland’s People website include records from beyond Scotland. An overview document detailing the holdings can be downloaded. The document begins with the expected records of Catholic missions and parishes in Scotland itself. However, on page 3 it moves on to the Bishopric of the Forces. Among the Roman Catholic registers here there are of course records from within Scotland but a great many are from beyond its borders – and not just from England, Ireland and Wales. In fact, the collection covers Catholic registers of the British Forces across the world. For instance, there are volumes from Aden, Austria, Germany, Iraq, Lebanon, Malta and Singapore.
For those undertaking research within the region covered by Bluebird Research, the following may be of interest:
Cyprus
- Akrotiri RAF base 1956-1967
- RAF register 1957-1969
Egypt
- Alexandria chaplaincy of the English forces 1899-1910
- Cairo military vicariate 1896-1945
- Cairo 1904-1955
- Moascar camp 1925-1967
Although these Roman Catholic registers have been digitised by the Scottish authorities, the records contained within them do not just relate to Scots but, of course, to English, Irish, Welsh and all other Catholics in the British Armed Forces. At least one of the two parties will have been serving in the Forces at the time of the registration of the event. However, in the case of marriages, the other party to the marriage (usually but not invariably the bride) could be a civilian and, for that matter, a local from the vicinity of the Forces base. Likewise, of course, for births and baptisms of issue of such marriages.
All of Scotland’s People’s Roman Catholic registers before about 1908 can be viewed online (in contrast to the General Register Office’s records, for which only the indexes are publically available). For more recent records after 1908, there is a searchable index, upon the basis of which extracts from the registers (certificates) can be purchased.
The Armenians and the Greeks were not the only nationalities to be largely removed from Asia Minor as Turkey redefined itself as a single-nation state in the post-Ottoman era. The Yezidis (or Yazidis) – Kurds with their own distinctive non-Islamic religion – have also largely disappeared, either assimilating into the Kurdish population, crossing the border into the Republic of Armenia or emigrating to continental Europe (e.g. Germany).
Bluebird Research has created a Google Map showing the location of the former Yezidi villages of the Kars oblast, or province, of the Russian Empire circa 1910 before it was re-taken by the Turks after the end of WW1. During the Russian era, the distinctiveness of the Yezidi people was recognised and these villages constituted their own administrative district or okrug.
Click here to view the Google Map showing the Yezidi Villages of Kars Province.
Bluebird Research has no experience of Yezidi genealogical research but is always interested in expanding its knowledge and would be delighted to hear from anyone who is researching their Yezidi ancestry.
There were a number of villages named Karakala in the Russian oblast (province) of Kars circa 1900-1914. To help distinguish between them and particularly to assist family historians with ancestors from Armenian Karakala, Bluebird Research has created an online map identifying and displaying the location of the villages named Karakala in the then Kars oblast.
Please note that that there were additional villages of this name elsewhere in Russian Armenia (i.e. in Yerevan province) and, of course, in Ottoman Turkey. These are not displayed on the map.
This map should be used in conjunction with our other related recent (March 2011) posts on this subject.
Please click here to view the map showing Places Named Karakala in Kars Province in Google Maps.
To help family historians with Armenian ancestors from the Kars region, Bluebird Research has created an online map identifying and displaying the location of Armenian villages in the then Russian oblast of Kars circa 1900-1914.
These villages were from 1878 to 1917 in Russian Armenia (and this is how they are usually described in, for example, American and Canadian passenger lists, naturalisation records and census returns) but since the end of WW1 have been incorporated into Turkey.
Most of the village names have now changed – both modern Turkish and the old Russian, Armenian and indeed Turkish names are given on the map.
This map should be used in conjunction with our other recent (March 2011) posts on this subject.
Please click here to view the Armenian Villages in Kars Province map in Google Maps.
When researching Croatian family history in Istria, one should not be surprised to find that names, both Christian names and surnames, do not appear in their expected forms. Just as in the diaspora a name may be changed to make it more pronounceable to an English speaker or to be typed on an English-language keyboard lacking the diacritical marks of Croat (so that Babić becomes Babich or Babitch, and Blažević becomes Blazhevich), so names were changed in Istria under Italian and earlier under Austro-Hungarian rule. The difference is that, under Italian rule, such changes were not always made voluntarily by the subject but imposed upon him or her by the state or the church.
The Italians occupied Istria in November 1918 and within a few years had started to suppress Croatian (and of course Slovenian) national culture. In October 1919, religious education in Croat was forbidden in schools and measures begun to encourage parish priests to use Italian rather than the local vernacular in church services. In October 1923 a diktat was issued closing all Croat-language schools; they could only re-open if education was conducted in Italian. In January 1929, Croat-language newspapers were shut down. Most pertinently for our purposes, in November 1928 parents were forbidden to baptise their children using Slavic names, so in baptism registers from that date one should expect to see only Italian equivalents of Slavic names (unless the local priest defied the ruling). From April 1927, surnames, especially those which Italians regarded as having Italian or Latin roots, or claimed to have been translated from Italian and given Slavic suffixes, were to be italianised as well, so that Babić might become Babicci, and Horvat became Crevato. In April 1936 an official publication was issued prescribing the way in which names should be changed.
These are but the legal manifestations of the pervasive creeping suppression of Croatian nationality in Istria during the inter-War period of Italian rule. Of course, some Croatians emigrated to the new Yugoslavia or to America, while a minority consciously opted for Italian culture. It can be expected that most, especially away from the larger towns, simply wanted to be able to get on with their lives and lived quietly, passively accepting the italianisation of the external forms around them and keeping their essential Croatian national identity intact. Those in positions of authority – such as teachers and priests – doubtless tried to continue using Croat where they could but switched to Italian if they had to. Roman Catholic parish registers – the baptism, marriage and burial registers – and the wonderfully informative status animarum documents, encapsulating a wealth of information about a family, usually evidence the pressure to italianise, and you should expect to see Italian spellings of names. However, this was seldom standardised, so that a single family surname can be rendered in different ways at different times. This demands constant alertness on behalf of genealogists, especially when surnames showed more significant alteration than a tinkering with the surname suffix. For example, one can expect a Croatian surname beginning with a K to be changed to a C, a name beginning with a Cu or a Ču sometimes changing to a Z depending on the spelling convention required when writing it in Italian, a name starting with Krm- or Krt- acquiring a vowel, and so on.
If you have roots in Istria and are interested in knowing more about your Croatian family history and ancestry, please contact us and we would be happy to provide you with an assessment of the research that can be done and an estimate of costs.
Mary Edith Durham was born in 1863, the eldest child of parents Arthur and Mary Durham. Her father, originally from Northampton, was a consulting surgeon in London. In the English decennial census returns, the family can be seen living comfortably, replete with domestic servants, at 82 Brook Street in the West End (in 1871, 1881 and 1891) and later at 20 Ellerdale Road in Hampstead (1901). Miss Durham received a private education before studying art at the Royal Academy (she is described as “artist, painter” in the 1891 census return) and then caring for her widowed mother.
Miss Durham’s life abruptly took an unexpected course in the early 1900s, when she undertook a trip along the Dalmatian coast to Boka Kotorska in what is today Montenegro. Here she discovered a lifelong passion for the southern Balkans, initially all-embracing but gradually developing into partisan advocacy for the Albanians. She wrote many books and articles about Albania, Montenegro and Serbia, ranging from travel to anthropology to politics.
In August 1931 she published a short piece called “Preservation of Pedigrees and Commemoration of Ancestors in Montenegro”, on the subject of ancestral awareness.
She recalled firstly how she had attended a Montenegrin Orthodox church service on All Souls’ Saturday (Zadušna Subota) at which the members of the congregation handed the priest a list of the names of deceased ancestors to be remembered and prayed for. Durham called the list a čitulja, which means obituary but in this context more accurately a necrolog (a list of names of the dead to be commemorated). This custom was found among the Montenegrins and Hercegovinians but, she wrote, not among the Serbs.
She then goes on to write:
“In the Northern tribes of Albania, all the men know their pedigrees – or knew them when I was there. I did not know then that the pedigrees were of any value, or I could have collected plenty. They go back mostly to thirteen or fourteen generations. Owing to early marriage, generations are rather short… In this district – and formerly in Montenegro – knowledge of pedigree is most important to prevent the possibility of committing incest by intermarrying with someone descended from the same ancestor. I expect that that was at first the sole object of preserving these pedigrees, and that praying for the names therein was a later and Christian idea… When I was in Njeguši in Montenegro, I was told of a couple who were just about to be married… The young man was from Bosnia. At the eleventh hour it was discovered he was her second cousin, his grandfather having emigrated. The match was at once broken off, and the girl was married against her will to another man, and the unlucky bridegroom left the country. I expressed sympathy with, and sorrow for, the couple. My informants were astounded: “On the contrary, we should be thankful the family had been saved from incest. We saw how necessary it is to keep pedigrees.””
These pedigrees, which appear to have been written rather than oral, were unlikely to comprise full reliable dates of birth, marriage and death, and were more likely a list showing the male line(s) of descent from an original paterfamilias. Even so, 13 or 14 generations is impressive: assuming 20 years per generation and dating from 1915, it means that the Albanians in questions may have had a record of their ancestors going back to the mid-17th Century.
Montenegro, or Crna Gora, is named after its “black mountain”. Mountain ranges bearing this name are of course common worldwide and in the former Yugoslavia there is another crna gora, being the Skopska Crna Gora of Macedonia.
Skopska Crna Gora is located north and north-east of the capital, Skopje, stretching up towards the Macedonian border with Kosovo. Its villages tend to be in the valleys of the fast-flowing mountain streams running south to the river Vardar. The villagers were peasant smallholders, growing the usual types of crop, including grape vines, suited to the climate and soil and, in some households, additionally grazing sheep in the mountain pastures.
Traditionally, the villages regarded themselves as being of either Serbian or Macedonian nationality. For example, Banjane, Čučer, Gornjane and Kučevište were Serb villages, while Gluvo, Ljubanci and Ljuboten were Macedonian. The differences – of language rather than culture – were exaggerated by the villagers, while the similarities between them were downplayed: for example, Serbs might jokingly refer to the Macedonians of the neighbouring village as “Bulgarians”.
The villagers were, of course, Orthodox. They celebrated a family slava, being the saint’s day specific to the male line of the family. In all Skopska Crna Gora villages, residence is patrilocal, meaning that upon marriage women move into the household of the man’s family. Generally, village society strongly favoured marriage to a partner from the same village, and certainly of the same nationality, but a bride might well find that she must make allegiance to a new household slava.
Both Serbs and Macedonians also celebrated their village slava. For example, the Serbs of the largest Crna Gora village, Kučevište, observed the village slava on Spasovden, being the feast day of Sveti Spas at Ascension, which is a movable feast taking place 40 days after Easter. Similarly, the Macedonian settlement of Gluvo celebrated the slava of Sveti Nikola annually on 22nd May. The churches in these two villages were dedicated respectively to Sveti Spas and Sveti Nikola, who effectively are their “patron saints”.
Some of the larger villages had a minor chapel as well as the main parish church. These chapels also had their special slava each year: for example, Kučevište has a second slava dedicated to Sveti Atanas each 31st January.
For more on the traditions of the Skopska Crna Gora, please refer to D B Rheubottom’s article “The Saint’s Feast and Skopska Crna Goran Social Structure” in the March 1976 issue of the anthropological journal Man.
The table below is a name concordance showing the Armenian settlements of Kars province (oblast) of the period 1900s/1910s. It is designed to be used in conjunction with the two extracts from late Imperial Russian gazetteers on this website – the 1902 and 1914 editions – to help Armenian family historians to locate their ancestral villages. Please contact us for further assistance if required, or if you are interested in our professional genealogical research services.
The table gives a) the names as transliterated from the Russian Cyrillic in Imperial Russian official publications, b) their Armenian names in standard transliteration and c) their modern Turkish names.
All errors are the blogger’s own. Additions and corrections are welcomed.
| Russian name | Armenian name | Modern Turkish name |
| Kars | Kars | Kars |
| Zaim | Zayim | Harmanlı |
| Matsra | Mazra | Mezra |
| Dashkovo | Dashkov | Yalınkaya |
| Norashen | ||
| Bulanih | Bulangh | Bulanık |
| Kani-Kei | Ghani | Gelirli |
| Karakala | Karakala | Merkezkarakale (Karakale) |
| Chermali | Chermali | Çerme |
| Berna | Berna | Koyunyurdu |
| Has-Chiftlik | Khas-Chiftlik | Hasçiftlik |
| Germali | Gyarmali | Kaynarlı |
| Giudali | Gyodali | Güdeli |
| Karahach | Garaghach | Başkaya |
| Sogiutli-Abad | Abat-Sogyutli | Atayurdu |
| Chigirgan | Chghrdan | Çığırgan |
| Hapanli | Ghapanli | Hapanlı |
| Bozgala | Bozgala | Bozkale |
| Begli-Ahmed | Beghli-Ahmed | Benliahmet |
| Orta-Kilisa | Ortakilisa | Ortalar |
| Kizil-Chahchah | Kzil-Chaghchagh | Akyaka (Garmirçağatsk) |
| Uzun-Kilisa | Uzunkilisa | Esenyayla |
| Aguzum | Aghuzum | Küçükaküzüm |
| Pirvali | Pirvali | Büyükpirveli (Eski Pirveli) |
| Odzhah-Kuli | Ojakh-Ghuli or Arapi | n/a (in Armenia) |
| Kiuruk-Dara | Ghyurakdara, Gyurakdara | Kürekdere |
| Poldirvan | Paldrvan | Duraklı |
| Parget (Bolshoy) | Metz Parkit | Büyükçatma |
| Bash-Shuragel | Bash-Shoragyal | Çetindurak |
| Tihnis-Stariy | Hin Tegniz | Kalkankale |
| Tihnis-Noviy | Nor Tegniz | Kalkankale |
| Ashaga-Kyadiklyar | Nerkin Gyadiklar | Ayakgedikler |
| Bayrahtar | Bayraktar | Bayraktar |
| Gamzakyaryak | Ghamzakyarak | Hamzagerek |
| Gerhana | Gorghana | Eşmeyazı |
| Araz-Ogli | Arazi | Arazoğlu |
| Dzhala | Jala | Esenkent |
| Adzham-Mavrak | Acham Mavrak, Ajam-Mavrag | Bekler |
| Karmir-Vank | Karmir Vank | Yağıkesen |
| Koshevank | Khoshavank | n/a (in Armenia) |
| Kuiodzhuk | Ghuyujugh | Kuyucuk |
| Tazakend | Tazakend | Tazekent |
| Bash-Kadiklyar | Bash Gyadiklar | Başgedikler |
| Oguzli | Oğuzlu | |
| Orta-Kadiklyar | Orta Gyadiklar | Ortagedikler |
| Agdzhakala | Aghjaghala | Akçakale |
| Kadik-Satilmish | Gyadik-Satlmish | Gediksatilmiş |
| Parget-Maliy | Pokr Parkit | Küçükçatma |
| Dolbant | Dolbandlu | Dölbentli |
| Baikara | Bayghara | Baykara |
| Baiburt | Bayburt, Paypert | Bayburt |
| Ortakala | Ortaghala | Ortakale |
| Sogiutli-Prut | Brut-Sogyutlu | Söğötlü |
| Eski-Kazi | Aksi-Ghazi | Eskigazi |
| Karamamed | Gharamahmed or Meghrashat | n/a (in Armenia) |
| Bezirgyan | Beyirgan | Eskigeçit |
| Ardagan | Ardahan | Ardahan |
| Okam | Çayirbaşi | |
| Urut | Urut | Bellitepe |
| Kagizman | Kaghzvan | Kağızman |
| Karabah | Gharabagh | Karabağ |
| Kers | Gers | Günindi |
| Har | Khar | Çallı |
| Enidzha | Yenice | |
| Karavank | Gharavank | Taşburun |
| Changli | Chankli | Çengilli |
| poselok Todan | Esenkır | |
| Zirchi | Zrchi | Yağlıca |
| Pivik-Armyanskiy | Bvik | Karaboncuk |
| Laloi-Mavrak | Laloy-Mavra | Dolaylı |
| Pakran | Bagaran | Kilittaşı |
| Akryak | Agarak | Derinöz |
| Dzhalal | Jalal | Celal (Celalköy) |
| Zibni | Tzpni | Varlı |
| Digor | Tikor | Digor |
| Elisavetinskoe | Elisaveta | |
| Nahichevan | Nakhichevan | Kocaköy |
| Kosha-Kilisa | Ghoshakilisa | Şehithalit |
| Hoperan | Goberan | Gecikmez |
| Shadevan | Shatevan | Belencik |
| Bashkei with posel. Cholahl and Kara-Pungar | Cholaghli and Gharapunghar | Başköy, Çolaklı, Karapınar |
| Giulyantapa | Gyulantara | Beşyol |
| Sitagan | Stahan | Eşmeçayır |
| Ah-Kilisa | Aghkilisa | |
| Armutli | Armutlu | Armutlu |
| Churuk | Churuk | Çardakçatı |
| Olti | Olti | Oltu |
| Dzhudzhurus | Jurjuris | Subatuk |
| Zardanes | Zardanes | Sarisaz |
| Tamrut | Temrut | Şendurak |
| Kubad-Eriuk | Yoruk | Derebaşi |
| Akryak | Agarak | Sindiran |
| Pertus | Bardus | Zömrüt |
| Olor | Olur |
The table below shows the Armenian settlements of Kars province (oblast) with their Armenian population as at 1913. A village (selo) or town (gorod) was located within a community (obshtina), and communities within a district (okrug). The table, with its companion for 1901, is intended to help Armenian family historians to locate their ancestral villages.
Unless otherwise indicated, all villages were entirely Armenian and were of the Apostolic (Gregorian) faith.
The table uses simple transliterations from the Russian, without replacing hard signs or soft signs, and does not attempt to render the place names in a correct transliteration from the Armenian language.
All errors are the blogger’s own.
| Selo or gorod | Obshtina | Okrug | Houses | Population |
| Kars | Kars | 3,178 | 10,250 | |
|
The Armenian population in Kars included 194 Catholics and 35 Protestants. |
||||
| Zaim | Matsra | Magaradzhik | 26 | 307 |
| Matsra | Matsra | Magaradzhik | 119 | 1,175 |
| Dashkovo | Matsra | Magaradzhik | 87 | 759 |
|
This village was Armenian Catholic. |
||||
| Norashen | Matsra | Magaradzhik | 43 | 364 |
| Bulanih | Vezinkei | Magaradzhik | 55 | 436 |
| Kani-Kei | Magaradzhik | Magaradzhik | 165 | 1,009 |
| Karakala | Magaradzhik | Magaradzhik | 79 | 489 |
| Chermali | Chermali | Magaradzhik | 105 | 873 |
| Berna | Chermali | Magaradzhik | 140 | 1,198 |
| Has-Chiftlik | Garam-Vartan | Garam-Vartan | 57 | 336 |
|
The Armenian population included 95 Catholics. |
||||
| Germali | Karahach | Garam-Vartan | 64 | 485 |
| Giudali | Karahach | Garam-Vartan | 38 | 444 |
| Karahach | Karahach | Garam-Vartan | 36 | 270 |
|
This village was Armenian Catholic. |
||||
| Sogiutli-Abad | Karahach | Garam-Vartan | 29 | 298 |
| Chigirgan | Karahach | Garam-Vartan | 50 | 454 |
| Hapanli | Karahach | Garam-Vartan | 51 | 430 |
| Bozgala | Karahach | Garam-Vartan | 15 | 153 |
| Begli-Ahmed | Begli-Ahmed | Garam-Vartan | 254 | 1,890 |
| Orta-Kilisa | Orta-Kilisa | Garam-Vartan | 69 | 666 |
| Kizil-Chahchah | Kizil-Chahchah | Kizil-Chahchah | 283 | 2,243 |
| Uzun-Kilisa | Kizil-Chahchah | Kizil-Chahchah | 130 | 1,328 |
| Aguzum | Pirvali | Kizil-Chahchah | 54 | 406 |
| Pirvali | Pirvali | Kizil-Chahchah | 146 | 1,068 |
| Odzhah-Kuli | Ohchi-Ogli | Kizil-Chahchah | 113 | 952 |
| Kiuruk-Dara | Kiuruk-Dara | Kizil-Chahchah | 166 | 1,216 |
| Poldirvan | Kiuruk-Dara | Kizil-Chahchah | 131 | 1,183 |
| Parget (Bolshoy) | Parget | Kizil-Chahchah | 93 | 811 |
|
By 1913, Parget was a mixed Armenian-Turkish village, with a declining Turkish minority (396). |
||||
| Bash-Shuragel | Bash-Shuragel | Bayrahtar | 208 | 1,601 |
| Tihnis-Stariy | Bash-Shuragel | Bayrahtar | 33 | 290 |
| Tihnis-Noviy | Bash-Shuragel | Bayrahtar | 98 | 620 |
| Ashaga-Kyadiklyar | Gamzakyaryak | Bayrahtar | 97 | 647 |
| Bayrahtar | Gamzakyaryak | Bayrahtar | 70 | 538 |
| Gamzakyaryak | Gamzakyaryak | Bayrahtar | 158 | 1,133 |
| Gerhana | Gerhana | Bayrahtar | 96 | 880 |
| Araz-Ogli | Dzhala | Bayrahtar | 70 | 532 |
| Dzhala | Dzhala | Bayrahtar | 158 | 1,131 |
| Adzham-Mavrak | Adzham-Mavrak | Bayrahtar | 83 | 502 |
| Karmir-Vank | Adzham-Mavrak | Bayrahtar | 35 | 352 |
| Koshevank | Adzham-Mavrak | Bayrahtar | 47 | 357 |
| Kuiodzhuk | Adzham-Mavrak | Bayrahtar | 46 | 343 |
| Tazakend | Adzham-Mavrak | Bayrahtar | 29 | 245 |
| Bash-Kadiklyar | Oguzli | Bayrahtar | 161 | 1,065 |
| Oguzli | Oguzli | Bayrahtar | 135 | 1,028 |
| Orta-Kadiklyar | Oguzli | Bayrahtar | 72 | 540 |
| Agdzhakala | Kadik-Satilmish | Dzhadara | 56 | 600 |
| Kadik-Satilmish | Kadik-Satilmish | Dzhadara | 92 | 794 |
| Parget-Maliy | Kadik-Satilmish | Dzhadara | 47 | 530 |
| Dolbant | Dolbant | El-Kechmaz | 115 | 855 |
| Baikara | Baikara | Engidzha | 58 | 483 |
| Baiburt | Baikara | Engidzha | 97 | 916 |
| Ortakala | Baikara | Engidzha | 60 | 499 |
| Sogiutli-Prut | Baikara | Engidzha | 48 | 432 |
| Eski-Kazi | Baikara | Engidzha | 56 | 588 |
| Karamamed | Giullibulah | Kizil-Dash | 73 | 622 |
| Bezirgyan | Dalaver | Kizil-Dash | 32 | 357 |
| Ardagan | Ardagan | 145 | 894 | |
|
Ardagan was a mixed town with a total population of 2,176. 287 of the Armenians were Catholics. |
||||
| Okam | Okam | Okam | 3 | 32 |
|
Okam was a mainly Kurdish / Turkish village (total population 422). |
||||
| Urut | Dadashen | Koravensk | 24 | 266 |
|
Urut was a mixed Armenian / Turkish village. |
||||
| Kagizman | Kagizman | 1,320 | 7,911 | |
|
Kagizman was a majority Armenian town with total population of 10,181, including 2,042 Turks. |
||||
| Karabah | Karabah | Kizil-Kilisa | 114 | 1,046 |
| Kers | Karabah | Kizil-Kilisa | 142 | 972 |
| Har | Karabah | Kizil-Kilisa | 85 | 762 |
| Enidzha | Karavank | Kizil-Kilisa | 21 | 173 |
| Karavank | Karavank | Kizil-Kilisa | 49 | 439 |
| Changli | Changli | Dzhamushli | 85 | 790 |
| poselok Todan | Oluhli | 1 | 8 | |
|
A single Armenian family residing among 77 Russian sectarians in a new settlement. |
||||
| Zirchi | Zirchi | Zirchi | 169 | 1,526 |
| Pivik-Armyanskiy | Zirchi | Zirchi | 59 | 719 |
| Laloi-Mavrak | Alyam | Dzhamaldin | 67 | 537 |
| Pakran | Pakran | Dzhamaldin | 86 | 796 |
| Akryak | Digor | Digor | 69 | 665 |
| Dzhalal | Digor | Digor | 54 | 396 |
| Zibni | Digor | Digor | 212 | 1,643 |
| Digor | Digor | Digor | 50 | 572 |
|
Digor was a mixed Armenian / Turkish village with a total population of 763. |
||||
| Elisavetinskoe | Digor | Digor | 38 | 332 |
|
Elisavetinskoe was a new Armenian Catholic village. |
||||
| Nahichevan | Nahichevan | Digor | 272 | 2,127 |
| Kosha-Kilisa | Karakurt | Karakurt | 57 | 590 |
| Hoperan | Mechetli | Karakurt | 64 | 564 |
| Shadevan | Mechetli | Karakurt | 63 | 657 |
| Bashkei with posel. Cholahl and Kara-Pungar | Bashkei | Bashkei | 228 | 2,393 |
| Giulyantapa | Giulyantapa | Bashkei | under 48 | 467 |
|
Giulyantapa was a mixed village with a Kurdish majority (579). |
||||
| Sitagan | Sitagan | Bashkei | 76 | 872 |
| Ah-Kilisa | Ortakala | Bashkei | 50 | 567 |
|
Ah-Kilisa was an Armenian Catholic village. |
||||
| Armutli | Armutli | Bashkei | 106 | 1,141 |
| Churuk | Armutli | Bashkei | 29 | 412 |
| Olti | Olti | 178 | 1,623 | |
|
Olti had a mixed population of 2,058. Two of the Armenian families (total 27 people) were Catholic. |
||||
| Dzhudzhurus | Bahchadzhuk | Lespek | 38 | 499 |
| Zardanes | Bahchadzhuk | Lespek | 13 | 211 |
| Tamrut | Bahchadzhuk | Lespek | 24 | 425 |
|
By 1913, Tamrut was a purely Armenian village. |
||||
| Kubad-Eriuk | Berdik | Lespek | 15 | 176 |
| Akryak | Kosor | Kosor | 31 | 401 |
| Pertus | Bardus | Bardus | 30 | 626 |
| Olor | Norpet | Panaskert | 20 | 188 |
|
Olor had a mixed Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish population. 82 of the Armenians were Catholic. |
||||
Source: 1914 Address-Calendar for Kars Province
The Kars region was administered by the Russian Empire from 1878 to 1917. The table below shows the Armenian settlements of the then Kars province (oblast) with their Armenian population as at 1901. A village (selo) or town (gorod) was located within a community (obshtina), and communities within a district (okrug). The table, with its companion for 1913, is intended to help Armenian family historians to locate their ancestral villages.
Unless otherwise shown, all villages were entirely Armenian and of the Apostolic (Gregorian) faith.
The table uses simple transliterations from the Russian, without replacing hard signs or soft signs, and does not attempt to render the place names in a correct transliteration from the Armenian language.
All errors are the blogger’s own.
| Selo or gorod | Obshtina | Okrug | Houses | Population |
| Kars | Kars | 453 | 3,153 | |
| Orta-Kilisa | Orta-Kilisa | Garamvartan | 42 | 560 |
| Has-Chiftlik | Garamvartan | Garamvartan | 18 | 321 |
| Gyarmali | Karahach | Garamvartan | 29 | 433 |
| Giudali-Bozgala | Karahach | Garamvartan | 34 | 433 |
| Karahach | Karahach | Garamvartan | 22 | 225 |
| Sogiutli-Abad | Karahach | Garamvartan | 18 | 224 |
| Hapanli | Karahach | Garamvartan | 31 | 327 |
| Chigirgyan | Karahach | Garamvartan | 53 | 361 |
| Begli-Ahmed | Begli-Ahmed | Garamvartan | 120 | 1,375 |
| Zaim | Matsra | Magaradzhik | 30 | 597 |
| Matsra | Matsra | Magaradzhik | 58 | 786 |
| Bulanih | Vezinkei | Magaradzhik | 21 | 243 |
| Karakala | Karakala | Magaradzhik | 43 | 464 |
| Kani-Kei | Magaradzhik | Magaradzhik | 69 | 741 |
| Berna | Chermali | Magaradzhik | 58 | 874 |
| Chermali | Chermali | Magaradzhik | 52 | 657 |
| Kizil-Chahchah | Kizil-Chahchah | Kizil-Chahchah | 150 | 1,750 |
| Uzunkilisa | Kizil-Chahchah | Kizil-Chahchah | 73 | 1,002 |
| Odzhyah-Kuli | Ohchi-Ogli | Kizil-Chahchah | 67 | 784 |
| Kiuruk-Dara | Paldirvan | Kizil-Chahchah | 81 | 927 |
| Paldirvan | Paldirvan | Kizil-Chahchah | 73 | 937 |
| Aguzum | Pirvali | Kizil-Chahchah | 38 | 425 |
| Pirvali | Pirvali | Kizil-Chahchah | 89 | 937 |
| Parget (Bolsh.) | Parget | Kizil-Chahchah | 49 | 417 |
| Parget was a mixed Armenian-Turkish village, with a slight Turkish majority (521 population). | ||||
| Bash-Shuragel | Bash-Shuragel | Bairahtar | 120 | 1,376 |
| Tihnis | Bash-Shuragel | Bairahtar | 75 | 810 |
| Adzham-Mavrak | Adzham-Mavrak | Bairahtar | 54 | 517 |
| Karmirk-Vank | Adzham-Mavrak | Bairahtar | 19 | 223 |
| Koshevank | Adzham-Mavrak | Bairahtar | 29 | 295 |
| Kuiodzhuk | Adzham-Mavrak | Bairahtar | 35 | 323 |
| Tazakent | Adzham-Mavrak | Bairahtar | 20 | 212 |
| Ashaga-Kadiklyar | Gamzakyarak | Bairahtar | 55 | 532 |
| Bairahtar | Gamzakyarak | Bairahtar | 31 | 454 |
| Gamzakyarak | Gamzakyarak | Bairahtar | 87 | 954 |
| Bash-Kyadiklyar | Oguzli | Bairahtar | 74 | 935 |
| Oguzli | Oguzli | Bairahtar | 89 | 870 |
| Orta-Kyadiklyar | Oguzli | Bairahtar | 45 | 509 |
| Araz-Ogli | Dzhala | Bairahtar | 42 | 441 |
| Dzhala | Dzhala | Bairahtar | 89 | 864 |
| Gerhana | Dzhala | Bairahtar | 43 | 567 |
| Agdzhakala | Kyadik-Satilmish | Dzhadara | 30 | 398 |
| Kyadik-Satilmish | Kyadik-Satilmish | Dzhadara | 68 | 617 |
| Parget (Mal.) | Kyadik-Satilmish | Dzhadara | 45 | 430 |
| Dolbant | Dolbant | El-Kechmaz | 64 | 625 |
| Baikara | Baikara | Engidzha | 32 | 353 |
| Baiburt | Baikara | Engidzha | 52 | 645 |
| Ortakala | Baikara | Engidzha | 30 | 385 |
| Sogiutli-Prut | Baikara | Engidzha | 26 | 274 |
| Eski-Kazi | Baikara | Engidzha | 30 | 396 |
| Karamamed | Giullibulah | Kizil-Dash | 59 | 531 |
| Bezirgyan | Seldaglan | Tapakent | 26 | 256 |
| Ardagan | Ardagan | 22 | 187 | |
| Ardagan was a mixed town with a total population of 1,013 and with a Turkish majority (601). | ||||
| Okam | Okam | Okam | under 35 | under 290 |
| Okam was a mixed Armenian / Kurdish / Turkish village. | ||||
| Urut | Dadashen | Koravensk | under 25 | under 211 |
| Urut was a mixed Armenian / Turkish village. | ||||
| Kagizman | Kagizman | 286 | 2,301 | |
| Kagizman was a mixed town with total population of 4,131, including 1,700 Turks. | ||||
| Karavank | Karavank | Kizil-Kilisa | 50 | 350 |
| Enidzha | Karavank | Kizil-Kilisa | 10 | 106 |
| Karabah | Karabah | Kizil-Kilisa | 54 | 758 |
| Kers | Karabah | Kizil-Kilisa | 68 | 763 |
| Har | Karabah | Kizil-Kilisa | 56 | 586 |
| Changli | Changli | Dzhamushli | 47 | 578 |
| Digor | Digor | Zibni | 26 | 359 |
| Digor was a mixed Armenian / Kurdish / Turkish village with a slight Armenian majority. | ||||
| Akryak | Digor | Zibni | 47 | 557 |
| Dzhalal | Digor | Zibni | 82 | 310 |
| Zibni | Digor | Zibni | 120 | 1,362 |
| Nahichevan | Nahichevan | Zibni | 148 | 1,647 |
| Laloi-Mavrak | Alyam | Dzhamaldin | 36 | 443 |
| Pakran | Pakran | Dzhamaldin | 52 | 614 |
| Zirchi | Zirchi | Zirchi | 109 | 1,299 |
| Pivik (Armyansk.) | Zirchi | Zirchi | 49 | 627 |
| Kosha-Kelisa | Karakurt | Horosan | 31 | 302 |
| Hoperan | Mechetli | Horosan | 35 | 411 |
| Shadevan | Mechetli | Horosan | 40 | 513 |
| Bashkei | Bashkei | Bashkei | 153 | 1,893 |
| Giulyantapa | Giulyantapa | Bashkei | 20 | 336 |
| Giulyantapa was a mixed village with a Kurdish majority (471). | ||||
| Sitagan | Sitagan | Bashkei | 45 | 609 |
| Ah-Kilisa | Ortakala | Bashkei | 11 | 149 |
| Armutli | Armutli | Bashkei | 69 | 925 |
| Churuk | Armutli | Bashkei | 20 | 277 |
| Olti | Olti | 86 | 600 | |
| Olti was a mixed village with a total population of 952. | ||||
| Dzhudzhurus | Bahchadzhuk | Lespek | 35 | 371 |
| Zardanes | Bahchadzhuk | Lespek | 13 | 161 |
| Kubad-Eriuk | Bahchadzhuk | Lespek | 15 | 144 |
| Tamrut | Bahchadzhuk | Lespek | 24 | 321 |
| Tamrut was a mixed village with 78 Turks. | ||||
| Pertus | Berdik | Lespek | 29 | 411 |
| Akryak | Arsenyak | Kosor | 30 | 292 |
| Olor | Norpet | Panaskert | 10 | 91 |
| Olor had a mixed Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish population with a Turkish majority (135). Its Armenian population was Armenian Catholic. | ||||
Source: 1902 Address-Calendar for Kars Province
During the twilight years of the Ottoman Empire, Macedonia – the vilayets of Kosovo, Monastir and Salonika – was a region experiencing great tension and flux. There was only a finite quantity of cultivable land, creating unemployment and under-employment and a movement of the landless to the towns. At the same time there was growing social unrest. Competing nationalist movements sought the allegiance of the population. Violence flared up, especially after Ilinden in 1903, and villages were razed and their inhabitants killed or made homeless.
Against this background, emigration became an increasingly attractive option. This was particularly so as the rural population of Macedonia already had a well-established tradition of seasonal migration: migrant workers, usually younger men, worked elsewhere within the Ottoman Empire, usually over the summer, and then returned to their home villages each year. Therefore, emigration to America was seen as a logical extension of a customary practice.
The numbers of emigrants taking the American option rose in the 1900s as push-factors in Macedonia increased. From modest beginnings – for example, 1,529 in 1903 – the number of emigrants to USA rose rapidly, peaking at 20,769 in 1907 and then, after a temporary drop caused by official attempts to stem the flow, increasing again to 18,405 in 1910. USA received a total of 108,323 immigrants from Turkey-in-Europe over the period from 1903 to 1912. Most of these headed to work in mines and factories in places such as St Louis.
However, the term “immigrants” is slightly misleading. Many of the Macedonians heading to the US regarded themselves as temporary migrants, working and saving for maybe three years in America and then returning home to Macedonia. Moreover, many of the immigrants counted in the official figures given above were repeat migrants. In other words, they travelled to USA, returned to Macedonia, and then returned for a second spell in USA. Of course, a significant number of Macedonians did not return to Europe at all, or returned to Europe but them emigrated permanently to settle in US, or had intended to return home but never did due to the outbreak of WW1.
This explains why it is not unusual for an American family historian with Macedonian roots to find their ancestor on incoming passenger lists arriving at East Coast ports on two or more occasions.
Examining the passenger lists, the family historian will also notice that, as likely as not, the immigrant ancestor did not sail from a port such as Piraeus or Salonika (Thessalonika) close to home. International shipping firms such as the British Cunard Line opened branches in Florina, Koritsa (Korçë), Monastir (Bitola), Resen and other towns, which in turn operated through a network of local agents (often money-lenders providing tickets on credit), selling a passage from ports such as Southampton in England, Le Havre in France, Antwerp in Belgium, and Hamburg and Bremerhaven in Germany. The migrants usually reached these departure ports by rail, crossing the continent, often in groups of relatives and friends from the same or neighbouring villages. Just as a majority of the traditional seasonal migrants were young men, so the typical Macedonian immigrant in USA was a single man in his twenties or thirties, with a rural background; very few travelled with wives and fewer still with children. Perhaps three quarters or more of the immigrants from Ottoman Macedonia were Slavic (that is to say, Macedonian or Bulgarian: national affiliations were not necessarily fully formed at that date), the remainder being ethnic Albanians, Greeks, Jews, Vlachs and others.
Among the Californian Armenian community is a disproportionate number of descendants of immigrants from the small village of Karakala, or Kara-Kala, near Kars. On incoming American passenger lists and in naturalisation records, the place of origin of these immigrants will usually be shown as Russian Armenia, because the region around the city of Kars became the Russian Karsskaya oblast from 1878 to 1917. Before that period, the region was part of the Ottoman Empire and therefore a minority of US immigration records, especially for those Armenians born in Karakala before 1878, may state Turkey or Ottoman Empire, rather than Russia, as place of birth.
There is little to be found on the internet – at least, in the English language and of value to genealogists – about Karakala. There is confusion as to its exact whereabouts. The primary reason for this confusion is that the place name is not unique: there are multiple candidates. Furthermore, place names changed under modern Turkey and some Armenian villages were completely razed and have disappeared from the map. However, the true location of Armenian Karakala can be determined with confidence.
Imperial Russia, like other late 19th century empires, took a lively interest in demographics and ethnography (not least because nationalism needed to be monitored as the single biggest challenge to empire). Russian gazetteers of the period show the administrative geography (the hierarchy of local government from regional capital down to village), the population breakdown and usually something of the ethnicity (natsionalnost or nationality in Russian) of the inhabitants. The colossal 1897 Russian Census was a monument to just such a preoccupation with the population of empire.
Gazetteers for Kars oblast record the entire population down to the smallest villages of no more than 50 inhabitants. The gazetteers for the 1900s and 1910s show consistently that there were nine places called Karakala in Kars oblast. However, Armenian Karakala – the source of the Californian immigrant population – is readily identified. Each of the various entries for the settlements named Karakala gives the nationality of its population. In this respect, while cities and towns in eastern Anatolia were usually of mixed population, the villages in the hinterland tended to be occupied by a single people. Only one of the nine places named Karakala had an Armenian population: of the remaining eight, seven were Muslim villages, identified carefully as Kurdish, Turcoman/Turkish and even Karapapak, and one a Yezidi village.
Under Russian rule, Armenian Karakala seems originally to have been classed as an obshestvo (community) in its own right, with the nearby Turkmen selo or village of Hadzhi-Halil subordinate to it, within the okrug (or district) of Magaradzhik (itself a Greek village). However, later Karakala lost its obshestvo status and became simply a selo like Hadzhi-Halil in Magaradzhik obshestvo in Magaradzhik okrug. The other two villages in the immediate grouping were Azat (which was Greek) and Kany-Kei (another Armenian settlement).
Across Kars oblast, the majority of Armenian settlements were growing rapidly during the years leading up to WW1, due to natural growth (families were large) and in-migration. Karakala was an exception to this trend. In 1902, the village comprised 464 souls (as they are described in the gazetteers) residing in 43 households; by 1914, it had 489 souls living in 79 homes. All were Armenian. The explanation for the relatively slow growth in population size and reduction in household size in Karakala is the significant emigration from the village to North America.
So where is Karakala? It is situated 17.5km SSE of Kars and is today called Merkezkarakale. The prefix Merkez simply signifies its location in Kars Merkezi, or the central district of the Kars province of modern Turkey: this name was not used during the Ottoman or Imperial Russian eras. 8km to the NNW is Azat; about 5km to the N is Magaradzhik, now called either Mağaracık or Ataköy in Turkish; 5km to the NW is Kany-Kei, now known as Gelirli; and 2km to the S is Hadzhi-Halil, now spelt Hacıhalil.
Bluebird Research has created two Google Maps showing a) Armenian Karakala in the context of the other Armenian settlements in Kars and b) Armenian Karakala along with the non-Armenian villages named Karakala. A third map shows Armenian Karakala in the context of the surrounding villages of different ethnicity or nationality.
There is an old photograph of the village of Armenian Karakala online. If one studies Merkezkarakale in satellite view at high magnification on the Bluebird Research Google Map, one thing that is noticeable and common to both photograph and satellite image is the village’s linear structure – essentially it is a single street with plots to the left and right set back at different short distances from the road. Although 100 or more years may have passed, and the village will have been rebuilt and extended, and perhaps shifted its centre of gravity, its basic plan seems remarkably similar today. The axis of the village is NW to SE. The road in the satellite view, extending off to the right half way down the village street (heading roughly N), looks like a more organic recent development. The old photograph seems to have been shot from an elevation and may have been taken on the rising ground SE of the village.
This is the only village named Karakala with a linear settlement plan in the former Kars oblast. If one looks at each of them in turn at high magnification on the Google Map, it will be seen that all of the others are organic, sometimes seemingly random clusters of low buildings. Merkezkarakale is the only one with the planned look and feel of a linear village. It has been suggested that Armenian Karakala was built shortly after the Russian administration arrived in 1878; if so, then this would be consonant with the appearance of a “modern” rectilinear and planned layout.
The next step in research is to try to find out if there are any surviving genealogical records for Karakala; and, if so, where they are held; and whether they cover both the Apostolic and the village’s burgeoning Armenian Protestant or Evangelical sect known as the “Jumpers” which generated many of the emigrants to California.
If you are a family historian with Armenian roots in Karakala, especially a descendant of one of the original immigrants – such as Katanian, Keosababian, Mooshagian, Nalian, Perumian or Shaharian or Stepanian – we would be delighted to hear from you.
London’s Olympia again hosted the annual Who Do You Think You Are? Live exhibition last weekend. I attended on both Saturday and Sunday and spoke with many family historians from all sorts of backgrounds and with the full range of experience from complete beginner to jaded and cynical old-timer.
Comparing this year’s WDYTYA event to last year’s, one has to say that the trends I wrote about in this blog have continued. All exhibition space was taken and there were some new exhibitors (such as Genes Reunited) and some returnees (Lincolnshire Family History Society, I believe). There has been no diminution in interest in family history in Britain. The show was busy every day and certainly it looked as though family historians were spending as if there were no recession.
The American giant Ancestry hoovered up even more floor space than last year and seemed to be sporting taller stands. It is now floated on the US stock exchange and preparing to register offshore so as to evade UK corporation tax (a wheeze already employed by S&N Genealogy, with its myriad misleading web domains).
This year is the Society of Genealogists’ centenary year and it was good to see them with a big footprint at the show and reasserting themselves at the heart of the world of British family history where they belong.
It is always fun to check out the more niche stallholders, to meet with the nice folk at the Anglo-German Family History Society stand, to browse through the second-hand book shelves, and to boggle one’s mind at the astonishing volume and variety of records which have been indexed or transcribed by the unsung heroic family history society volunteers.
This year, as last, the majority of the questions I took from family historians with roots outside the British Isles related to Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors from Russian Poland, usually via London’s East End. The problems brought to me were identical to last year’s too, as of course they would be, because this is necessarily the defining question of all such research: how to find out exactly where in Russian Poland an ancestor came from. The 1911 census of England & Wales too rarely gives a specific place name, although this year I was pleased to see a census return where the place of birth was recorded by the householder as “Lodge”, meaning Łódź (briefly renamed Litzmannstadt by the Nazis and the sad site of a notorious ghetto). It is a sobering and depressing thought that each of these family historians of Jewish descent with whom I spoke last weekend is perhaps only here through luck, by virtue of an ancestor having the means, or the pluck, or the desperation, to get out of Poland before the Nazis rolled in.
Incidentally, there is truth in the suggestions about the English Census Office producing both German language and Hebrew language 1911 census forms. Recently, I have seen one German and two Hebrew forms, the German one completed in German by the head of the household but the Hebrew ones filled in in English. However, this tiny number may represent the sum total of those German and Hebrew returns completed by householders in 1911, meaning that a great many unused foreign language forms printed by the Census Office must have been pulped. I wonder if one hundred years ago questions were raised in parliament about the waste of public funds…
In the autumn of 1913, Noel and Harold Buxton travelled through the Armenian regions of Persia, Russia and Turkey, the next year publishing their account as Travels and Politics in Armenia (Smith, Elder & Co, 1914). “Tiflis”, they write, “is best known as the ancient capital of the Georgian kingdom, but today it is as much the capital of the Armenians as of any other race, for it has been the Armenians who have built up this modern city.”
Tiflis, now Tbilisi, was indeed in many ways primarily an Armenian city until 1921, when it became the capital of the Soviet Republic of Georgia; many of those Armenians who had not already left by that date moved to the neighbouring Republic of Armenia, ostensibly independent again.
The Armenian component of the population of Russian Tiflis grew throughout the 19th century: 16,807 in 1834, 28,488 in 1865, 37,610 in 1876 and 55,553 in 1897. It is true that the percentage started to fall with the rapid growth of the city (from 74% in 1803 down to the 38% at the time of the 1897 Russian census). However, this reflects the position held by Armenians in Tiflis society.
Whereas both the nobility and the working class in Tiflis were Georgian, and the Georgian working class mushroomed with immigration from the surrounding villages, the city’s middle class was overwhelmingly Armenian. They were skilled craftsmen, the merchants controlling the caravansarais, the owners of the hotels and cafes, and, as the century wore on, the financiers and industrialists largely responsible for developing the Tiflis economy during the rapid expansion it enjoyed under Imperial Russian rule. International trade, always significant in Tiflis, flourished even more with the opening of the railway to the Black Sea port of Poti (1872) and the Caspian Sea port of Baku (1883). Armenians resided in all quarters of the town but especially in Sololaki and Havlabar (Avlabari) districts.
Not all Tiflis Armenians had family names which one would instantly recognise today as being distinctively Armenian. Sometimes surname endings were Russified, to -ev, -oev or -ov (for example, Kevorkov and Pitoev). Names could be transliterated into the Latin alphabet in various ways – for example, a name could be spelt Alikhanov, Alikhanyan, Alikhanian or Alikhanyants. The suffix -ants was common in fact – for example, in names such as Sarkisiants, more familiar today as Sarkisian. Occasionally, you may see the suffix -ant or -antz.
Bluebird Research may be able to assist you with Armenian family history research in Tbilisi or elsewhere in Georgia. Please send us full details of the background information you hold and we would be glad to provide an opinion without any charge.
At number 4 New Street in the City of London, not far from Liverpool Street railway station, there is a discreetly elegant door, over which, on the architrave, are the words EZEPOS G BENLIAN in relief.
The brothers Aharon and Ezepos Benlian were Armenian merchants, trading together as A & E Benlian Brothers until their partnership was dissolved in 1904. They specialised in the import of high quality oriental carpets from the Tabriz region of Iran. Tabriz had a sizeable Armenian community and it is likely that there was a branch of the Benlian family residing there, as Aharon and Ezepos appear to have been born, circa 1861 and 1869 respectively, in the town of Caesarea in Cappadocia in the Ottoman Empire (today Kayseri, Turkey). The family also had a Constantinople connection, as Ezepos’s son Edward was born there in about 1899/1900. Quite possibly Ezepos had married his wife Haykanush Evrenian in the Ottoman capital a year or so earlier.
The G in Ezepos G Benlian is for Garabed, being the name of his father. This pattern of patronymic use was often taken over into the diaspora, at least by the first and sometimes the second generation of immigrant Armenians. Thus Ezepos’s son was named Edward Ezepos Benlian. If you are a family historian researching your Armenian roots and come to the point where you have identified the immigrant ancestors but do not the name(s) of their father(s), it can be safely assumed that the middle name of a child will be the forename of the father (although quite likely heavily anglicised in the process). A frequently encountered exception is of course Der or Ter, which may look like a middle name but is a common Armenian surname prefix denoting descent from an ancestor who was a priest. In this regard, many ecclesiastical titles are placed between forename and family name in Armenian usage, so that, for example, the Vartabed in the name Dikran Vartabed Hovhanesian is not a middle name but a clerical rank.
Ezepos renounced his previous Ottoman citizenship and became a naturalised British subject in 1910. He died in 1925 and his son in 1973. The Benlian family seems to have prospered in London, having addresses at different times both in the City and in suburbs such as Harlesden, Harrow and Wimbledon. New Street, formerly a hub of carpet and rug traders, in common with much of the immediate vicinity of Devonshire Square in EC2, has been gentrified; no. 4 is now the address of a legal practice.
And what of Caesarea? The Armenian community must now be very small, although the church of Surp Krikor still stands and apparently is the sole remaining functional Armenian church in eastern Anatolia. I have a copy of a Turkish language book published on the history of nearby Talas in the 19th century* (the same author has published a companion volume on Kayseri). Both towns were ethnically mixed in the 19th century, with a thriving population of Armenians and Greeks as well as Turks.
The Talas book includes a listing of the property owners of the town, arranged by mahalle (quarter) and street, with the valuation of their houses for taxation purposes. The information is based on taxation registers circa 1875 held in the local archives. These original tax records would have been written in Osmanlı Arabic script and names have been transliterated into the version of the Latin alphabet used in modern Turkish. Nearly all Christians, both Greeks and Armenians, had, or were given in official records, surnames ending in the patronymic suffix -oğlu (such as Onasıoğlu and Gülbenkoğlu – in fact, there was a mahalle of Talas named Gülbenk, in which many Gülbenkoğlu had homes including the family of Kalus Gülbenkoğlu a.k.a. Calouste Gulbenkian, the oil baron, art collector and philanthropist). Often only the full combination of forename and family name distinguishes them, and then not always successfully, from their Turkish neighbours – forenames such as Karabet (Garabed) and Kirkor (Krikor) are usually identifiable as Armenian, but other names could be those of Greeks or Turks. In the Talas book there are no Benlian entries. It would be interesting to obtain a copy of the Kayseri volume and see whether the family of Ezepos G Benlian is in evidence.
* 19. Yüzyilda Talas, by Hüseyin Cömert, pub Mazaka Yayıncılık, 2010
Many of the towns on the coast of Istria had Italian populations, but the rural population was predominantly Croatian. Here the traditional peasant society survived until about 1930. By “peasant society” is meant a largely self-sufficient farming or smallholding community, with a relatively limited cash economy, still living close to the land and according to cultural and religious norms which had evolved relatively little over the centuries. This is not to say that outlooks and experience were necessarily narrow, as we shall see in a moment when we look at emigration.
For a family historian with ancestral roots in Istria, it is important to remind oneself regularly of the larger political context, as this affected many of the events in even the smallest communities. Istria was part of Austro-Hungary from 1814 until the outbreak of WW1; Italian from 1918 until 1943; and of course Yugoslav thereafter. The Austro-Hungarian era in Istria is sometimes regarded with some nostalgia. Croatia was subject to Hungarian rule, it is true, but in the villages of Istria there was peace and no interference in daily life. This was not the case during the Italian occupation, when the peninsula was subject to increasing attempts at Italianisation – for example, Italian was made the sole language of government, the courts and business, while from 1930 there was pressure upon Croatians to Italianise their names.
These political changes affected emigration from Istria too. In general, there was restricted cultivable land, poor soil and limited opportunity. Accordingly, many peasants became part-time fishermen or sailors – often becoming cabin boys at a very young age (11 or 12) and working at sea until land was made available in the village by inheritance upon the death of the father. Others migrated elsewhere in Europe or to USA to find work and earn money – this could be temporary, during which they remitted money home before returning themselves, or permanent if they decided to settle.
During the Austrian era, the ports of Trieste and Rijeka (Fiume in Italian) attracted many migrants from across Istria. When these ports became Italian, they were cut off from their former natural hinterland of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and started to stagnate. This meant that, although Istrian villagers were still residing in the same country as the ports, their opportunities beyond the village began to narrow. This problem was compounded by the Italians making emigration more difficult and the US imposing post-War immigration quotas. In consequence, the long slow decline of Istrian villages can be traced to the 1920s.
The Catholic parish of Sveta Lucija na Skitači is situated south of Labin (also known as Albona in Italian) on the eastern side of the Istrian peninsula. Three small Croatian villages within the parish – Drenje, Ravni and Škvaranska – were the focus of a detailed demographic study by Rudolph Bell*.
The parishioners in Sveta Lucija belonged to a relatively small number of extended families. Rudolph Bell calculated that the more than 500 individuals born in the parish between 1852 and 1914 carried only 15 surnames between them. The commonest names in each settlement were Blažina in Drenje, Škopac in Ravni, and Tomičić in Škvaranska. It should be noted that in the parish registers and status animarum the local surnames were often given in Italianised form, even prior to the Italian occupation: for example, Škopac may appear as Scopaz and even as Scopazzi.
Bell’s microhistory of this small society, using family reconstruction methodologies based on the same records which a genealogist would use when researching their family tree, produced some very interesting outcomes.
From birth and baptism records, he discovered a mid-summer dip in births, lasting from mid-June to mid-August. The annual peak was in April, with a lesser spike in September.
In a previous blog I wrote about seasonality in marriage, focusing on Eastern Orthodox communities in the Balkans. It is interesting that in a Roman Catholic country like Croatia the same basic patterns prevailed. Bell found the same influences – ecclesiastical and agricultural – producing the same peaks and troughs. In Sveta Lucija, marriages were rare both during Lent and Advent and throughout the high intensity workload on the land from April to September. Marriages tended to be celebrated after Martinje (St Martin’s Day) on 11th November, with a lesser peak in February before Lent.
Bell calculated that the mean age at marriage was 27 for men and 24 for women; that what demographers call premarital conception was responsible for between 20% and 25% of all first-born children of marriages; that women traditionally nursed their children for between 12 and 24 months as a form of contraception, and thereby were able to space their children by about three years; and that the average number of children per marriage fell from 6.25 in 1870 to 4.5 circa 1900 to 2.7 in 1930.
Family historians tend to concentrate on the particular, what is individual and specific to their own family. However, it is illuminating to place and understand one’s one family in a larger context and the work of demographers, anthropologists, local and social historians, and others is a great aid in this respect. Nor should the general reader be deterred – not all such works are academic and abstruse. Demographers may be statisticians but they illustrate their work with specific examples and also with anecdotal evidence gathered from personal interviews (oral history). For example, Rudolph Bell comments in passing that the unmarried couples of Sveta Lucija na Skitači sometimes used premarital conception to overcome parental disapproval of marriage – in other words, by presenting the parents with the fait accompli of the young woman’s pregnancy, they could precipitate a marriage which their parents had wanted to delay or prevent.
*See “The Transformation of a Rural Village: Istria 1870-1972”, published in Journal of Social History, vol 7 no 3 (1974).
For the English-speaking family historian with roots in an Eastern European country, reading English-language travelogues from the past is one way to develop a better understanding of the old country. True, travelogues view a country from a single perspective only, that of the privileged outsider who, on his or her travels, is unlikely to see or experience the country as a native does. Nevertheless, I believe there is much to be gained from historical travel writing and particular from reading a number of books so as to seek a more rounded composite picture of how a place seemed.
Unfortunately, with some exceptions, more recent travel writers rarely seem to be successful in capturing a country. They may be too self-regarding, or unconsciously supercilious, or concerned to avoid seriousness, so that they fall into the category of the ephemeral and lightweight.
There is only a modest literature in English on the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, so I approached Christopher Deliso’s “Hidden Macedonia: The Mystic Lakes of Ohrid and Prespa” (Haus, 2007) with some excitement. Deliso is an American living in Skopje, married to a Macedonian; his travelogue covers his clockwise trip around the lakes of Prespa and Ohrid, through Greece, Albania and of course Macedonia itself.
It is probably accurate to say that I was disappointed by the book but, also, that I understood it and found it interesting despite itself. There are facets of the book which are not pleasing: the casual jibes at poor Albanians and their recent history, seemingly in the hope of raising an easy laugh; the over-intrusive self of the author; the way the book loses momentum midway and starts to peter out in an uncertainty as to its purpose and its audience. The author is described as having read Byzantine Studies at Oxford; it is right that a writer wears his or her learning lightly, but little learning makes it through to this book, which is a shame.
But still, the book catches something of the truth of the place. I can say this with confidence, even without having visited Macedonia. I have travelled in neighbouring Serbia and Bulgaria and I have seen equivalents of some of the things Deliso describes. More than anything else I think I can sense and respect Deliso’s feeling for Macedonia. There is something compelling about the Balkans, something very attractive; and something not at all what you would think if you relied solely on the media’s perennial accounts of the region (a subject superbly dismantled by Maria Todorova in “Imagining the Balkans”), in fact, quite the opposite. It is the humanity of the people and their way of life. To which one should add the roughness and variety of the natural settings of the Balkans, and the beauty of the Orthodox monasteries and churches, and mosques, in that setting. Finally, of course, countries such as Macedonia have yet to be smothered by the blandness of corporate capitalism and the homogenising spirit of the European Union. For the next 10 or 25 years, they will preserve that particularity which makes them fascinating to someone like Deliso or, for example, Alan Grant, whose Balkanology website better illustrates the compelling draw of the region than anything I could write. I am conscious that, if you are from Western Europe, part of this power is the otherness of the Balkans and that this exoticising of the Balkans is something Todorova also addresses in her work; but it also seems to me that the otherness is real and that recognising and valuing it is a valid experience for a person born and raised somewhere in Australia, Britain or North America.
So read Deliso’s book if you can, accept its limitations, and, if you have roots in this particular corner of the Balkans, try to get out there to see it for yourself.
“You cannot know the feeling of a man who has no home… Perhaps no others can understand the hopeless homesickness of us older Russians.”
“The whole world is open to me… Only one place is closed to me, and that is my own country – Russia.”
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff, New York Evening Post (26 Dec 1933) & “Some Critical Moments in My Career”, Musical Times 71 (June 1930)
A family historian in the English-speaking world searching speculatively for the marriage of an ancestor on an unknown date does not usually consider seasonality; that is, they have no preconceptions as to whether a wedding would or would not have taken place at any particular time of year. Furthermore, one rarely comes across any especially noticeable peaks or troughs in the frequency of marriages across the calendar year. Couples get married all year round, perhaps in the post-WW2 world showing a preference for summer weddings.
In contrast, in most rural societies across Eastern Europe before WW2 and certainly before WW1 when traditional ways of life were still very much intact, there was marked seasonality of marriage. This is reflected in the pages of any volume of a parish marriage register.
One of the two chief factors was the agricultural year. Throughout the growing season and especially during the harvest, farmers, smallholders and peasants were joined in the fields and in the processing of harvested crops by just about every available hand – villagers of both sexes and all ages would be involved and frequently laboured both long days and by moonlight. During this period, there was generally no time for marriage.
The second factor was the religious calendar. In particular, fasting created marriage seasonality. Especially in Eastern Orthodox communities, marriage was an occasion of extended feasting and therefore incompatible with the fasts, during which meat, dairy produce, rich oils and so on were eschewed. There are various individual feast days during the Orthodox calendar, upon which it would be unthinkable for a wedding to be celebrated. But more to the point there were two fasts of great length.
The first fast was the great or holy fast of the seven weeks of Lent. For instance, in the Serbian Orthodox calendar, traditionally the Church celebrated no marriages between Bele Poklade (a moveable feast, “white Shrovetide”, the last Sunday before Lent) and Đurđevdan (St George’s Day, 6th May).
The second fast took place over the 40 days leading up to Christmas. Again, for the Serbian Orthodox calendar, this is the Božićni Post period from 28th November up to Božić, the Orthodox Christmas itself, on 7th January.
Marriages therefore tended to cluster between these two extended feasts. Factoring in the principal months of agricultural activity, this produced a spate of weddings from mid-January to early March, and again from October to late November.
Of course, for other Orthodox societies, the harvest might move a few weeks according to latitude, altitude, climate and other factors. Similarly, fasting at Lent might well take place over fewer weeks. However, the pattern itself remains largely true and produces the same seasonal peaks in marriage.
One question I’ve been asked in the past, at family history shows or in emails, is about the British community in Russia in the 18th and 19th century. The usual question is: what would my ancestors have been doing out there?
It’s a good question and admits of no simple answer. As was the case with the British Empire, a disproportionate number of the Brits in Russia were Scottish and, to a lesser degree, Irish, even though at the time “English” tended to be used instead of “British” irrespective of actual nationality. The community was centred on the consulate and the merchant community, originally called the Russia Company’s British Factory, in St Petersburg. The merchants were essentially in the import/export business – exporting to Britain raw materials, such as flax, hemp, pitch and timber, and importing to Russia all kinds of the often fashionable British merchandise, ranging from tableware and fancy goods to race horses and carriages.
In addition to the merchants, however, there were all sorts of technical experts, especially in the 18th century, when naval officers and shipbuilders played a key role in developing the Russian navy. Other experts included landscape gardeners on Russian estates, engravers and clockmakers, and doctors.
However, it should not be thought that there were no lower middle class or working class Brits in the Russian Empire. For instance, the Russian aristocracy’s and gentry’s love of horses and horse racing created all sorts of opportunities for British grooms, ostlers, saddlers, blacksmiths, jockeys, horse trainers and of course horse dealers. Similarly, among the retainers of the Russian upper classes were many British governesses, nannies, nurses, tutors and housekeepers.
Some of the British settled in Russia and remained there for generations, occasionally marrying into Russian families but just as often intermarrying within the community or seeking spouses from the British Isles. However, others stayed only a few years, on contract or assignment, and the only indication of a Russian connection may be, for example, a single child in the family with place of birth Russia on a census return or other document.
An average American or British person knows little about Eastern Europe. Given an outline map of Europe, it is unlikely that they would be able to confidently fill in the names of all nation states across the region. In speech or in thought, they might confuse the Baltic and the Balkans, or Slovakia with Slovenia, and very probably Moldavia and Moldova. Head further east to the Caucasus and even more people would struggle to locate and identify the Russian breakaway republics or the independent states such as Armenia.
On a map, the Republic of Armenia appears tiny and landlocked, squeezed between neighbouring but not always neighbourly Azerbaijan and Georgia. This is a remnant of a much greater land area that was and, to Armenians, still is Armenia. There is no precise parallel in Europe. However, for those familiar with Partitioned Poland, a comparison can be drawn at the beginning of the 19th Century. At that date, previously independent Poland was carved up between the three empires of Austria, Prussia and Russia. At the same time, the land of Armenia was situated within the territory of the Ottoman, Persian and Russian Empires. The difference between Poland and Armenia is that in regaining its independence in the 20th century Poland recovered significant historical territory, while Armenia was reduced to its present much shrunken state.
It is important for Armenian family historians to realise that it is unlikely that their ancestors lived within the present borders of Armenia. For most, to visit Armenia is not to visit the land of their ancestors.
So where is Armenia, the Armenia which generated the global diaspora?
At the end of the 20th Century, only a small part of historic Armenia still lay in Persia, as the Ottoman and Russian Empires had expanded at its expense. However, those Armenians in Persia lived, relatively speaking, a less troubled existence. There were (and still are) significant Armenian communities in, for example, the cities of Tabriz and in the New Julfa district of Isfahan. Moreover, during the multiple troubles which afflicted the Armenian nation, Persia occasionally became a place of refuge.
The majority of Armenians resided in Ottoman Turkish Western Armenia. In English-language diaspora documents, such as American census returns, this is likely to appear as “Turkish Armenia” (or simply as “Ottoman Empire” or “Turkey” or “Turkey in Asia”). This is to contrast it with Russian Eastern Armenia (“Russian Armenia” or “Russia” on census returns). The border between these two regions shifted with the Russian advance south into and beyond the Caucasus. Armenians lived across Transcaucasia including in what are now Georgia and Azerbaijan – in fact, the Armenian communities in Tiflis (modern Georgian Tbilisi) and in Baku (now Azerbaijan) were larger and more dynamic than that in Yerevan, today’s capital but then only a comparative backwater. The most significant forward push of Russia was in 1878, when it subsumed the easternmost section of Turkish Western Armenia, including the towns of Ardahan and Kars. Russian retained this territory officially until 1921.
It is impossible to read Armenian history without a rising sense of indignation at injustice or, as Philip Marsden wrote in The Crossing Place, becoming partisan. Events in the 19th Century had already displaced many Armenians. The wars between Russia and Persia in 1826-28 and between Russia and the Ottomans in 1828/29 led to Armenian emigration into Transcaucasia – an estimated 45,000 from Persia and 100,000 from the Ottoman Empire. The 1877/78 Russo-Turkish War resulted in another 25,000 or so Armenians removing to Transcaucasian Armenia. Large-scale Muslim emigration (of Kurds, Turks and others) into regions which had experienced a loss of Armenian population changed the demographic balance of Armenia. Inter-communal relations began to sour. It is sobering to realise that the Armenian Genocide of 1915 was not a one-off aberration but the logical and pre-planned culmination of Turkish nationalist policy. It was foreshadowed by the co-ordinated state-sponsored Hamidian massacres of 1895-97. Atrocities were committed against Armenians in Constantinople, Cilicia and elsewhere: reliable estimates speak of 200,000 killed, 100,000 forcibly converted to Islam and between 60,000 and 100,000 emigrating. This pattern was repeated in 1909, albeit on a smaller scale. During both these times of massacre, hundreds of Armenian villages were entirely destroyed: it is important to understand that many of these places cannot be located on contemporary maps of Turkey, not because of a change of name (although this happens too, especially in the case of mixed communities) but because the sites remain abandoned.
The 1915 Genocide is well enough known not to need repeating. What compounded the misery for Armenians was that in the post-War situation they were abandoned first by the French in Cilicia, then by the British and US, and finally by the Soviets. Turkey, allied to Germany and defeated in WW1 (just as it was to be in WW2), emerged from the conflict with a larger territory which had grown at the expense of Armenia and had been ethnically cleansed of both Armenians and Greeks. But unlike Germany, the Turkish state, now a NATO partner and candidate EU accession state, has never paid reparations or acknowledged the Genocide. Perhaps this will change with the centenary in 2015.
What all this means for most Armenian genealogists is that researching family history is fraught with difficulty.
For those from Turkish Western Armenia, tracing roots in modern Turkey is (with some few exceptions, such as Constantinople) currently not a realistic proposition, at least in the way in which we customarily conceive of family history research, with ready access to parish registers or other vital records.
For those with roots in Russian Eastern Armenia, including the Kars province, there is more hope: surviving records are held in Yerevan.
For all researchers, the first task is to identify place of origin. The same place names – those of provincial and vilayet centres – appear all too frequently in such Armenian diaspora documents as passenger lists, naturalisation records and censuses. You will see Adana, Bitlis, Dikranagerd, Diyarbekir, Erzurum, Kars, Kharpert, Marsovan, Sivas, Trebizond, Van and so on. While in many cases, the immigrant individual or family may indeed have been from the town of this name, in at least as many cases it is likely that they were simply from one of many Armenian villages in its district. In these circumstances, it is vital to exhaust all possible record sources in the immigrant land (such as USA) and collate all family information carefully before even considering turning your attention towards Anatolia and Armenia.
Bluebird Research welcomes enquiries from Armenian family historians. We may not be able to help in all cases, as so often circumstances are not conducive to successful research, but we will gladly provide advice, a second opinion or a free assessment.
The Manchurian city of Harbin, or Kharbin as it tends to be transliterated by Russians, became known as Belyi Kharbin, or “White Harbin”, to the Soviets, who depicted it as the refuge of the reactionary and royalist White Guard and its sympathisers. The history of Russian Harbin is much more complex and varied than this only partly true Soviet characterisation would suggest.
For starters, of course, Harbin was a pre-Revolutionary railway city when there was no such thing as Reds or Whites. The Russian community was founded in 1898 as the hub of the Russian-built Chinese Eastern Railway. The early settlers, therefore, were not politicised but were frontiersmen and pioneers, working on the railway and attracting all the support facilities that the town needed – builders to create housing, technical experts, service professionals such as doctors and teachers, shopkeepers and restaurant owners. The February 1913 census of Harbin enumerated 34,313 Russians in Harbin (Kharbintsy), almost exactly half the town’s total population of 68,549. In addition, there were 5,032 mostly Russian Jews and 2,556 Poles. Like many new settlements, there was out-migration as well – for instance, some engineers and labourers worked on a temporary contract and then left Harbin, while other Russians evacuated during and immediately after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904/05 – but the general trend was incoming, with an increasing influx in the four or five years up to the census date.
Of course, this settlement was greatly boosted by the wave of incoming White Russians after the Revolution. Again, it is important to note that many of these used Harbin as a stopping-off place en route to elsewhere. Perhaps between 100,000 and 200,000 Russians arrived in Harbin during the 1920s but the settled Russian population was smaller – for instance, there are precise counts of 55,959 in 1927 and 55,924 in 1935, showing just how many were in transit.
But these figures also conceal significant differences within the community: although there were indeed plenty of veteran White officers and soldiers, royalists and old intelligentsia, not all of Harbin’s 55,000 or so Russians in the late 1920s and early 1930s were Whites. The situation is complex. In September 1920, the Russians in Harbin had become officially stateless and, to compound matters, Sino-Soviet agreements of 1924 decreed that henceforth only Chinese and Soviet citizens could work on the Chinese Eastern Railway and in its extensive ancillary operations in the city. This was the tipping point for Harbin Russians. They were faced with a choice – either accept Soviet or Chinese citizenship, or remain stateless and become unemployed. This was the point at which the Russian community in Harbin really split into opposing political camps.
The situation did not improve. In 1935, the USSR sold its share in the Chinese Eastern Railway to the government of what in 1932 had become the Japanese Manchurian puppet state of Manchukuo. At this date, the majority of Soviet citizens, including those who had opted for citizenship after 1924 and often held only provisional Soviet passports, moved to USSR. The movement was not auspicious. Their fate was to become immediately suspect in the eyes of the Soviet state. In September 1937 the NKVD moved to repress the 25,000 or so Harbiners in USSR. Some were accused of being Japanese spies, some were regarded as White Guard veterans, others still as having engaged in bourgeois professions or occupations such as owning a hotel or being involved in business. They were deported to labour camps or executed.
Significant numbers of Russians still remained in Japanese Harbin. They were obliged to register with the Japanese Bureau for the Affairs of Russian Émigrés. By October 1936, there were 25,942 Russian Harbiners on its books (plus some 1,952 Soviet officials and other citizens). By 1942, this number had risen to 36,711. This rise probably reflects improved registration more than incoming migration or natural increase.
In August 1945, the Soviet Army defeated Japan and occupied Manchukou, receiving at least a tentative welcome from many Harbiners, exhausted as they were by their decades of exile and insecurity. The latest turn of events was not auspicious either, however: the Soviets were keenly interested in the voluminous files of the Bureau for the Affairs of Russian Émigrés and some 15,000 Harbiners were promptly arrested, deported to labour camps or summarily executed. Those not arrested were permitted to apply for Soviet passports. China regained control of Manchuria in 1949. In 1954, the USSR granted Harbin Russians the right to be repatriated to such virgin land destinations as Kazakhstan and Altai. Some Harbiners took up this offer, while the remainder, sensing the closing pages of the final chapter of Russian Harbin, chose to emigrate, heading overseas to Australia, USA and various South American countries.
Today surviving Harbiners and their descendants form communities in Moscow, Novosibirsk, Omsk and Yekaterinburg, as well as in diaspora cities such as San Francisco and Sydney. There is a rising interest in the history of Russian Harbin, including among genealogists. There are resources available for Harbin family history research but these are dispersed – there are archival and library holdings in, for example, Moscow, St Petersburg and Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East. We welcome enquiries from researchers investigating their Harbin Russian family trees and are available for professional research assignments in Russia.
From the 1842 Treaty of Nanking onwards, Shanghai had been a British and subsequently international city planted on Chinese soil. The International Settlement in Shanghai, with its neighbour the French Concession, was its own jurisdiction: as well as existing outside Chinese systems of justice and taxation, it developed its own defence, in the form of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, and police, the Shanghai Municipal Police Force. Moreover, as a free port, it was open to all, which explains its pull to those not in possession of passport or visa during the great European crises of the Russian Revolution and the rise of Nazism. Even before stateless refugees arrived in Shanghai, however, it had a thriving Jewish community.
First to arrive was a small but influential community of Baghdadi Jews, wealthy trading families such as the Ezras, Hardoons, Kadoories and Sassoons whose business networks extended from Cairo to Bombay to Singapore to Hong Kong and Shanghai. These established branches in Shanghai within just a few years of the 1842 Treaty – for example, the Sassoons opened their first Shanghai office in 1845. Some of these families were British subjects, some Ottoman (before WW1) or Iraqi (after WW1).
The Baghdadi Jews founded Mizrahi or Sephardic synagogues in the International Settlement:
Beth-El, Peking Road, 1887 Shearith Israel, Seward Road, 1900 Ohel Rachel, Seymour Road, 1920 Beth Aharon, Museum Road, 1927
This development pattern shows the westward drift of the Jewish community from the densely built and increasingly overcrowded neighbourhoods of the eastern riverfront.
The same movement was also shown by the German and Russian Jews, who arrived in Shanghai somewhat later – from the 1870s – and tended to follow more modest occupations, running bars and cafes and small hotels, as well as engaging in trade and clerical work. They set up Ashkenazi synagogues:
Ohel Moishe, Seward Road, 1906 Ohel Moishe (sic), Ward Road, 1927 prayer house, Seymour Road, 1934 prayer house, Rue Bourgeat, 1937 New Synagogue, Rue de la Tour, 1941
For family historians, it is worth knowing that there have been two Ashkenazi synagogues with the same name at different locations within the International Settlement.
Setomaa is a land that does not exist on maps, inhabited by the Seto, or Setu, a small nation which is both threatened by assimilation and experiencing something of a cultural renaissance.
It is divided by the border between Estonia and Russia.
On the Estonian side, the Seto live in Mikitimäe and Värska parishes in Põlvamaa, and in Meremäe and Misso parishes in Võrumaa. A traditional Seto settlement differs from an archetypal Estonian settlement in being a compact or linear village rather than a looser cluster of scattered dwellings and farmsteads. Also, the Seto are Russian Orthodox, rather than the typical Lutheran religion of Estonia, and worship in a distinctive wooden chapel known as a tsässon.
On the Russian side, the Seto live mainly between the towns of Petseri (Pechory in Russian) and Irboska (Izborsk in Russian), which lie on the western edge of Pskov oblast’, part of the Northwestern Federal Okrug of Russia. The Seto are a recognised minority in Russia but this does not prevent assimilation. According to the 2002 census, only 197 Russian citizens declared themselves to be of Setu nationality (there were also some 28,113 Estonians). It is of course likely that some Setu stated that they were Estonian, or indeed Russian, or chose not to declare any nationality.
During Estonia’s first period of independence, from 1920 to 1940, however, before the German and then the Soviet occupation, all of Setomaa was in Estonia, in the then county of Petserimaa with its county town at Petseri. Petseri grew up around its monastery (now known as the Pskovo-Pechersky Dormition Monastery) which, as well as being the major landowner in Setomaa, was the spiritual centre of Russian Orthodoxy among the Seto.
Previously, before WW1, all of Setomaa was in the Pskov gubernia of the Russian Empire. For this reason, the population here died not acquire surnames as the Estonians did during the period from the 1810s to the 1830s. I have read that the Seto did not take surnames until 1921, before then using a Russian style combination of forename and otchestvo (patronymic). This seems late but may well be true. After all, looking further west, not all Swedes had a surname as such until the Släktnamnslagen 1901 made fixed family names compulsory.
Is there a Seto diaspora? Undoubtedly there must be, although I suspect that this is concentrated in Siberia and elsewhere across Russia, rather than in Australia, North America and Scandinavia. Presumably, Seto would have been among the June 1941 and March 1949 Soviet deportations of Estonians to Siberia and the descendants of those who survived and have not returned to Estonia might now exist in the Urals and in the regions of Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk and Omsk in Siberia.
The League of Nations negotiated the ratification and oversaw the implementation of the fait accompli of the great population exchange between Greece and Turkey, encapsulated in the 1923 Lausanne Convention.
By 1928, there were 1,221, 849 refugees resident in Greece. It should be stressed that this is an under-estimate of the total number of displaced Greeks who arrived in the country in the early 1920s, as of course by 1928 many refugees had died, while perhaps up to 50,000 had migrated onwards to destinations such as Egypt, France and USA.
The official figures for the origins of the refugees, as given in Dimitri Pentzopoulos’s Balkan Exchange of Minorities, are as follows:
Asia Minor 626,954 Thrace 256,635 Pontus 182,169 Bulgaria 49,027 Kars & Tiflis 47,091 Constantinople 38,458 Russia 11,435 Serbia 6,057 Albania 2,498 Dodecanese 738 Romania 722 Cyprus 57 Egypt 5
It will be seen that Greece received refugees from beyond Turkey. The figure from Bulgaria excludes 81,892 Greeks who arrived in the country following the earlier Treaty of Neuilly of 1919.
The places of residence of the refugees in 1928 were as follows:
Macedonia 638,253 Central Greece 306,193 Thrace 107,607 Aegean Islands 56,613 Thessaly 34,659 Crete 33,900 Peloponnese 28,362 Epirus 8,179 Cyclades 4,782 Ionian Islands 3,301
A great effort was made to settle refugees on land, both that available as a result of the exchange of Muslims and of the 1923 land reforms (which expropriated major landowners, both Muslim and Greek), and that newly brought into cultivation. This infused new agricultural techniques, for instance in tobacco and vine growing.
However, a majority of the refugees necessarily had to settle in towns and many were unable to pursue their former occupations and trades due to an excess of supply over demand for their services. Some industries were effectively transplanted to Greece. For instance, the silk industry of Nicomedia (Izmit in Turkish) was recreated at Nea Kios in Argolis prefecture, and Oriental carpet-making at refugee settlements in Nea Ionia and Nea Kokkinia. Similarly, the celebrated pottery industry in Kutahya in Asia Minor was re-established in Greece.
The Ottomans conceptualised the population of their empire as three basic communities: the Muslims, the non-Muslim inhabitants and the foreigners (or Franks). In turn, the non-Muslims were divided by religion into the millets.
This view of the population informed the arrangements made to measure and monitor the people. Only Muslims could serve in the army. Their Christian and Jewish neighbours instead had to pay a kind of poll tax called the cizye or jizye, later replaced by the bedelât-ı askeriye, literally a tax in lieu of military service. The early 19th century Ottoman censuses were designed primarily to capture the necessary information to enable the state to conscript Muslim men into the army and to levy taxes upon the non-Muslims. Over the course of the century, the Ottomans endeavoured periodically to improve the accuracy and comprehensiveness of their data, so as to boost army and reserve sizes and to maximise tax revenues.
Only males were counted in the census before reforms in 1878, as only males were liable to military service and taxation.
The Ottoman censuses were not defined regular (for instance, decennial) events taking place over a single night or weekend, unlike most of those in places like Britain and America. Rather, they tended to extend over two years and frequently longer. In due course, the census and civil registration functions merged into a single continuous ongoing recording of the population – the basis of this can be said to have been largely achieved by the mid- or late 1880s. This system was also joined up with the military, so that the army had a continuous feed of information for conscripting men into active service, the reserve and the local militia.
From the late 1850s, the census was also used to produce the equivalent of ID cards. The earliest of these was the vergi nüfus tezkeresi or population tax certificate issued to males, which recorded the holder’s obligations to the state, such as their tax liability.
From about 1878, this was replaced by nüfus tezkeresi or population certificate. This served for ID and had to be used in all interactions with the state and for travel purposes. The information on this population certificate was an extract from the sicil-ı nüfus, or nüfus defter, being the actual population registers created and maintained by the state. Muslims and non-Muslims were enumerated in separate registers. The registers included women for the first time. The register included name, age, place of birth, marital condition, religion, occupation, address and military status. Nickname and, in case of adult males, style of beard or moustache were also recorded for purposes of identification. Along side the population registers, a system of notifying and registering births, marriages, divorces, deaths and change of address was also implemented.
Between 1878 and 1885, the new system was gradually rolled out across much of the Empire. Provinces in Turkey-in-Europe which were not immediately covered included the vilayets of Kosovo, Monastir and Shkodër, plus Bosnia, Bulgaria, Crete, Cyprus, Hercegovina and the autonomous Eastern Rumelia. However, the Aegean, Constantinople, Danube, Edirne, Janina and Salonica provinces were covered, plus Ionia and all of western and central Asia Minor.
Finally, new regulations came into force between 1900 and 1902 that mandated the requirement to carry and present one’s population certificate. In due course, this was documenting so much information about the bearer that it became an ID booklet rather than card, known as the nüfus hüviyet cüzdanı or simply nüfus cüzdanı and still used in Turkey today.
Of course, an increasing numbers of Ottoman-born subjects of empire acquired, for protection or advantage, European passports. For instance, the Greek state was happy to assign Greek citizenship to all Greeks living beyond its borders who applied.
Cyprus, As I Saw It In 1879, by the Victorian engineer and adventurer Sir Samuel White Baker, is an important depiction of the condition of the island one year after British occupation. Baker, alternately mounted or on foot, with hunting dogs, the barely glimpsed Lady Baker and convenient quantities of retainers in tow, crossed Cyprus in all directions – from arrival at Larnaca, to Nicosia (Lefkosia), across the Mesaoria plains to Famagusta (Ammochostos), back up to Cape Apostolos Andreas on the point of the Karpasia peninsula, west along the northern coast to Kyrenia (Keryneia) and beyond to Morfou, then anti-clockwise round the coast via Paphos and Limasol to the cool of the mountain-top monastery of Trooditissa, where he wrote up his daily journal into a manuscript for his publishers back in England.
The book has all the strengths and flaws of a product of that class of Englishman, perhaps now extinct, possessed of unthinking self-belief, classical education, the practical application of common sense and a love of the great outdoors. His value judgements are confident and his manner usually patronising but he acknowledges both the good character of the Cypriots he encounters and the impoverished straits in which they find themselves. Refreshingly, he is not sparing in his criticism of the invidious deal that the British have struck with the Turks and the practical consequences of that deal both for the British and for the islanders.
The Convention of June 1878 effectively gave the British a conditional lease over Cyprus so long as the Russians continued to hold and occupy previously Ottoman districts of Ardahan, Batoum (today Batumi) and Kars. Should the Russians withdraw, so would the British. This meant that Cyprus was not part of the British Empire per se and would not be colonised; the uncertainty meant that the British government and British capital were disinclined to invest in what could prove to be but a temporary holding. The normal British instincts for improvement were therefore checked. Not only was Cyprus in dire need of investment, having been impoverished from its three centuries under the chronic mismanagement of the Turks, with their iniquitous system of tax-farming and extortion, but there was a double-bind: the British arrangement with the Ottomans included the ongoing payment of revenues from Cyprus to the Turks at the previous inflated levels. This meant that there was barely any surplus from which the British could fund the development of roads, forestry, irrigation and education as they would customarily wish. The result was disappointed Cypriots and slow progress.
Baker’s book describes the geography, geology, nature, agriculture and settlements along his route. He is not an anthropologist and his curiosity about the inhabitants is limited. Nevertheless, his book is recommended to any family historians with Cypriot roots who wish to understand the Cyprus known to their ancestors in the late 19th century. The book is out of copyright and now widely available through print-on-demand services.
The 1861 Greek census systematically enumerated the population of the Kingdom of Greece, at that time restricted of course to what is now the south of the mainland (the Peloponnese and Livadia), plus Euboea and the Cyclades. The census therefore covered, for example, Corinth, Patras and Tripolis but not such important Greek towns as Florina, Ioannina, Kastoria, Larissa, Salonika and Trikala which still lay outside Greece in the Ottoman Empire.
In the cities of Athens and Piraeus, census forms were distributed to and complete by householders. However, everywhere else in the Kingdom local authority officials went knocking door to door and gathered information from the householders.
Information typical of a 19th century European census return was collected: name, sex, age, marital status, relationship to head of household, occupation, religion, nationality and address.
Statistical information was published in full the following year and provides an historical record of the population of Greece at this moment in its history. However, the actual individual name level census returns have not survived complete.
For example, census information survives for approximately 61% of the inhabitants of the new town of Ermoupoli (Hermoupolis). Ermoupoli sprung up on the island of Syros in the 1820s as a place of refuge during the Greek struggle for independence and was settled initially by bankers, industrialists, merchants, ship-owners and the like, who fled from Chios, Psara, Smyrna and other major Greek settlements vulnerable to the Turks. The town thrived and became a centre of commerce and shipbuilding, attracting both other businesses and economic migrants from all parts of Greece and the Aegean. By the time of the 1861 census, the population amounted to 18,044 and was regarded as perhaps the wealthiest town in independent Greece. This was soon to change, as the 1870s proved to be a decade of financial crisis and economic decline for Syros.
The 1861 census for Ermoupoli is arranged alphabetically by forename of the head of household. Census returns for the first five letters of the Greek alphabet (A, V, G, D and E) are missing. This means that there are no returns for families whose head was named, for example, Anastasios or Dimitris. However, the returns for the remaining letters survive. These are followed by institutional returns (for the gaol, the hospital, the police station etc) and then by a separate (and alphabetically complete) return for the 751 inhabitants of the Hydriot quarter of town (which was by no means inhabited solely by families from Hydra). All told, 11,082 men, women and children are enumerated; the returns for the remaining 6,962 inhabitants (known from the statistical abstracts) have been lost.
Revision lists are the nearest Imperial Russian equivalent to the censuses conducted in places such as Canada, USA and Britain which are so familiar and indispensable to family historians in those regions. While those censuses were intended as a count of the population at a particular point in time and were conducted over a single night or weekend every 10 years, the Russian revision lists were generated for taxation purposes and were more irregular in frequency and duration, with each one tending to take up to a year or more to be completed.
The revision lists, also known as revision of souls, are extremely useful to those genealogists with ancestral roots in the Russian Empire, which of course covered great swathes of territory outside its current borders, for instance in the Baltic and in the modern states of Belarus and Ukraine. The term “revision” derives from the detailed comparison which is being made by the census-takers between the census being undertaken and its immediate predecessor.
Although revision lists evolved and therefore vary over time, essentially each revision list enumerates all residents (or at least all male residents) of a particular place. In the Baltic provinces, with the exception of land owned by church or state, most land was in the hands of a small number of the usually Baltic German elite. Their estates were divided into the demesne (the manor or farm – hof – and its surrounding estate lands) and the peasant farmsteads or smallholdings, all of which were named, and of which there could be a hundred or more on any one single estate. Agricultural labourers lived both on the estate lands and on the smallholdings of other peasants. Those smallholding peasants did not have an opportunity to own their farmsteads until this was made possible by the land reform measures implemented first in 1849 and then ratified in 1860 in Livland (Livonia) and in 1863 in Kurland (Courland). Thereafter, peasant ownership expanded rapidly until by the 1880s most smallholdings were owned by their occupiers.
What the revision lists provide, among other things, for the family historian is evidence of movement. This is because each revision records not just where an individual is resident at that time but also where he or she was resident at the time of the previous revision, if different. For example, the 1850 revision gives where a person was living in the 1833 revision. This of course makes it possible to track a person across time.
It is important to understand that migration in early and mid-19th century European Russia, for instance in the Baltic provinces, was generally local. Usually, we are not talking about emigration beyond Russia or beyond the province, but about small-scale movements of only 2 or 3 km in most cases.
Movement between estates was minimal. Those peasants making such movements were usually young men and women in their twenties getting married. Military conscripts were the only other major group of individuals who moved outside the estate.
Movements within an estate were common. Some smallholders moved to another farmstead, while many agricultural labourers were mobile, even moving annually between different farms on the estate.
A revision list such as the 9th revision in 1850 records departures and arrivals. For those individuals who were present at the time of the previous revision in 1833 and have left since, it records when they left and their destination. For those who were living elsewhere in 1833 and have since arrived, the place of origin is recorded. Just as the 1840 and 1850 American censuses, or the 1841 and 1851 English censuses, show only where individuals were living at those two dates, and are silent on any movements in between, so the 1833 and 1850 revision lists only plot where a person was at these two dates, not any interim places of residence. For instance, an agricultural labourer could quite conceivably have moved every year between the two revisions but will only be recorded on them at the two qualifying dates of 1833 and 1850. This also means that a person who is at the same place in 1833 and 1850 may of course have lived elsewhere in between but returned. The family historian must therefore accept that they are only being presented with snapshots in time and not with an unbroken seamless record of movement. Nevertheless, the significance of the revision lists cannot be under-estimated for those researchers investigating their ancestors and the structure and composition of family trees in the Russian Empire in the 19th century.
In the Russian Imperial provinces of Livland (also known as Livonia) and Kurland (also spelt Courland), the peasantry obtained surnames over a process of years between the 1810 and the 1830s (the so-called period of name-giving). It is worth a genealogist with roots in this region taking the time to understand the background to this process, as it may explain certain facts or why the family historian is confronted with a potentially insurmountable brickwall in their Latvian research.
The Livland and Kurland countryside were dominated by Baltic German landowners, with a scattering of Polish and Russian counterparts. The land was essentially divided up into large estates, which in turn contained individual farmsteads as well as the generic estate lands. Some of the peasants were effectively heads of farmsteads, notwithstanding the fact that they themselves, as serfs, were the property of the estate owner, to whom they paid dues. Other serfs were agricultural labourers who worked on the estate and/or farmstead lands. Both types of serf were legally bound to their owner on the estate, although movement between individual farmsteads was common for the agricultural labourers. Neither type of serf bore a surname; rather, they would be known by a combination of their first name and the name of the place (usually the farmstead rather than estate) to which they belonged. Sometimes, the name of the father might be used as a qualifier to differentiate between individuals of the same forename on the same farmstead.
The legal process of the landless emancipation of the serfs took place between 1816 and 1819, although of course its implementation on the ground in the provinces occurred over a period of time extending into the mid-1820s and beyond. The serfs were freed but were freed without land. This meant that although they had legal freedom of movement, including the right to move between estates, they tended to remain on the land they had worked in recent generations and which was still owned by the landowners; they had no land of their own to buy or sell.
The process of taking surnames took place concurrently with emancipation for families and individuals. The process was controlled by newly created peasant courts set up at county (pagasts) level. Once chosen, names could only be altered by approval of the court. Details respecting the old and the new names were entered into court minutes along with details of emancipation. Unfortunately, survival of these minutes and of manorial rolls confirming the new surnames is far from complete.
The state set down both rules and guidelines, refined a number of times in the early 1820s, for the taking of family names.
The head of a farmstead was responsible for choosing the name which would be borne by him and his lineal descendants. The name selected by a man in his 50s or 60s would therefore cascade down to his living children and grandchildren and thereafter to his as yet unborn remoter issue. However, if this family elder had already died and, instead, there were a number of adult sons in, say, their 30s or 40s, each of these brothers was free to choose their own surname. This means that while they may all have taken the same surname, this was not always the case – siblings may bear different surnames.
The agricultural labourers and the peasants employed solely on estate lands acquired their surnames generally at a somewhat later date than the farmsteaders.
One of the rules established early on, in 1822, was the prohibition on taking the surnames of the German landowners, other nobility and what we would now call celebrities, who clearly did not feel flattered when a newly liberated serf graced himself with their grand and distinguished name.
By 1824, guidelines were being issued on what were regarded as appropriate and acceptable surnames. Peasants were encouraged to take surnames with a literal meaning in the local Latvian vernacular, rather than Germanic names. A suitable name might be that of the farmstead upon which they lived and worked. Also, given the small pool of forenames used in most rural communities, the authorities tried to dissuade peasants from assuming names based on patronymics, so as to avoid a plethora of families adopting the surname Jansons after men named Janis, Jēkabsons named after Jēkabs, Pētersons named after Pēteris, and so on.
But these were only guidelines and in most cases the peasantry was able to select a surname of its own choosing without intervention from the authorities. The existence of unflattering names derived from physical appearance or character suggests that some were assigned to the individuals concerned by the court or even the landowner, perhaps because their own suggestions were rejected, or they could not decide, or were in such reduced circumstances that they were not in a position to exercise choice – we will never know. However, most names were indeed based upon the identity of the farmstead, or taken from nature (trees, birds, animals and geographical features), or from patronymics. Surprisingly perhaps, contrary to what we might expect from most European surname dictionaries, only a relatively small proportion of names were occupationally derived.
To see the rolling out of surnames, one need only compare the 7th, 8th and 9th revision lists, carried out respectively from 1815/16 (in some places not undertaken until as late as 1826), from 1833 and from 1850. The revisions were those Imperial Russian censuses enumerating the individuals living on estates – the term “revision” refers to the comparison between the present census and its immediate predecessor, noting the changes caused for instance by death and in- and out-migration from an estate. The 7th revision usually shows very few surnames. However, by the time of the 8th, a great many peasants had acquired surnames and the process is fully complete by the 9th revision in 1850.
For an in-depth study of the period of name-giving in Latvia as it affected one particular Livland estate, please see the excellent and very readable article “Patrilines, Surnames and Family Identity”, by Andrejs Plakans and Charles Wetherell, published in The History of the Family, vol 5 no 2, in 2000.
Civil registration – mandatory official secular registering of vital events of birth, marriage and death – was implemented by different states at different times.
In Hungary before 1895, registration was the responsibility of church not state. What this means is that the different faiths recorded the baptisms, marriages and burials of members of their congregations in different ways.
This also means, of course, that baptism was not compulsory. While in the 19th century baptism was probably near universal for those of Christian faith in Hungary, equally it is clearly the case that there may be no record of birth or baptism for some individuals born before 1895 (for example, if one or both parents were not religious, or resented the charge for baptism, or were travelling, or were of no fixed abode).
Marriageable age, before the 1895 Civil Marriage Act in Hungary, was set by the customs and traditions of the various faiths. For example, the age of marriage for Roman Catholics was 14 for males and 12 for females (although of course such ages are absolute minima and were presumably very rare in the 19th century). Similarly, for the Calvinists, the marriageable ages were 18 for males and 15 for females. Under Jewish law, the minimum age for marriage was traditionally 13 years for boys and 12 years for girls. Of course, marriages at such young ages were uncommon. Before WW1, the average age at marriage for both sexes spanned a couple of years either side of 20, with the groom usually two to four years older than his bride. This of course is in respect of first marriages. In the second half of the 19th century, up to 1 in 5 marriages related to remarriage of the widowed. Interestingly, demographers have reported that Hungarian widowers tended to remarry more quickly and more frequently than widows.
Marriage (and divorce) in Hungary became a civil institution from 1st October 1895. Henceforth, civil registration of marriages was compulsory; religious celebration was optional and a matter of personal conviction.
For genealogists, it is worth knowing the marriageable ages in different jurisdictions at different times. While, of course, some brides and grooms might be economical with the truth when declaring their ages, either adding or subtracting years to suit the occasion and the need, in theory when searching speculatively for the known, expected or possible marriage of a particular individual it makes sense to search from the marriageable age onwards, rather than covering years when a marriage should not have taken place. Only if a marriage is not found in such years should you backtrack to the years in which, strictly speaking, marriage was not permitted.
In this regard, it is important to note that Hungary had a surprisingly high marriageable age regulation between the Wars. In the 1930s, the legal age for marriage was 24 years. This was reduced to 20 years in 1952, then to 18 years, and finally, in 1973, to 16 years for females conditional upon parental consent.
Bluebird Research provides professional family history research assistance to genealogists researching their Hungarian roots and would be pleased to help or advise you as you investigate your family tree. Contact us for a free assessment.
Albania was never part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but one of the most useful genealogical sources for Albanian family history is a census conducted and preserved by the Austrians. This took place in March 1918, during the Austrian military occupation of the country in WW1.
Not all of the country was under Austrian control at that time; areas to the south of the river Vjosë were under Italian occupation and the census was not extended to such parts of the country. This means that towns such as Gjirokastër, Sarandë and Vlorë were excluded. Unfortunately, also, census returns for some districts of the Austrian-controlled area of Albania have been lost: this mostly affects the vicinity of Berat, Fier and Lushnjë. All that survives for these areas is statistical information.
However, censuses survive for the majority of the northern and central regions of Albania, including such key communities as the port of Durrës, Elbasan, the predominantly Roman Catholic town of Shkodër and the capital Tiranë. A total of 435,075 individuals are enumerated in these bilingual (Albanian and German language) surviving census enumeration books.
The census is superbly detailed. As well as the usual census data such as administrative geography and address, the information captured for each individual in every household included their name, relation to head, sex, age, place of birth, usual abode, occupation, religion, nationality, literacy in the Latin and Turkish alphabets, and so on.
An especially interesting feature of the census is the evidence of polygyny. Monogamous marriage was enforced by the state in 1928; or, rather, future polygamous unions were made illegal, as existing marriages were not affected. Until then, it was not unusual for Albanian men to take two or very rarely three concurrent wives. It should be stressed that this was culturally acceptable in both Christian and Muslim societies in Albania, albeit far more common in Muslim. It was predominantly a feature of rural villages (especially in the northern mountains) and was only very rarely encountered in towns. Academics working with the data contained within the 1918 Albanian census have calculated that 4.9% of Albanian marriages extant in March 1918 were polygamous. This figure is recognised as an under-estimate of the total proportion of polygynous marriages, as it excludes those marriages in which either the man or the woman had died before 1918 (and it should be noted that the percentage of widows in the census is very high).
Where a man has two wives, these are marked in the census as Frau I and Frau II and ordered by seniority. Invariably, the first wife was the elder of the two: the average age difference between the two women or co-wives (known as shemra in Albanian) was seven years but sometimes it was as great as 35 years. Second wives were taken for various reasons. The usually accepted reason was the childlessness of the first wife; or, given the widespread cultural son preference, the “sonlessness” of that marriage. However, another reason for a householder to take a younger second wife was to secure extra household labour, especially where the first wife was in declining health or the couple had no live-in daughter-in-law. Two other reasons have been offered, namely the levirate (where a widow marries a brother of her late husband) and the sororate (where a woman marries the widower of her late sister, for instance to look after young children) but of course both of these practices would require the man to already have a first wife and therefore probably contribute only slightly to the overall proportion of polygynous marriages. Finally, a head of a household may simply have taken a second younger wife because he could.
The feature of polygyny in Albanian society can have repercussions for a family historian working with the 1918 census, as it can lead to uncertainty as to the true maternity of a child: even if only one wife is named in the census, the possibility of one or more of the children in the household being the issue of a now deceased wife cannot always be eliminated.
Occasionally in the 1918 census you will come across a head of household with two mothers, Mutter I and Mutter II. This points to a scenario in which the head’s father died at some date before 1918 but was survived by two co-wives. Of course, only one is the actual birth mother of the late head’s son, now in 1918 the new head of household. However, once again, it is not necessarily apparent which Mutter is the true mother and which a kind of step-mother.
The Albanian census also confirms the reports of 19th century travellers and anthropologists in the region regarding age at marriage. These reports speak of child betrothal and of grooms being 15 years and brides as young as 12 or 13 years old. Although it is clear that these ages were not the averages but those at the lowest end of a range, very young brides were not unusual and a 13-year old co-wife in a polygynous marriage has been noted. However, Albanian society was already changing, more typical ages for groom and bride were 29 and 18 years respectively, and perhaps a more notable feature is the disparity in age between bride and groom – averaging at 11 years for a first marriage. The communists banned what they regarded as under-age marriage after WW2 and it is unlikely that Albania today displays ages at marriage much different from those anywhere else in Europe.
There was much anxiety but no fighting as such in Cyprus during WW2. The Germans never invaded; the Italians bombed, but usually ineffectually. Various plans were put in place to evacuate civilians from the capital Nicosia in the event of enemy attack; the idea was that Cypriots should make for their family villages and keep their heads down for the duration. British dependents were in fact evacuated from Famagusta for Port Said, Egypt, along with some 500 Polish refugees, in June 1941.
Initially, the British had low expectations of the Cypriots as fighting men and thus patronisingly directed volunteers to the supply and transport companies. However, this attitude soon changed and the bravery of Cypriots acknowledged as they fought in France, Greece, Italy and North Africa. From February 1940, at least 20,000 men volunteered and were attested into the newly formed Cyprus Regiment. Cypriots were motivated by the perfectly reasonable hope of post-War enosis with Greece and also by simple economic reasons, the volunteers being paid two shillings per day (significantly more than the average wage at that time). Additionally, over 1,000 men were recruited into the Cyprus Volunteer Force to serve as the equivalent of the Home Guard on the island itself. Many more Cypriots – 20,000 men and women – laboured under the Public Works Department to construct defences on the island.
Inevitably, many Cypriots were killed during the War, a small number on the home front as a result of air raids but far greater numbers overseas. It is possible to search for individual casualties (including civilians) by name on the official Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. Alternatively, you can visit the Cyprus Veterans Association website, which has extracted from the CWGC database the list of Cypriot casualties. The Veterans website also carries a list of Cypriots decorated for bravery.
The Aromanians are one of the most fascinating of the various transnational minority groups in the Balkans. In the context of the region known as Macedonia and now subdivided between the nation states of Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Greece, this people tends to be called the Vlachs or Koutsovlachs but they are known by, and call themselves by, a number of different names, many geographically determined.
One reason for this is the nature of their traditional way of life, which was transhumance. Transhumant shepherds would migrate seasonally between summer and winter grazing lands, often significant distances apart, following the same droving routes between highland and lowland each year. They paid little regard to political boundaries, unless forced, and therefore the geographical space they occupied was greater than their numerical population might suggest (even though it is thought that there could well have been 500,000 Aromanians across the Balkans on the eve of the First World War).
Individual branches of Aromanians tended to be known by the names of the mountain ranges where they grazed their flocks in summer. For example, on the territory of modern Greece, those Aromanians frequenting the pastures of the Gramos mountain range in summer were known as the Gramostani and those on the Pindus Mountains as the Pindusteani.
By no means all Aromanians in this region practised transhumance. Many in fact were merchants and, indeed, part of the local elite in towns and larger villages, for example in what is now Florina prefecture in northern Greece abutting the border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The whole geographical region of Macedonia was ethnically mixed and polyglot and therefore the Aromanians, whether shepherds or merchants, were likely to speak one or more of the local Slavic vernaculars and/or Greek and Turkish as well as Aromanian. Certainly, the urban Aromanians were Greek-speaking and of the Orthodox religion and increasingly identified themselves with the Greek nation state, although those who did not – and there were not a few of these – emigrated to Romania (particularly to Dobruja) and beyond to Australia and North America.
Despite the processes of assimilation, there are still 20,000 or more Aromanians in Greece, with typical Vlach villages including Nymfaio (known as Nevesca in Aromanian) in Florina prefecture and Perivoli and Pisoderi in Grevena prefecture.
Researching Aromanian family history is likely to be challenging, at least beyond 1913 (when Epirus and Macedonia were incorporated into Greece). Many families were mobile across what are now international frontiers and many adjusted their surnames to suit the prevailing winds of politics (for instance, commonly changing the suffix at the end of their name from -ović to -ov to -ovski). However, with these caveats, Bluebird Research would be delighted to assist you with genealogical research into Vlach ancestors in northern Greece. Please contact us for a free assessment.
For those American family historians with Serbian ancestry, it is important to understand that the immigrant ancestors did not necessarily come from within the borders of modern Serbia. By logical extension, when planning research from America back to Europe, it is crucial to identify correctly the place of origin to be able to successfully investigate your family tree.
Serbs settled in various parts of USA – including some quite unexpected places – during the second half of the 19th century. The first communities developed in cities such as San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Chicago. Many Serbs worked on the railroads and in factories, and in the mining and steel industries, settling in places like McKeesport and Steelton in industrial Pennsylvania. However, there were also sizeable settlements in towns as diverse and dispersed as Douglas (Alaska), Butte (Montana) and Angels Camp (California) which might not be front of mind when one thinks of “typical” immigrant centres of population. Their draw was the gold-rush.
So where did the early Serbian immigrants come from? Some came from Belgrade or across the Danube in Vojvodina but these were very much a minority. The more common sources for Serbian emigrants to USA were:
- Boka Kotorska (the Bay of Kotor) and the Budva district of what is today the coast of Crna Gora (Montenegro) – these Serbs were known collectively as Bokelji
- Dalmatia – prominent in the early settlement in San Francisco
- Herzegovina – particularly during periods when the Austrian occupation intensified
- Krajina, on the Bosnian side of the Croatia-Bosnia border – many settled in Pittsburgh in 1890s and 1900s
If you are interested in research assistance in Europe to help you with your Serbian family tree, please get in touch. We operate successfully throughout Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro. We also work in Republika Srpska and elsewhere in Bosnia Hercegovina. Please contact us for an assessment and estimate of costs.
Towards the end of the 19th Century, the Armenian population in Greece is thought to have been a mere 350 or 400 but starting to grow steadily. The settled population comprised merchants, of course, but also skilled craftsmen, such as goldsmiths, and their families. Other Armenians had come from Asia Minor – especially from the region of Mush – in the 1880s to work on major construction projects such as the Corinth Canal and the Ottoman Empire’s Thessaloniki to Constantinople railway. However, many of these were seasonal labourers who stayed for a while in, for example, Loutraki or Alexandroupolis (Dedeagatch) and then returned home. Later, many Armenians fleeing massacres in the Ottoman Empire, such as those in 1894 to 1896, used Greece as a temporary staging post on a journey to an ultimate destination elsewhere, such as USA.
The big influx of Armenians came with the collapse of the Greek Megali Idea and the subsequent population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Perhaps 80,000 Armenian refugees arrived in Greece at this time, many from Smyrna and Ionia but also from Cilicia and from Eastern Thrace. Again, many passed through Greece and headed to France or, for that matter, Soviet Armenia, with the result that the Armenian population in Greece started falling from the mid-1920s. This process continued into the 1930s and resumed after the War, during the so-called Nerkaght. This was the repatriation, or gathering in, of diaspora Armenians to Soviet Armenia during the period from June 1946 to December 1948: the official figure was 102,277 “repatriates” worldwide (many of whom would never have set foot before in the Soviet Republic), of whom perhaps 18,000 or more came from Greece.
Of course, other Armenians made a permanent home in Greece, which was generally a welcoming and sympathetic host. The Armenian refugees in the 1920s settled in much the same urban areas as their Greek Orthodox counterparts from Asia Minor. Some city neighbourhoods acquired a distinctively Armenian flavour, such as Sykies in Thessaloniki and both Dourgoti and Kokkinia in Athens. However, these quarters are gradually losing their Armenian character as the population falls, people assimilate and the successful move out to other areas of town.
To read more about the Armenian community in Greece, see the article by Prof Ioannis Hassiotis in Richard Clogg’s excellent Minorities in Greece (Hurst, 2002).
“An immigrant shall be considered an undesirable immigrant if he cannot show that he has in his possession or is in a position to obtain the means of decently supporting himself and his dependents (if any)”.
from: An Act to Amend the Law with Regard to Aliens, 11 August 1905 (5 Edw. 7. c13), 1 (3a)
The Aliens Act 1905 was enacted in response to growing public alarm at the waves of Eastern European Jews which had been arriving in England from the Russian Empire since 1881. Much of the alarm was stoked by exaggerated media reports – even the respectable Whitaker’s Almanac claimed in 1902 that 140,000 Jewish immigrants were arriving each year, despite the average annual number settling throughout the period being 4,000 to 5,000 (partly this misperception was due to the very large number of trans-migrants for whom England was but a staging post en route to America). The Aliens Act put an end to unrestricted entry into Britain, although numbers picked up again in the years before the outbreak of war in 1914 as Jews claimed political or religious asylum, which continued to be permitted under the 1905 Act. It was WW1 which effectively halted Jewish immigration – thereafter, the only group which arrived in any numbers were the Polish Jews among post-War Belgian refugees.
It is often said that the Jewish immigrants arrived in response to poverty, persecution and pogroms in Tsarist Russia. The picture is more nuanced: it was, for example, the fear of pogroms which drove many to leave, as pogroms mainly affected a few communities in southern Russia (for instance, Odessa and Chişinău in what are today Ukraine and Moldova). Emigration was driven more by the obligations and restrictions upon Jewish life, which placed a cap on potential and ambition. As is well known, between 1791 and the Revolution in 1917 the majority of Jews had to reside within the Pale of Settlement. Even those, such as university graduates and Guild merchants, who were exempted and could live beyond the Pale (only 4.1%, according to the 1897 Russian census) had to pay an annual tax for the privilege. There were quotas for Jewish university student numbers: a decree in 1887 restricted the numerus clausus to 10% of the student body in those cities in which Jews were entitled to reside, to 5% elsewhere and to a mere 3% in Moscow and Petersburg. Jews were excluded from the professions and the vast array of career options in the Tsarist civil service. Nor could Jews become army officers. This was ironic as it was precisely compulsory and onerous military service which impelled many young Jewish men to emigrate. The trade unionist Joseph Fine, giving evidence before the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration in 1903 cited escaping military service as one of four principal reasons for Jewish immigration in Britain (see David Englander’s A Documentary History of Jewish Immigrants in Britain 1840-1920, Leicester University Press, 1994). The other three he gave were the 300 roubles the Russian government fined the fathers of sons who escaped military service, which prompted many to emigrate instead; the poverty of the artisan and small tradesmen class into which excessive numbers of Jews were forced through lack of other options; and the proscribing of trades unions, in which many Jews were active.
These were all “push” factors in migration. Of course, “pull” factors were exerted by Britain. It had an open door policy till 1905; it had a liberal tradition as the home of refugees; it could be a first stop on an intended eventual continued journey to America; and, of course, its ever-increasing Jewish population led to a chain of migration as friends, wives, sweethearts and children followed the (usually male) initial migrants from a shtetl or neighbourhood.
By the time of the 1911 census of England, the Jewish population is thought to have been in the order of 257,000. The exact number is unknown: the census is silent on religion and race. Numbers have been variously estimated based upon such factors as the known size of particular long-established communities and the numbers of individuals who declared their place of birth as, for example, Poland, Romania or Russia.
The 1911 census is a snapshot of the population as at Sunday 2nd April 1911. It is a superb resource for those studying their Jewish family history, particularly those late 19th and earlier 20th century immigrant families (the wealth of resources available before the public release of the 1911 census made the researching of earlier, established Anglo-Jewish families somewhat more straightforward). For instance, the 1911 census asks married couples to state the duration of their marriage, the number of children born to the marriage, the number of children still living and the number now deceased. It is therefore possible to calculate the approximate year of marriage. Treat the date with caution, as the duration of marriage figure may well have been rounded, usually upwards, and the longer a couple had been married the more likely it is that rounding will have taken place. The number of children may surprise. Sometimes this will be because the census shows the existence of hitherto unknown children (tantalisingly so, if they are not resident at the family home). Sometimes, it will be the prodigious family size which surprises. Immigrant Jewish fertility rates were high but it is less well known that infant mortality rates were low, due to better hygiene and childcare practices than much of the surrounding gentile population (see Eilidh Garrett, Changing Family Size in England and Wales: Place, Class and Demography 1891-1911, Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Of course, there were many exceptions and not all families were large. The family of Abraham Bevistein (a boy soldier “shot at dawn” in WW1) is one. At the time of the 1911 census, he was residing at the family home at 5 Anthony Street, Stepney. His parents Joseph and Rebbeca (sic) Bevistein state they have been married 16 years (which places the event circa 1894/95) and have had two children only, both of whom survive and are living with them – Abraham, 15, and Kate, 12. Against all four, the place of birth is given as “Russia Poland”. This means that we know that the family arrived in England after the birth of Kate in around 1899 (in fact, they arrived in 1902). The nationality is Russian. This indicates that Joseph had not been naturalised by that date: the £5 fee, if not the need for a formal petition and police report, may have been off-putting for a tailor such as Joseph living in a two-room dwelling. This common failure to naturalise later made many alien Jews vulnerable to being returned to Russia to fight in WW1 under the 1917 Anglo-Russian Convention.
When the Bevisteins arrived in England, they stayed briefly at the Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter in Leman Street, London. Newly arrived immigrants could stay there for up to 14 days while orientating themselves, seeking accommodation and employment, or readying themselves for an onward journey to America or elsewhere. Admission registers survive and the 43,000 names from the 13 volumes covering admissions from 1896 to 1914 are searchable online . The Bevisteins were admitted, recorded under the spelling Biberstein, on 1st October 1902.
The different spelling of the surname highlights the importance of considering name variants when making census searches. Remember that the names of recent immigrant families might not have stabilised by 1911 and English would very likely have been the third or fourth language in which they became literate (after, for example, Polish, Russian and Yiddish).
The painter Mark Gertler was also born in London to Jewish immigrant parents, although, as the 1911 census return makes clear, his came from Austria rather than Russia. He was born in Spitalfields and at the time of the 1911 census was a 19-year old art student studying at the Slade. The Gertlers came not from Vienna or elsewhere in today’s Austria but, as was often the case, from its far-flung province of Galicia, today divided between Poland and Ukraine. Whereas the 1911 census form stipulates “if born in a Foreign Country, write the name of the Country”, the Gertler return is unusual in delivering an exact place of origin (Przemyśl, in today’s Poland). Unfortunately, this is all too rare. If the census simply states “Russia”, the birthplace could have been anywhere within the then Russian Empire, which often means today’s successor states such as Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine rather than Russia itself. If “Poland” or “Russian Poland” is stated, this narrows down the region to the then Congress Poland, which it should be noted does not at all coincide with the borders of modern Poland.
Landsleit, immigrants from the same hometown, often settled in the same communities or neighbourhoods or streets, and knowledge of this may assist if your own ancestor’s 1911 census is silent as to exact place of origin. For instance, a significant number of the Jews in Leeds were Litvaks from the Kovno gubernia, who travelled purposely to Leeds to join the clothing industry. Generally, where places are given on the 1911 census, they are in the Yiddish or transliterated Russian form, not the name current today (e.g. Kovne or Kovno, not the Lithuanian Kaunas). It is important to note that “Kovno” may well refer to the Russian gubernia or province rather than necessarily to the city itself (although that was 36% Jewish at the time of the 1897 Russian census). Incidentally, the 1911 census return for the Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter mentioned earlier is unusually forthcoming about place of origin, perhaps because as a charitable institution it felt obliged to record information more diligently than the average householder. For instance, on the second page of its census return, birthplaces include, as well as the expected Grodno, Kovno and Minsk, less expected Russian places of origin such as Radomsk and Samaroff, and even some Bulgarian towns.
As mentioned earlier, many Jews landing at London and other east coast ports were trans-migrants rather than immigrants intending to reside permanently in Britain. The trans-migrants may have stayed in Britain only long enough to cross the country to Liverpool or Southampton to catch their steamer to America. Others stayed in England for years and then decided (or had saved the money) to emigrate to America. Although it was possible to travel direct from, say, Hamburg to New York, it was significantly cheaper to break your journey in England – £5 15s compared to £7 15s in 1902 (according to David Cesarani, The Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry, Blackwells, 1990) – and this was one of the main reasons why trans-migrants to America appear in such numbers in the British passenger lists.
America was not the only destination for trans-migrants. Litvaks in particular passed through England on the way to the Cape in South Africa. Others headed to Canada, of course, and to South America. On the night of the 1911 census, Nestor Derenzuk, a 26-year old agricultural labourer from Grodno (now in Belarus), was one of the persons staying at the Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter. He is described as having been married for four years and having two children, both alive. However, they are not staying at the Shelter with him and it can be inferred that they were still in Grodno and would join him later if he made a success for himself overseas. In fact, a search of the outward-bound passenger lists show him, as Nestor Derenczuk, leaving England from Dover four days later, on 6th April 1911, bound for Buenos Aires. The passenger list also shows that he had arrived at London on 27th March 1911 on a United Shipping Co vessel. Other men, also farm labourers, were on the same vessel arriving in London in March, in the Shelter on census night, and embarking on the same ship from Dover as Nestor Derenczuk and he was clearly travelling as one of a party. Did he make it to Argentina? Did his family ever join him there? We do not know. We can only catch a glimpse of his life through the official documents he left behind, and imagine the rest.
In the territories which were to become what we now call Estonia – the Russian provinces of Estland and Livonia (also known as Livland) – burials in churchyards were forbidden from 1772, at least in theory. The legislation was passed primarily for reasons of public health and sanitation. Henceforth, new burial grounds had to be beyond the immediate settlement. Of course, over time, settlements expand and therefore eventually such burial grounds were often enveloped within a growing town.
The Russian subjects of Estland and Livonia responded in different ways to the new laws.
The Baltic German elite – the landowners, the merchants and of course the Evangelical Lutheran clergy itself – had traditionally been interred in the immediate vicinity of the churches or even within the church itself. Many landowners now responded by establishing their own private family cemeteries on their estates, usually close to the manor and perhaps with a small chapel attached. They were emulated towards the end of the 19th Century by a growing number of ethnic Estonian landowners, who set up small family graveyards close to their farmhouses.
Of course, the German merchant classes, without land, were laid to rest along side the native Estonian population in the Lutheran parish cemeteries which sprang up. Not infrequently there was more than one burial ground within a large parish, for instance a cemetery might be created beside an outlying chapel of ease. Most family historians with Estonian ancestors will find them buried in these parish cemeteries.
There are some exceptions, however. During the 1840s there was a succession of crop failures and up to 65,000 Estonians are thought to have converted from Lutheranism to the Orthodox religion of Imperial Russia. There had always been Orthodox communities in the territories of Estonia – for instance, in the Setu villages of the SE, and in ethnic Russian settlements in the north-eastern Alutaguse district near what is now the border town of Narva. However, the mass conversion of peasantry in the years 1845 to 1848 created a swathe of Orthodox communities and therefore burial grounds, especially across northern Livonia. The conversions seem to have been a response to economic conditions and represented a switching in allegiance from the German Lutheran nobility which owned most of the land to the Russian Orthodox Tsar, in the hope that the latter would alleviate their distress and ameliorate their living conditions. Later in the 19th Century, there were further conversions in Estland, these being less voluntary and more driven by the pressures of the Empire’s Russification programme.
Estland was generally the poorer of the two provinces. As the peasantry had been emancipated landlessly in the 1810s, they were in practice usually tied to the estates upon which they had previously worked as serfs. Only a tiny percentage moved annually to neighbouring or more distant estates: it has been estimated that only 1% of the peasants in Estland moved between 1835 and 1849. Restricting as this was at the time, it is a great boon to family historians today, as it provides continuity of residence in a parish (kihelkond) and it is generally safe for a genealogist to make such a working assumption when conducting ancestral research during this period unless and until evidence emergence to the contrary.
For more detailed information on the various types of cemetery in Estonia, see the article “The Formation and Location Features of Estonian Cemeteries” published in Journal of Baltic Studies in 2006 (volume 37, issue 3).
The situation of the peasantry in the 19th century Russian Empire is much more complex than generally thought, and a genealogist with ancestors in the territories of rural Russia should be aware of this complexity so as to better understand the likely circumstances under which their ancestors may have lived.
Firstly, it is not true to think of the peasantry as being a single undifferentiated mass, or to say that all peasants were serfs. The Russian Empire was expanding in all directions at the start of the 19th century. The Poles in the Partition were not enserfed when they came under Tsarist jurisdiction; nor were the Finns after 1809 or the Bessarabians after 1812. Furthermore, where serfdom had previously existed in the Baltic, it began to be modified, first in Livonia (or Livland – roughly the north of modern day Latvia and the south of Estonia), where there were reforms in 1804, and then in Estland (today’s northern Estonia) and Courland (or Kurland, western and southern Latvia) where there was landless emancipation of the serfs during the years 1816 to 1819. This introduces another point worth emphasising: emancipation did not necessarily lead to increased prosperity and, in fact, the opposite was true in these Baltic regions – the serfs were freed without being gifted or sold land and therefore became more destitute than they had been before the reforms.
Elsewhere in the empire, most minorities, such as the free agriculturalists, were not subject to serfdom, something that the Russian peasantry did not understand and which could cause resentment – why should German colonists, for example, be free when native Russians were not?
Secondly, there were different types of peasant in the lands of Imperial Russia.
There were state peasants, who were literally owned by the state and worked upon state lands. They were the responsibility of the Ministry of Finance and later, from 1837, the Ministry of State Properties. Although state peasants enjoyed some rights and freedoms (for example, they could acquire smallholdings of their own and even become civil servants), they had to pay taxes, maintain roads and supply recruits to the army. Moreover, the state was a largely indifferent owner and did not invest in its properties.
Then there were privately-owned serfs, who were the property of the landowning aristocracy and gentry. Absentee landowners often left an estate manager in charge, not infrequently to exploit the serfs on the estate. Some landowners permitted their serfs to remit in cash not labour dues – in other words, instead of working upon the landowner’s estate, they could leave the land and go to work in a town or city, and pay their owner in lieu. Of course, while some serfs made a substantial amount of money and were able to purchase their freedom, the majority remained upon the land in reduced circumstances.
The serfs in Russia were emancipated from 1861. Unlike in the Baltic region of the empire in 1816, the serfs were able to purchase their dwelling and land, so as to become independent smallholders. As redemption prices for the privilege of emancipation were way beyond the means of many serfs, the state lent them monies at 6% annual interest for up to 49 years, thereby creating a generation of peasants perpetually in arrears to the state.
Then there was the issue of military service. By 1815 the Russian Army was 1 million strong and the state, entering peacetime, was apprehensive of demobilisation and its impact upon communities across Russia and its potential for unrest. At this point, it needs to be explained what military service entailed. Men were recruited at aged 20 years for a period of 25 years (reduced to 15 years from 1834). Once enlisted, a serf became a free man in law; hence, once demobbed he would be his own man, with no immediate source of employment but with the experience of handling a weapon. To mitigate the risks that this entailed, the army found ways of making military service mean life service, not releasing men at the end of their term (for instance, by imposing extra service as a penalty for the many disciplinary offences).
Between 1815 and 1858, the state found an ingenious way of dealing with demobilisation and managing the risk to stable civilian life of releasing ex-soldiers into the community. So as not to demobilise troops, agricultural “military colonies” were established. Previously uninhabited state land was colonised by a mixture of soldiers and state-owned peasants commandeered from elsewhere. The soldiers retained the status of soldiers, although in their everyday lives they became agricultural labourers working for the state peasants. The army was therefore kept at full strength and made economically productive and self-supporting. Furthermore, the reserve army was strengthened because of the newly acquired status of the state peasants residing in these military colonies. The head of the household and the eldest son remained state peasants. However, younger sons were classed as military canonists (the term used for sons of soldiers during their minority) and joined the reserve at aged 18 years. It is estimated that by 1825 over 750,000 soldiers and families had been settled on these military colonies in areas such as Mogilev, Novgorod and St Petersburg, as well as in the southern region of Ukraine.
Much has been written about Jewish aversion to military service and, of course, the Jews shared the same reasons as the Russian peasantry for not being keen on being conscripted into the army, plus had plenty more valid religious reasons of their own. In fact, the Jewish population of the Russian Empire was not subject to military service until 1827. However, from then on, the state pursued a russification programme for the Jews and required them to be available for service from aged 12 years. Community elders had to select the recruits whenever demanded each year and of course this led to tension and frequent flight to evade the draft.
It is interesting to note that the infantry divisions of the Russian Army tended to be garrisoned around the periphery of the empire, especially in the west. While therefore there might be a solitary division in the Caucasus, or one in Orenburg towards the restless Kazakhstan, the vast majority were stationed in occupied Congress Poland and the westernmost gubernia of Russia (areas now in Belarus’ and Ukraine) where there was a perceived and sometimes a very real threat of politically or economically driven internal unrest.
Alexandria, along with Constantinople and Smyrna, was one of the great hubs of Greek business and culture outside Greece in the period leading up to the First World War. A Greek Consulate was set up in Alexandria as early as 1833, very soon after Greek independence, and the population flourished with the cotton boom of the 1860s. Many among the earliest waves of immigrants came from those cosmopolitan Greek families which had business as well as kinship connections throughout the Mediterranean and beyond to, for example, Britain and Switzerland. And the Greeks came to Alexandria not just from Greece but of course from the Greek regions of Turkey-in-Europe and Asia Minor. Indeed, a disproportionate number arrived in Alexandria from the Greek islands such as Chios, Crete, Cyprus and Lemnos which were Ottoman possessions throughout the 19th century.
The Greeks settled especially in the downtown Ramleh and Shatby (the so-called Quartier Grec) neighbourhoods in Alexandria, where their businesses – whether small grocer’s or international finance – prospered and attracted further immigration. Even when immigration eased off (for instance, when Greeks started emigrating en masse to USA, or after the 1907 financial crash), the number continued to swell by natural increase – there were between 1,000 and 2,000 Greeks born annually in Alexandria during the 1910s and 1920s. At the time of the 1917 census, 25,393 Greek citizens were counted in Alexandria – and it should be noted that this figure excludes those who were British, Ottoman or of course Egyptian subjects. By the next census in 1927, which was about the time the Greek population in Egypt peaked, this figure had reached 37,106 (approximately 6% of Alexandria’s total population).
And of course the Greeks created vital records – Greek Orthodox baptism, marriage and burial registers – which, where surviving, are of tremendous value to Alexandria Greeks and their descendants now residing in the worldwide diaspora. Even if a family was settled in Alexandria for three, four or more generations, it is very likely that these records will prove to be a stepping stone to somewhere else: if you are lucky, the registers will point to the original immigrant’s place of origin beyond Egypt.
Should you be interested in assistance in researching your Greek ancestry in Alexandria, or elsewhere in Egypt, please contact us with the information you hold, even if very limited, and we would be happy to provide our professional opinion.
John Millar’s The Lithuanians in Scotland (House of Lochar, 1998) provides a very readable account of the lives of first and second generation Lithuanian immigrants in Scotland, covering their geographic distribution, their working and living conditions, their customs and traditions. It is fascinating on the name changes and how most immigrants took Scottish surnames (usually seemingly assigned to them rather than chosen voluntarily).
The book was written before the recent great explosion of interest in family history and, of course, was not written with the family historian in mind. Unfortunately, while it should prove essential reading to anyone trying to understand their Lithuanian roots in Scotland, it is less helpful for anyone wishing to extend their genealogical research back to Lithuania. The book is light on the places of origin of the Lithuanians who came to Scotland. Various places are mentioned in passing – “Vladislavovskiy district” (today known in Lithuanian as the border town of Kudirkos Naumiestis), “the valley of the Nemunas River”, “Mikolines dvaras near Mariampolė” (a dvaras is a farm or manor estate), “Sukalupio dvaras in the Naumiestis area” and Kaunas itself. If these places are plotted on a map of Lithuania, it does appear that Millar’s general statement that “the majority… came… from the Suvalkija area in the south-west of the country and from the Kaunas district” is probably true. This is the region south of the Nemunas and east of the Šešupė River, extending east to Kaunas.
However, it is important to understand that vital records in Lithuania – the Roman Catholic parish registers of baptism, marriage and burial – are held by specific locality. There is no centralised or regional indexing, and no computerised database. Therefore, it is vital to know or to be able to find out exactly where an ancestor came from to have good prospects of finding their birth or baptism in Lithuania and being able to research their family tree back from there.
One also needs to be mindful of not confusing a regional place name with a town or village name. For instance, Kaunas is both the town and the region – in Imperial Russian times, Kovno (Kaunas) gubernia covered the majority of what is today Lithuania. Similarly, Suwałki gubernia covered the Suvalkija region mentioned above plus adjoining territory in what is today Poland, including the Polish town of Suwałki itself.
The historical geography is especially important to grasp as, with the exception of Lithuanian immigrants who arrived in Scotland as Displaced Persons immediately after WW2, the Lithuanians in Scotland came to the country from the Russian Empire before the start of WW1. In historical documents, therefore, including Scottish census returns, Russian terminology is to be expected, as the Lithuanians were Russian subjects, who prior to their emigration had resided in the Russian Empire (“Poland” is often seen too, as Suwałki gubernia was part of Congress Poland, that part of partitioned Poland belonging to Russia).
If you are interested in taking your Lithuanian genealogy further, Bluebird Research is always happy to receive enquiries and provide a professional opinion on the prospects for family history research in Lithuania.
When the British occupied Cyprus in 1878, Nicosia was the only large town and the great majority of the island’s population resided in the 900 or so villages. Some Cypriot villages were solely Christian and some solely Muslim, but many were of mixed religion to a greater or lesser extent. Intermarriage took place between Turkish men and Christian women but generally Christian men were not permitted to take Muslim wives.
Some families, known as linobambaki or linobamvaki, or “flax and cottons”, had a kind of dual identity. Some of the early colonial British saw this simply and pejoratively as an expedient adaptation, a kind of shifting identity avowedly Christian and Muslim alternately, as it suited the linobambaki, for instance Christian to avoid military service and Muslim to avoid the military exemption tax. Indeed, they had a reputation among the British for either avoiding taxes or being perpetually in arrears. The linobambaki took names such as the local equivalents of Jacob and Joseph which could pass as Christian or Muslim, Greek or Turkish.
However, today the received opinion is that the linobambaki were crypto-Christians, who tried to conform outwardly to Islam while inwardly still observing the Christian faith. There are some persuasive arguments that the linobambaki tended to be Roman Catholic Franks or Latins, with distant Western European roots, or Maronites, rather than Greek Orthodox, although straightforward conversion to Islam did of course occur.
Everywhere in rural Cyprus, regardless of religion, marriage was contracted at a young age: it was quite common for a boy to marry at aged 15 years and his bride to be a girl of 12 years or younger. Divorce seems to have been a straightforward affair and neither infrequently sought nor socially unacceptable.
What appears somewhat unusual is the modest family size. Early British colonial administrators were surprised to find that married couples often had only one or two children (and suspected female infanticide). Having three or four children was considered a burden in the context of the rural poverty in which most families lived. The Ottoman state had collected a poll tax, called a verghi, on every male aged 15 years and older, as well as the tithe, a tax on livestock and, in the case of Christians, the exemption tax in lieu of army service. These charges upon essentially subsistence smallholders and peasants kept them poor and acted as a disincentive to large family size. This makes Cyprus quite a marked contrast to the rest of Turkey-in-Europe, where big peasant families were the norm despite the attentions of Ottoman tax collectors.
From the mid-1820s the small Estonian seaside town of Haapsalu began to develop into a resort, attracting tourists from St Petersburg, Moscow and elsewhere in the Russian Empire, as well as visitors from abroad, especially Germany.
Picture postcards from the 19th and early 20th century generally carry titles and descriptions in Russia or German, often both, sometimes also in French, but never in Estonian. The town is called Hapsal or, transliterated from the Russian Cyrillic, Gapsal’, the Russians at that date using a hard G for the soft H in foreign proper nouns.
The names of buildings, shops and streets in postcards of old Haapsalu show the marked Germanic influence prevalent throughout Russian Estonia. For example, Bergfeldt’s Baths, the publisher Eduard Siegfeldt, Marie Schmidt’s haberdashery shop, the Pension Rosenberg, the Villas Friedheim and Wenden, and so on. However, sometimes these names can be misleading, as many ethnic Estonians bore Germanised names: for example, the artist Hans Laipmann, who went to school here, later became, in 1935, Ants Laikmaa. But it is true that many of the Haapsalu locals who benefitted from the resort status of their small town were ethnic Germans rather than Estonians or, for that matter, Swedes, who lived there also.
When I stayed in Haapsalu in 2006, few tourists were in evidence and most of these were Estonians, Finns and Swedes, at least some of the last perhaps interested in their Aiboland (or, in Estonian, Rannarootsi or “coastal Swedish”) roots. In the harbour district of Haapsalu there is a modest and seemingly little-visited museum dedicated to the now much diminished Swedish community of Noarootsi vald and the other parishes in Läänemaa county in NW Estonia (the great majority of whom – some 8,000 – fled during the Second World War).
Passports are conceived as facilitators of long-distance travel, to permit the bearer to cross international frontiers. For this reason, only a proportion of the population of most states applies for and possesses a passport: those who have no need to leave the country do not own one.
In Soviet Russia, however, these notions were turned upside down. Passports became mandatory but there was no freedom of international movement and only a tiny percentage of the civilian population ever went abroad.
Effectively, the passport was a misnomer. Really, it was an ID card to control the population, including and especially its movements.
In fact, the Soviets inherited the passport from Tsarist times but abandoned it during the first rush of idealistic reforms, regarding it as a mechanism of ancien régime despotism. However, as the new regime became embedded and found itself confronting no end of difficulties, it recognised the value of the internal passport. It was re-introduced in December 1932 at the time of the famine, with its associated massive displacement of desperate people. At the same time, the Soviets also introduced residence permits for the urban population, so as to control who could and could not reside in particular cities and towns. Both passports and residence permits were administered by the Soviet security police, at that time known as OGPU but later as the NKVD.
As well as the expected details of name, date and place of birth, residence and nationality (ethnicity), the passport also recorded the bearer’s social class. This enabled the Soviet state to manage a system of positive discrimination in favour of, for example, the urban proletariat, and to curtail the rights of a growing list of class enemies and “former people” (kulaks and the dekulakised, former landlords and merchants, NEPmen, nobles, priests, the old Tsarist bourgeoisie and its technical experts etc). The passport enabled the security police to implement internal deportation and exile.
Before the re-introduction of passports from 1932, the basic identity document was the simple spravka, which was issued by the local soviet. It should be borne in mind if using either a Soviet passport, or a residence permit, or a spravka in one’s family history research that the information contained may not be reliable, as these papers were not neutral documents and statements of fact but conferred or denied privilege. For some individuals, therefore, it was useful to alter or fabricate details, to get on in life or simply try to escape persecution and repression. Forging and falsifying documents was a thriving underground cottage industry in some places and times. All ID documents from Soviet times should therefore be treated with caution.
This need for the genealogist to exercise caution with regard to the reliability of official documents is not restricted to the former USSR, of course. For example, following the turmoil of WW2, many millions of people found themselves dislocated in Central Europe and with inadequate proofs of ID, or no ID at all, or with a compromised or an unfortunate ID which they destroyed. Documents were vital in the UN registration of Displaced Persons (which could lead either to repatriation or to settlement abroad) and many of these DPs acquired identification papers which did not truly reflect the holders’ real identities.
Last week I attended a fascinating talk by Larysa Bolton, archivist at Tameside Local Studies and Archives Centre in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester. Larysa outlined the history of the Ukrainian community in Manchester and then spoke more specifically about her role in collecting community archives.
The Ukrainians in the city have been reinforced since 1991 by a new wave of immigrants but the longstanding community is founded on two earlier waves. The first of these comprised essentially economic migrants from the Austrian province of Galicia (Halychyna to Ukrainians) in the 1890s and 1900s. The second wave was mostly of political refugees, from the same region (which had become, between the World Wars, SE Poland) via occupied defeated Germany and Austria, in the immediate post-WW2 era (under the British government’s European Volunteer Worker scheme of 1946-1951). Most Ukrainians tended to settle around Red Bank and Cheetham, along the artery north out of the city towards Bury.
From the archival point of view, neither the first nor the second wave of Ukrainian immigrants placed great importance on preserving the documentary history of their life in UK. This is changing, partly through successful archival outreach work and partly through the growing interest in family history as second, third and later generation descendants of immigrants discover their Ukrainian roots.
Useful introductory websites concerning the Ukrainians of Manchester include those of the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain and this Multi-Cultural Manchester Ukrainian page.
Bluebird Research undertakes family history research in Poland and throughout Ukraine and is happy to provide advice on genealogical research in Eastern Europe for those investigating their Ukrainian family history.
If you want to gain an understanding of what life was really like for the majority of Russian subjects before the Revolution, you can do worse than read Maxim Gorky’s autobiographical trilogy – My Childhood, My Apprenticeship and My Universities. The books are difficult to find in English, although the 1960s and 1970s translations by Ronald Wilks, published by Penguin, are sometimes to be had second-hand.
Gorky’s reputation in the West is regarded as compromised by his association with the Soviet regime and his writings seldom figure in any major way along side those of Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev in courses on Russian literature. This is a shame, as he serves as a salutary corrective to the more romantic, metaphysical and literary takes on Russia and the Russians found in the works of the more highly acclaimed writers. His trilogy depicts Russian society at the bottom rung and it is seldom attractive. His Russian labourers are not the idealised figures found in Tolstoy. They are impoverished, often ignorant and without hope, possessed of a casual brutality and a seeming enjoyment in witnessing others’ pain. Their lives are often cut short by poverty, toil, inadequate diet, alcohol abuse, violence, the extreme weather, and a failure or inability to look after themselves. But these same lives are illuminated occasionally by astonishing tenderness, or comradeship, or an ability to be engaged and greatly touched by the written and spoken word, which in itself is very moving to the reader precisely in the context of the coarseness and cheapness of their daily lives.
The trilogy covers Gorky’s early childhood to restless late adolescence, from approximately 1871 through to 1888, as he grows up in the fractious home of his maternal grandparents, then, at aged 11 years, becomes an “apprentice” on a Volga steamboat and in an icon workshop, and finally, aged 16, enrols in the “university” of life among the urban poor. The trilogy is set in specific places such as Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan and Krasnovidovo, strung out along and in the hinterland of the Volga, but there is no reason to suppose that life among the lower classes elsewhere in Russia was much different in the second half on the 19th century. All three works make compelling reading and are recommended for those with family roots in Russia, or an interest in the history of late Imperial Russia, or of course a passion for great literature.
The NW region of Bulgaria is recognised by the European Union as the poorest part of the EU, with a GDP of only about 25% of the EU average. The region corresponds approximately to the Montana oblast which was in existence from 1987 to 1999, but which both before and since then was divided into the three okrugs (pre-1987) and oblasts (post-1999) of Vidin, Montana and Vratsa. Life here has suffered what the Bulgarian journalist Diana Ivanova calls “a collective breakdown”: firstly, of the traditional village way of life under collectivisation, and, secondly, of the communist structures following their collapse in 1989.
NW Bulgaria presents a very attractive face to most Western visitors, although it receives but few: the landscape is beautiful, often mountainous and forested, the flora and fauna is diverse and rich, and of course the human settlements have that picturesque quality that is often inherent in places noticeably sidestepped by modernity. But for the inhabitants prospects often appear bleak: there is a subsistence-level life in the villages and few employment opportunities. The region is experiencing depopulation. The young head for the capital Sofia or for one of the other large towns in Bulgaria, or are drawn overseas to work in Germany or elsewhere within the EU. Another key phenomenon in the depopulation is the exodus of mature women to Greece, Spain and especially Italy, where they work as carers and auxiliaries in nursing homes and hospitals. In Italy, these women care workers are known as badante. They may spend several years abroad, away from their families, saving or remitting money home to dependents in the villages.
Sofia’s National Art Gallery is currently showing a tremendous temporary exhibition called “Traumas and Miracles: Portraits from North-Western Bulgaria”, combining monochrome photographs of people and places by Babak Salari, an Iranian photographer, and accompanying text by Diana Ivanova. The exhibition focuses on a cluster of nine villages: Chelyustitsa, Dolna and Gorna Bela Rechka, Dolno and Gorno Ozirovo, Druzhevo, Lyutadjik, Milanovo and Zanozhene.
For more information, visit the “Traumas and Miracles” Facebook page , the Town of Badante Women documentary film website and the Goat Milk festival website.
In Bulgaria, as in other Central and Eastern European countries, it is the custom to publicly announce and remember deaths by memorials affixed to certain recognised sites within a neighbourhood, for instance, pinned on boards or wall surfaces on particular street corners with frequent passing foot traffic, or near bus stops, or outside the parish church. It is common to see passers by pausing and cyclists dismounting to read the notices; they serve a similar purpose to obituaries published in newspapers and doubtless are read and discussed keenly by some local gossips.
In Bulgaria, these black-bordered notices typically feature a reproduction of a black and white or colour photograph of the deceased, their full name (usually but not invariably complete with patronymic), vital dates and details of those mourning their loss. Sometimes a nickname is given too.
As well as those notices posted immediately after death, in memoriam notices are often placed at, for example, 40 days, and at three and seven years after death. A deceased person may be remembered at 10 or 25 years too if, for example, they died prematurely, or are survived for many years by their widow or widower.
There is something very touching about this public display of mourning and the levelling of an air force pilot, a TV anchorman, a teenaged motorcycle accident victim, a building caretaker and a nonagenarian widow appearing side-by-side on the same board, equally to be regarded or ignored by the living.
Gumoshtnik is little more than a hamlet today, being occupied by only around 165 people, but it was formerly a significantly larger settlement, reportedly boasting a population of approximately 1,000 at the time of Bulgaria’s liberation from the Turks in 1878. Two principal causes lay behind the population decline – the recent depopulation of the countryside common to much of mid- to late Communist and post-Communist era Bulgaria, and the earlier transatlantic emigration. It is the latter that places Gumoshtnik on the map today.
Eight men from the village were on the Titanic when it picked up passengers from Cherbourg on 10th April 1912, after leaving Southampton on its maiden and only voyage. All eight perished. However, just as in the blockbuster film, not everyone who had purchased tickets to America actually boarded. While Leonardo Di Caprio won a ticket in a card game and so took another’s place at the last minute, so Stefan Kliinovski and at least one and possibly two other villagers (Matyu Gankov and Petko Gloushkov) from Gumoshtnik apparently drank too many brandies in Paris the night before and failed to make the boat at Cherbourg.
There is a memorial to the victims in Gumoshtnik’s St Nikolai Letni churchyard. The eight who died, all of whom were potters, booked together into 3rd class for New York and bound for Chicago IL, were:
Peyo Kolev, 36 Marin Markov, 35 Lazar Minkov, 21 Stoycho Minkov, 28 Penko Naidenov, 22 Nedyalko Petrov, 19 Iliya Stoychev, 18 Lalyo Yonkov, 23
Their names often appear differently spelt in original documents and the subsequent articles and commentaries on the sinking of the Titanic, due both to errors and to the alternative systems used when transliterating from the Bulgarian language’s Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet.
It was surprising to find, while travelling in Bulgaria, a village in the NW of the country named after a British soldier. The custom in Bulgaria, as in Serbia and some other countries using the Cyrillic alphabet, is to spell a foreign proper name phonetically and then to transliterate it, letter by letter, back into Latin characters for translation purposes (for instance, on maps, streets signs and so on). In this case, Major William Frank Thompson’s surname became Tompsan or Tompsen when so treated. Similarly, William Gladstone – popular in Bulgaria due to his outspoken denunciation of the Bulgarian Horrors, committed by the Turks, in 1876 – can become Ujljam Gladston on a Sofia street map.
Major Thompson, brother of EP Thompson (the author of the classic The Making of the English Working Class), was a young special operations officer, with communist sympathies, liaising between the British army and the Bulgarian partisans in 1944 when Bulgaria was still a royalist dictatorship uneasily allied to Nazi Germany. He and other commandos came unstuck when, having crossed the river Iskar hoping to meet up with a larger band of partisans, he was betrayed, ambushed, wounded and captured at Batulia. He was interrogated and executed by firing squad in June 1944 at Litakovo, near Botevgrad, to the NE of the capital Sofia.
After the War, the Partisans among the new Communist leadership in Bulgaria honoured Thompson by creating out of the six small settlements of Babul, Lipata, Livage, Malak Babul, Tsarevi Stragi and Zavoya the new community of Tompsan. The village is easily reached by slow train from Sofia, being one of the halts on the regional line north up the scenic Iskar Gorge towards Mezdra. There is a memorial to Major Thompson at the railway station.
EP Thompson subsequently researched and wrote a book called Beyond the Frontier: The Politics of a Failed Mission after studying his brother’s wartime fate and the official British, Bulgarian and Soviet responses to it.
Class was essentially a feature of rural society in pre-Partition and indeed Partitioned Poland.
At the top of the tree was the great nobility, the elite 30 to 50 families, in possession of wealth and titles. Immediately beneath them was the średnia szlachta or middle nobility, prosperous and estate- and village-owning, and with a strong sense of internal class solidarity fostered by frequent inter-marriage – it has been estimated that there may have been approximately 300,000 middle nobility towards the end of the 18th Century as the partitions began to dismantle the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
More numerous still was the drobna szlachta or peasant nobility, which itself was stratified and known by various other terms, such as szaraczkowa (or “grey” nobility, from their plain clothes), zaściankowa (“village” nobles), zagonowa (“bed”, as they owned but small beds of land) and gołota (“naked” nobility, who owned no land whatsoever). These nobles had tradition and pedigree, coats of arms and political rights, but whilst economically independent were rarely prosperous. Over time, subdivision of their land through inheritance and natural increase over the generations meant that a single petty-nobility family might grow to effectively occupy, or itself become, a village, or even two or more villages. The chief distinction between the peasant nobility and the great and middle nobility above them was that the peasant nobility owned no serfs and therefore usually subsisted only just above or at the same economic level as the landless peasants, who made up the lowest stratum of traditional Polish society.
The city dwellers were outside this class structure. Of course, many of the great and middle nobility owned substantial town houses or palaces. But the merchants, craftsmen, small traders and unskilled labourers who made up the mass of the urban population were just as frequently not ethnic Polish but, for example, German or Jewish. The larger Polish cities to the east – such as today’s L’viv or Vilnius – would likewise have a concentrated Polish and Jewish population but would be urban islands in a rural sea of Ukrainian or Lithuanian, rather than Polish, peasantry.
The ancestry of the Polish szlachta makes a particularly interesting subject for family history research, which Bluebird Research would be delighted to help you investigate. Kindly contact us for more information.
The special settlements – spetsposeleniye – are a Soviet euphemism. The experience of settlement there felt far from special, as the “settlers” were in fact the internally deported peoples of the Soviet Union.
During the Second World War, entire peoples were rounded up for deportation. The task was undertaken so comprehensively and systematically that serving soldiers fighting at the front were withdrawn, ostensibly into labour corps, before being deported. No one was meant to be excluded from the deportation orders – women, children and the elderly, subsistence farmers and communist activists, all were forcibly deported.
The peoples concerned were the minority nations of the USSR. It is supremely ironic that the notionally internationalist and fraternal Soviet Union should have been responsible for the type of chauvinistic nationalism that exiled entire ethnic groups into its harsh interior, to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekhistan, as well as to the Urals and further east to Siberia.
The Volga Germans were deported from August 1941. The Karachay were deported in November 1943. The Kalmyks were deported in December 1943. The Chechens and Ingush were deported in February 1944. The Balkars were deported in March 1944. The Crimean Tatars were exiled in May 1944. Greeks, Jews, Armenians and other smaller minorities around the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov were also deported. Where these people had had their own autonomous republics within the Soviet Union, these were dissolved. In transit and in exile, many tens of thousands of the special settlers of the minority nations died of hunger or disease, or in labour camps.
It is true that, following the death of Stalin in March 1953, many of these peoples eventually gained an official right of return to their homelands – although this did not happen for the Crimean Tatars until Perestroika and is not true of the Volga Germans. In most case, ethnic Russians and Ukrainians had been immediately moved in during the War to colonise the homelands of these people, so much had changed by the time of the special settlers’ return. It was seldom possible for them to reclaim property, and usually the balance of population and power had shifted significantly in favour of Russians or Ukrainians, such that the returnees were more of a minority in their homelands.
The Greek island of Kythira (alternatively transliterated from the Greek alphabet as Kythera or Cythera) has an extraordinary story. Its modern population is somewhat lower than 3,500 yet it has a huge diaspora – it has been estimated that there may be as many as 60,000 Australians with roots on the island. Other Kythiriotes emigrated to USA, Germany and elsewhere.
Despite its position off the southern tip of the Peloponnese, Kythira is counted as one of the seven Ionian Islands, together with the more familiar Kerkyra (Corfu), Paxi (Paxos), Lefkada (Lefkas), Ithaki (Ithaca), Kefalonia (Cephalonia) and Zakynthos (Zante).
Kythira has never known Ottoman domination, being for centuries an outpost of Venice. The Venetians were followed by periods of Napoleonic and then of British rule (1815-1864), before enosis (union) was achieved in 1864 when the British ceded the island to Greece. Separate birth, marriage and death records exist for the British in Kythira and the other Ionian Islands, divided into three sections: the chaplains’ returns, the military returns and the civil registers. The indexes to these are available online (for example, on Find My Past) and certificates can be ordered online from the General Register Office using the index information. In these records, Kythira is shown under its Italian name, Cerigo.
These indexes refer only to the colonial population (and, of course, any intermarriage with locals and issue of such marriages). For the resident Greek inhabitants of the era of British rule, it is necessary to use the vital records created and still maintained on the island; this is true also, of course, of the years after the 1864 enosis. Generally speaking, records up to 1864 are kept at the state historical archives, while records after this date are held, depending upon their type, either at local community (koinotita) level or at the main register office (Lixiarheion) in the (rather small) capital (Hora, also known as Kythira town).
While there were some pioneers as early as the 1870s, chain migration from Kythira to Australia (as to America) began in the 1890s and grew steadily through to the First World War. Many emigrants were destined for New South Wales, but others settled in Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia. To generalise, the Kytherians tended to concentrate in the urban centres, rather than to move on into the interior. Emigration from Kythira continued between the world wars, as family members gradually joined earlier immigrants in the usual fashion, but ceased to be so significant (at least as part of the overall Greek emigration to Australia) after World War Two.
Bluebird Research would be delighted to provide diaspora families with professional family history research assistance in Kythira. Please email us for further details.
What does it mean for, say, the average Scottish or English person to research their family tree, to take it back three or four or five generations? To find out that ancestors worked as agricultural labourers, or in domestic service, or down coal mines? Probably not such a great deal. Recreational family history is a hobby often undertaken casually, out of curiosity or interest. The emotional and psychological resonance of the research is limited and incidental. Even identifying an ancestor who was a black sheep, or who died in penury in a workhouse, is unlikely to have much of a bearing upon your early 21st century world view and sense of self.
For an American, Canadian or Australian, or for that matter a British person of immigrant stock, the whole undertaking is more likely to hold deeper meaning regarding their understanding of their identity and place in the world. This is especially true where their people as a whole has experienced some kind of profound trauma – think of black family history research, or Jewish, or the Irish in the context of the Famine. Then family history research is part of the process of engaging with and making sense of that past; it is much more likely to be raw and charged.
Michael J Arlen’s book Passage To Ararat (Hungry Mind, 1996) is not about genealogical research per se but is profoundly about family history in the sense of understanding one’s roots. Arlen’s father, Michael Arlen senior, a reasonably successful writer, was born as Dikran Kouyoumjian. His life seems to have been purposed to leave behind and rise above his Armenian roots and he encouraged his son to live first as an Englishman and then as an American. Following the death of his father, Arlen junior felt a pressing need to learn about his father’s background. The Kouyoumjian family came from Ruse in Bulgaria, and previously from Constantinople, and before that from near Ani, NE of Kars*, on the Armenian plateau, now known as Anikoy and situated on the wrong side, the Turkish side, of the Turkish-Armenian border. Arlen does not reconstruct his family tree but researches Armenia and its history from ancient to modern and what it means to be Armenian. And this means confronting the hard fact of the Armenian genocide of 1915/16 at the hands of the Turkish state and understanding too that this was not an isolated wartime aberration but formed part of a determined pattern of events, to eliminate Armenians from what is now Turkey, extending at least as far back as the Ottoman massacres of Armenians in 1894-96 and on to the Turkish ethnic cleansing of Anatolia in 1921/22, culminating in the destruction of Smyrna and deportation of the Armenians, with the Greeks, from Asia Minor.
In the introduction to the 1996 edition of Passage To Ararat, Clark Blaise wrote:
“If there is a difference between the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide, it might be only this: the Germans have made restitution, both Germany and Israel thrive. The Turks have never apologised, the Armenians have never returned, and both are unhealed.”
And, of course, the Turkish state and too many Turkish academics still persist in vehement denial.
Passage To Ararat is recommended reading for anyone researching Armenian roots.
* The good news for Armenians with ancestors from the Kars region – including the villages surrounding the towns of Artahan and Kaghzvan – is that significant records of interest to family historians for this area are available in Yerevan (Erevan), Armenia. Please contact us for details of professional genealogical research assistance in Armenia.
It is still occasionally possible to see, when travelling around rural Serbia, surviving examples of the extended homestead – the main house and around its courtyard (known as an avlija) a cluster of secondary dwellings and structures. The traditional family structure was called the zadruga: it comprised an extended family of, for example, a man and his wife, living with their married sons and their children, or alternatively, two or more brothers and their wives and children. The head of the zadruga was the starešina, who would live in the main building with his wife (the stanarica). The other couples would sleep in simpler outbuildings known as vajati.
An average sized zadruga might be a household of a dozen or so individuals, although up to 25 or more members were not so rare when a starešina was in residence with two or three married sons all of whom had young families. When the starešina died, a new one, usually the eldest able-bodied son or brother, would take over. From time to time, one of the married sons or brothers would break away to set up his own zadruga.
The starešine collectively within its village made up the village council of elders, or kmetovi. The council used to be known as the opština but after WW2 this was changed to odbor.
Complex factors contributed to the slow decline of the zadruga – among them, the fragmenting of land holdings into less viable units, the running out of land which a break-away son or brother could claim to set up a new zadruga, declining birth and death rates, the rise of individualism and interest in more private nuclear family households, and the move to towns and the values associated with modernity which were inimical to the traditional structures. Today most Serbian households are nuclear and the head of a household is simply called a domaćin.
Throughout the long 19th century, there were two main classes of Greek immigrant in Britain.
On the one hand, there were the wealthy merchant families, whose kinship ties formed an extended network of family homes and businesses throughout the Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas, and beyond. For instance, the Mavrogordato family in London and Manchester had kin in Alexandria, Egypt; in Ottoman Constantinople; in Firenze (Florence) and Livorno (Leghorn), Italy and Castellammare, Sicily; in Taganrog and Rostov, Russia; and in Calcutta, India. Other prominent families included the Negreponte, Paspati, Psicha, Ralli and Rodocanachi. And, of course, these intermarried and formed different business partnerships over the decades of the 19th century.
On the other hand, there were a large number of Greek merchant seamen – cooks, donkeymen, firemen, sailors – who worked in the Greek or British merchant navy. Many of these were of humble origin and not necessarily from Greek islands or coastal communities – plenty came from peasant backgrounds in the mountains. If they settled in Britain, then tended to do so in sea ports such as Cardiff and Newport (Monmouthshire) in South Wales, or Newcastle and South Shields on Tyneside. Some then ran cafes, or fish and chip shops, or boarding houses for mariners.
Of course, the two broad types of Greek immigrants in Britain were connected. The merchants traded in currants, cotton or tobacco, and the sailors manned the merchants’ ships that took these goods overseas.
When starting on your Greek family history research, you should not expect your ancestors to have had Athenian roots. Athens was a small town at the time of Greek independence in 1832 – the population in 1840 is thought to have been approximately 26,000 (tiny compared to the Greek population of Constantinople – 120,000 – at the same date). The merchant families often had roots in Constantinople or Smyrna, or on islands such as Chios in the North Aegean and Syros in the Cyclades, outside the immediate post-independence borders of Greece. Ermoupoli on Syros was in fact the principal port in Greece until Patras and Piraeus rose to pre-eminence in the 1870s.
Bluebird Research would be happy to assist you with your Greek family history research, wherever your ancestors came from. Contact us with the information you already have about the family genealogy and we would be pleased to give you our assessment without charge.
The Greeks formed the largest European community in Egypt before the First World War: 62,973 Greeks were counted in the 1907 census. As well as Alexandria, Cairo, Ismailia and Port Said, Greeks settled and lived in smaller towns such as Damietta, Edfu, Helwan, Kantara, Mansoura, Tanta and Zagazig.
Overwhelmingly, they were of the professional and merchant class. In the cities, Greeks were bankers and financiers, lawyers and doctors, architects and engineers; however, they played no role in the civil service. Everywhere they were cotton factory owners and exporters, traders and money-lenders, grocers and shopkeepers, tobacco merchants and cigarette manufacturers, distillers and millers, hoteliers, innkeepers, restaurateurs and cafe owners. They also had shipping interests in Alexandria (where the Greek community was almost 25,000-strong) and along the length of the Suez Canal. Of course, there were working class Greeks too, many of whom arrived in the mid-19th century as immigrants from the Ottoman Empire (for instance, from the Greek islands in the Aegean, such as Kasos) rather than from independent Greece, labouring on the Canal and finding work as mechanics, carpenters, cooks and sailors.
The Greek communities in Egypt today are dwindling. There was a mass exodus after the July 1952 Revolution and an estimated 70% of the community is thought to have emigrated from Egypt during the years 1957-62. Of course, many headed for Greece, even if only temporarily; many more emigrated to Australia and North America.
Family history research for the Greeks of Egypt is challenging but not impossible, depending on the quality of the background information and the availability of surviving records from which to reconstruct family trees. Bluebird Research provides professional family history research services and would be delighted to take enquiries from those interested in researching further their Egyptian Greek ancestry. Please contact us for an assessment and estimate.
It would be naive to expect family history research in Russia, and many other places within the former Soviet Union, to follow the comparatively smooth path that it can take in most of the English-speaking world and in many countries in Western Europe. Even if the First World War, the ensuing Civil War and the Great Patriotic War (as the Second World War is known in Russia) are put to one side, millions were arrested, killed, internally deported, or incarcerated in the Gulag. For a great many others, the social revolution provided for a new, albeit still relative freedom of movement, and travel for education, employment and political career, often across great distances and what are today’s international borders, became commonplace.
The NKVD, a precursor of the KGB, disappeared many tens of thousands of Soviet citizens at Moscow’s Lubyanka prison. The victims were drawn in from all across the USSR and from all sections of society, from the poorest to the elite, from the apolitical to the committed Stalinist, and from the capital itself to the remotest corners of the Soviet empire. The photographer and collector of Soviet era visual art David King gathered mugshots of some 166 of these victims for publication in a volume called Ordinary Citizens: The Victims of Stalin (Francis Boutle, 2003). Apparently, King obtained the photographs from the NKVD’s interrogation files held by Russian human rights organisation Memorial, which documents the Soviet repressions across Russia and campaigns for official rehabilitation of the victims. It publishes regional and local memorial books and lists of the executed.
Among the haunting photographs in King’s selection are the following:
Fedor Andreevich Baikov – peasant, born 1861 in Moscow, executed 20 October 1930 on charges of anti-Soviet agitation
Pyotr Petrovich Dragachevatz (Dragačevac) – lithographer, born 1886 somewhere in what was later Yugoslavia, executed 19 April 1939 on charges of anti-Soviet espionage
Stefan Leonovich Geltman – collective farm technical manager, born 1886 in Zamość, Poland, executed 20 September 1937
Wolf Shmulievich Genpelman – Jewish apprentice locksmith, born 1914 in Dombrovitsy, near Rivne (Rovno), Volhynia, Ukraine, executed 1 November 1940 on charges of being counter-revolutionary
Yelena Ignatievna Oshmyago – railway guard, born 1911 in Sprugi, Belarus, executed 10 October 1939 on charges of railway sabotage
Dionis Petushkov – Russian Orthodox monk, born 1863 in Tver’, Russia, executed June 1931 on charges of anti-Soviet activities
Ruzya Iosifovna Todorskaya – technician, born 1900 in Łódź, Poland, executed 9 October 1937 as a Trotskyist
On the cusp of the 20th century, Romanian peasants still lived their lives much as their forefathers had done: their customs, their belief systems, their culture and their clothing had evolved gradually over the centuries without any sharp disjunctions from the past.
Families were large, notwithstanding high infant mortality rates. Pregnant women enjoyed no lying-in period but would work up to the very day of giving birth. Traditionally, a baby would be baptised and christened by the end of the week of its birth. The baptism was celebrated in the church without the presence of the parents of the child, the godparents standing in loco parentis during the service. A godparent is known by two names: naş or naşǎ expresses, respectively, the godfather’s and godmother’s relationship to the godchild (the fin, or finǎ), while cumǎtru expresses the godparent’s relation to the parents of the godchild. Marriage between cumǎtri and between the close kin of cumǎtri is prohibited. This even had an effect on attendance figures at a baptism, as all those present and who witnessed the baptism were considered in some way to have become cumǎtri.
Marriage was expected and, while love matches were not so unusual, often arranged between two families, with a family friend acting as go-between, rather than instigated by either partner. A proverb relates how a young man was married by his parents up to the age of 20 years, by his own choice to the age of 25 (although military service could swallow up much of these five years of his life), but from that age on he was in the hands of the old women, the babas.
The period of engagement was short, usually merely the necessary three weeks from betrothal to allow for the wedding banns (strigǎri) to be read out in the parish church on consecutive Sundays. The two sponsors (nuni) played a central role in the marriage ceremony – they were often godparents of one or both of the bride and groom.
A deceased’s body was customarily laid out for three days in his or her own house, before being taken to church for a short service and burial in the adjacent graveyard. Prayers for the dead were then said at three, nine, 20 and 40 days, and then on the anniversary of the death for seven years (this was the customary period of mourning during which, for example, a widow was expected not to re-marry).
Britain relieved Ottoman Turkey of Cyprus during the gathering days of the late Victorian era, before the unthinkable possibility of imperial decline had occurred to anyone within the British elite.
In June 1878, a defensive alliance was struck between Britain and Turkey against Russia expansionist ambitions. In exchange for its protection, Britain occupied and administered Cyprus (with the proviso that it would withdraw from the island if Russia withdrew from Kars in Armenia). So in July 1878 the British sailed into Larnaca to assume its new responsibilities.
A habit of census-taking was well-established in Britain by this time, with the decennial censuses of the population informing and directing social policy and cultural debate – these are now very familiar to family historians with English, Welsh and Scottish ancestors, as those from 1841 to 1911 (or to 1901 in the case of Scotland) have been digitised and published online. So of course the British administration wanted immediately to get down to the serious business of counting and measuring and understanding its new subjects.
The Cyprus census returns of 1881, 1891 and 1901 show how small the population was: respectively, 186,173, 209,286 and 237,022 persons. The population was overwhelmingly rural too: the largest town, Nicosia, had only 11,536, 12,515 and 14,752 inhabitants in these three census years. As for religion, the population was majority Greek Orthodox: 73.9% in 1881, 75.8% in 1891 and 77.1% in 1901 (although the figures for Nicosia were markedly lower, being only 54.2% Orthodox in 1901). The great majority of the remainder of the population was of course Sunni Muslim.*
Registration of vital events also began to be placed upon a more sound footing from 1895. Births, marriages (from 1889) and deaths of British and other non-Ottoman subjects were registered by the Commissioners, being the chief British administrators of the six Districts of Famagusta (Ammochostos), Kyrenia, Larnaca, Limasol (Lemesós), Nicosia (Lefkosia) and Paphos. Births and deaths of Ottoman subjects (both Greek and Turkish Cypriot) were registered by the mukhtars (village heads). However, there was no official civil registration of non-British marriages until 1923.
The British also closed any overcrowded and/or unsanitary graveyards and opened new cemeteries away from human habitations.
They did all the other things that, for better or worse, usually accompanied British colonial rule in the late Victorian era – they tried to create more equitable taxation and a fairer judiciary; they started a programme of public works, laid roads, and modernised the harbour in Larnaca; they introduced a postal system, laid a telegraph cable to Egypt and opened a government savings bank. And of course the British rules of the road were enforced: drive on the left and overtake on the right, irrespective of whether you were driving a cart, riding a bicycle or leading a beast of burden.
There was of course no thought of political self-determination for the people of Cyprus, let alone enosis with Greece. However, the system imposed by the British seems, for its time and at that time, to have been more progressive than oppressive, even if it suffered from the under-funding and uncertainty which came from its unclear status before annexation in 1914.
For the family historian, too, the advent of British rule, with its censuses and civil registration, was probably a boon. The civil registers from 1895 onwards are held in the local register offices, while the censuses are in the custody of the State Archives but – it should be noted – do not list every member of the household as they do in Britain.
*The census counts are of course regarded as controversial by some, given the politicised history of modern Cyprus, but there seems no sound reason to doubt their basic accuracy. Contemporary commentators remarked upon the intelligence and co-operativeness of the Cypriots at census-taking and felt the census figures to be reliable and uncontentious. As well as Orthodox and Muslim, there were also minority communities of Maronites and Armenian Apostolic Christians on Cyprus.
In 19th century Russia, a child would be baptised as soon as possible after birth, usually within one day or two. The reason for this is that, prior to baptism, a child is heathen and therefore spiritually at risk (and, of course, given heavy infant mortality rates, at risk also of dying a heathen in early infancy). The child’s godparents will renounce the devil upon behalf of the child prior to its baptism. The child can then be immersed in consecrated water and christened, and a small protective cross fastened round its neck.
Traditionally, Russians were given just a single Christian name (their middle name being, of course, the patronymic derived from the forename of the father). This custom continued while elsewhere in Europe children began to be given a distinguishing second (even third etc) forename, in response to population increase and the rise of individualism. But in Russia one name was held to be enough, as each forename itself was thought to have its eponymous representative in heaven, being effectively the guardian angel of all bearers of that forename, and an Orthodox Russian peasant could not have two such angels.
Family history research in Russia is blighted by the twin ravages of the 20th century, those of war and of revolution. Inevitably, vital records of birth or baptism, marriage, and death or burial, have been lost, damaged or destroyed, but this is not true of all places at all times and prospects for research should not be needlessly or prematurely written off. When searching through Orthodox baptism registers, it helps to know, and is rather convenient, that baptism swiftly follows birth, compared to other communities and faiths where baptism may take place four or more weeks after birth, necessitating a longer and more speculative search of the registers.
Traditionally, kinship in Greece society is very strong, with three concentric rings of attachment: the household, the close kin and remoter kin.
The close kin, or kindred, is broader than in the modern English-speaking world. It ascends up to one’s eight great grandparents. Laterally, it extends out to great uncles and aunts and to their children and grandchildren (one’s true second cousins*). No distinction is drawn between kin on the paternal and maternal sides of a Greek family – they are regarded equally. Everyone within this definition is recognised as being kindred and marriage within it is prohibited: for instance, one should not marry one’s second cousin.
Marriage within the seventh degree of kin – to a child of one’s second cousin – is permitted and is not uncommon in Greek village communities. However, it is thought of as being somewhat ill-starred and inauspicious, and it is discomforting for a villager who survives to great old age to see his or her descendants – such as two great great grandchildren, or a great grandchild and a great great grandchild – marry one another, as may happen in communities where nonagenarians and centenarians are not rare.
Remoter kin are of course recognised, although with further degrees they shade into unrelated members of the village. More distant direct lineal ancestors – one’s great great grandparents and higher up in the family tree – are known generically as “great grandfathers” (although of course strictly speaking this is incorrect) or just as “ancestors”. Similarly, collateral kin such as third cousins are acknowledged although the ties of blood and affection are much looser.
Interestingly, two brothers from one family may marry two sisters from another family only if they do so on the same day. The reason for this is that the rules of kindred apply also to affinal kin (family acquired through marriage). In other words, when a person marries, he or she takes on their spouse’s kindred as their own, so that (for example) the spouse’s brother or sister becomes their own brother or sister too (which is why the two brothers can only marry the two sisters on the same day, as otherwise the brother entering into the second marriage would be viewed virtually as marrying his own sister).
When listening to oral history being recounted by an elderly relative, or when reading old family correspondence, it is important to understand that kindred terms are used both of consanguineous kin (blood relations) and affinal kin (in-laws, those acquired upon marriage). Thus the term “nephew” can be used equally for a sibling’s son, or for a spouse’s sibling’s son. Moreover, terms such as “nephew” and “niece” can be used by extension for the children of nephews and nieces (grand nephews and grand nieces) without distinction. These usages can be confusing and one needs to be aware of them constantly when reconstructing Greek family histories from family evidence.
* A second cousin (being the grandchild of a great uncle or great aunt) is not to be confused with a first cousin once removed (being the grandchild of an uncle or aunt, and the child of a first cousin, sometimes erroneously called a second cousin).
Marriages in most jurisdictions must be witnessed by third parties to be valid – for instance, in England two persons are needed by law both at a civil ceremony and at a religious wedding. However, in Greece, the role of the sponsors of a marriage is far stronger and more culturally important.
The wedding sponsor enters a kind of spiritual kinship with the bride or groom he or she is sponsoring, becoming koumbaros (if male) or koumbara (female) to one another, and these terms are also understood to apply to close kin of the two koumbaroi.
A sponsor at a wedding will traditionally become the godparent to the first child of that marriage (and sometimes of subsequent children too) and very frequently also the sponsor at their godchild’s own marriage later on. Koumbaroi are therefore key figures at both baptism and marriage ceremonies.
If a wedding sponsor is not a blood relation of the bride or groom, or the godparent not a blood relation of the godchild, the creation of the koumbaroi is such that marriage between their close family (brothers, sisters, children etc) is forbidden. This prohibition extends to marriages between the godchildren of a godparent, who also may not marry one another.
It is worth paying attention to the names of godparents given in Greek Orthodox church baptism registers and certainly always noting them down, in case they gain in significance in your research at a later date. Godparents do not usually feature in contemporary civil birth registers, although they may be recorded in the kind of composite registers collated by some communities and containing a single overview record of an individual’s life (birth, baptism, marriage, death etc).
Miroslav Krleža, the Croatian writer, said in his 1952 speech “On the Freedom of Culture” that the greatest native cultural achievements of Yugoslavia (as opposed to those of, say, its Austrian or Turkish heritage) were Croatian church buildings, the frescoes of the Orthodox Church in Serbia and Macedonia, and the stećci of Bosnia.
The stećci or mramorovi are the monolithic carved headstones of the medieval Christian cemeteries of Bosnia and Hercegovina (at that date known as Hum). They span maybe 500 years from the 12th century onwards, pre-dating the Ottoman conquest and surviving it for a while. Most headstones in Europe are flat slabs, but the stećak is a massive solid monumental chunk of stone, inscribed with Cyrillic characters and sculpted in relief, some featuring human figures raising a huge right hand. It is not possible to describe the expressive power they exert, but that power is undeniable.
How exciting would it be to find one of these gravestones for an ancestor! Sadly, that it is unlikely to be. Although Ivan Lovrenović writes in Bosnia: A Cultural History (Saqi, 2001) that an estimated 60,000 stećci survive, and the names of the deceased and even of the stonemasons may be known, the chances of continuity of surname and of researching a family back to the 15th or 16th century in Bosnia are all but negligible. However, the names on the stećci must certainly have their descendants, both Christian and Muslim, and any visitor to their ancestral homeland in Bosnia or Hercegovina should take the time to drop by at one of these graveyards – known as mramorje or groblje – and experience their power. Lovrenović quotes an inscription on one stećak and one hopes that the sentiment will preserve this and all the other stećci for many generations to come:
Be blessed he who passes by And damned he who damages it.Stara Serbia, Old Serbia, was the unliberated rump of the country left behind inside the Ottoman Empire after the core of continental Serbia – the Principality or free Serbia – gained its independence from the Turks. While the Serbs and other Slavs referred to the region by this name, the Turks referred to it as Arnavutluk, on account of its Albanian (in Turkish, Arnaout or Arnaut) inhabitants.
The heartlands of Stara Serbia were Kosovo and Metohija, respectively regarded as the battlefield and the garden of Serbia. But Serbian settlement in the region has ebbed and flowed with political events, and from time to time during the Ottoman era, such as in 1690, there would be a mass exodus of the population northwards to safer parts of Turkey-in-Europe and beyond the Dunav (Danube) to Banat and elsewhere in the Austrian Empire. The times of Serbian emigration would coincide with times of Albanian immigration, so that the balance of the population in Old Serbia could swing over the course of the centuries, with an Albanian majority at times and a Serbian at others.
There was not a simple Muslim versus Orthodox Christian opposition, however, as a significant number of the Albanians, who in these parts were Ghegs, were Roman Catholic and referred to as Latins (and, indeed, some of them, members of the Klementi tribe, are thought to have fled north with their fellow Christian Serbs when Islamic rule became too oppressive). Of course, many Catholic Albanians converted to Islam over time. Again, as in other places and other contexts within the Ottoman Empire, we read of the Albanian Latins being torn between two faiths and cultures, trying “to bridge over the passage between the two creeds by adopting Mahommedan names, and thus passing for Mussulmans abroad, while they remain Christians at home” (G Muir Mackenzie & A P Irby, Travels in the Slavonic Provinces of Turkey-in-Europe, Daldy Isbister & Co, 1877).
Of course, too, those Serbs locally who converted to Islam out of conviction, or for advantage, or for a quiet life, tended to assimilate with the Albanian population and would be regarded henceforth as Arnaouts (just as they became Muslim Bosniaks in Bosnia).
The Serbs of Old Serbia have always been in a double bind when not in a position of ascendancy. On the one hand, there is a pressure upon them to get out, applied by the majority Albanian population and inevitably internalised by the Serbs as a wish to escape from their invidious minority position and to be able to live in peace elsewhere. On the other hand, Serbs do not want to abandon their historic Stara Serbia: the more Serbs leave it, the fewer claims they will have upon it. This is the reason why Serbian governments have periodically encouraged return migration to and colonisation of Old Serbia.
The Temporary Regulations of May 1882 required Jews within the Pale of Settlement to settle only in towns and cities. In Bessarabia, which was situated within the Pale, some towns were demoted to the status of village to debar Jews from residence. Town and city limits were also redefined to reduce the immediately surrounding area available to Jews. In addition, Jews were forbidden to reside in an international border strip 50 versts (about 53 km) wide; as Bessarabia was a border province, this meant that a significant area of land along the Russian border with Romania was also out of bounds. Rights of residence for Jews were therefore strictly delimited in Bessarabia to around 40 larger settlements.
And of course they were subject to all the other civil and political disabilities imposed upon the Jews throughout Russia.
They were subject to two special taxes: the box tax (collected on kosher meat, at slaughter and sale) and the candle tax (on candles lit in synagogues). The community as a whole was made to make up the deficit of a Jewish tax defaulter.
Quotas (of from 2% to 10% of intake) controlled the admittance of Jews to high schools and universities, while other higher education institutes elsewhere in the empire (such as the Moscow Medical Academy and the Veterinary Institute in Kharkiv) were completely closed. Jewish school teachers were forbidden from teaching Russian to their pupils.
Jews could not enter government service, with the sole exception of doctors. They were usually prohibited from serving as elected representatives of zemstvo or town assemblies or artisan boards, or were restricted by quotas, as in the case of aldermen and guilds.
Jews could not become officers in the Russian army but were required to undertake military service; for various reasons, a higher proportion of the Jewish population was enlisted. A collective punishment was exacted, so that a Jewish family as a whole was held responsible for draft-dodgers in its midst, to the tune of a 300 ruble fine.
And in Bessarabia, as elsewhere in Russia, the Jews were resented for their acumen and their success in the remaining fields left open to them: as landowners’ preferred tenant farmers, as vine growers and inn keepers, as orchard men and tobacco growers, as middlemen and agents, as traders and exporters, and as money-lenders. What is interesting but probably not at all unusual is that the anti-Semitic feelings which led to the April 1903 pogroms in the Bessarabian capital Kishinev definitely appear to have been orchestrated and encouraged by the provincial government and police, and stoked by local media agitation, rather than being a spontaneous outburst of animosity from the townspeople. 42 Jews were killed, countless Jewish properties damaged and a community temporarily divided.
Genealogists deal with time and are accustomed to the passing of generations and the irretrievable loss of undocumented family lore which goes with it. Headstones are raised, weather and crumble; unwatched and untended cemeteries become overgrown and revert to nature. The places where our ancestors lived change inexorably: streets are renumbered, houses are demolished or rebuilt, villages and towns evolve and sprawl to the point that only a few landmarks survive which would be recognisable to earlier generations.
For most of us, however, something remains that we can visit and use to visualise, with who knows what degree of inaccuracy, how things may have been for our great great grandparents living in their home town or native village. But not for all of us. In too many cases, a community has disappeared: a Jewish dorf or shtetl entirely expunged, a German colony deported wholesale from Bessarabia, a Ukrainian village in SE Poland razed.
Sometimes the agency of change is not violence but something more mundane. The historical old town of Kalyazin in Tver’ oblast’, Russia was drowned unsentimentally by the Soviets. It was situated on the banks of the Volga, which was insufficiently navigable for the industrially driven USSR: too sluggish, too irregular, too many sandbanks. In 1940, as the Volga was widened, straightened, deepened, canalised where necessary and harnessed to deliver hydro-electric power, Kalyazin was submerged. Only the bell tower of the Church of Svyatoi Nikolai remains above water, tremendously evocative visually. The inhabitants of Kalyazin were relocated to a new site, still called Kalyazin, on higher ground above the Volga. Everything not taken down went beneath the waves.
Juxtapose this with a Volga legend, which inspired Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya. Rimsky-Korsakov made the substance of the legend more realistic, by having the city rendered invisible to the Tartar hordes threatening Russia by shrouding it in dense fog. In the original version of the tale, however, to avoid being sacked by the Mongols the city of Kitezh was immersed in the lake, the dome of its church being the last of the town to submerge, and henceforth led an underwater existence; if one puts ones ear to the ground on the lake shore and listens hard, then, if one is pure of heart, the bells of Kitezh can be heard pealing beneath the water.
Throughout the long 19th century, while thousands of Poles went into exile or campaigned and rebelled against the partition and occupation of their country, thousands of other Poles served in the Russian army, both as officers and as other ranks, just as they served in the imperial civil service, the police and the prison service throughout the length and breadth of the Russian empire.
There were various types of exemption from military service. Only sons were entitled to exemption, as were eldest sons acting in loco paternis due to the actual head of household being no longer able to support their family. Other young men were exempt for reasons of ill health.
As for the balance of non-exempted men, a lottery existed to determine who should be enlisted. A community was required to furnish the army with a certain number of recruits and, as this number was usually smaller than the number of non-exempt men available, lots were drawn to select which of the eligible would have to go for a soldier.
The loss of a son to the army was keenly felt by the family for a multitude of reasons, even in times of peace when no conflict was on the horizon and there was no imminent fear of his death. Firstly, there was the loss of the contribution made by an able-bodied member of the family, whether as a worker on a subsistence smallholding or as a wage-labourer in the town or country. Then there were the personal feelings of separation of a young man leaving home for the first time and entering into the unknown. In the mid 19th century, the standard term of service in the Russian military was seven to 15 years and conditions in the army were harsh; often the length of service was extended as a result of disciplinary action. During this period, communication between soldier and family was likely to be infrequent, even if the soldier was literate. And of course, unlike emigration, service in the Russian army was involuntary and, at least for the more politically and nationally conscious families, would have carried if not exactly shame – for military service was widespread and all but unavoidable for most – then the oppressive consciousness of being a powerless subject people.
In Lithuania today three different forms of a surname may be recognised: male, married female and unmarried female. For example, Mr Budrikas married to a Mrs Budrikienė might have a spinster daughter named Miss Budrikaitė. Of course, the form that the surname takes makes it unnecessary to ask whether or not Ona Budrikienė or Marija Budrikaitė are married, or to use a title for either of them.
However, more historically, in speech there were additional forms of the surname for different members of the family, based upon age and sex. The wife of a Mr Švelnas would be Mrs Švelnienė. Their young son would be Master Švelnytis and an adult son would be Mr Švelnukas. Their young daughter would be Miss Švelnytė and an adult but unmarried daughter would be Miss Švelnikė.
(This particular example is given by EJ Harrison, a member of the British mission to Lithuania writing in 1922, shortly after Lithuanian independence.)
Generally speaking, of course, the names of minors are unlikely to feature in these forms in the official documentary record. However, the forms of the names based on diminutives (Švelnukas and Švelnikė in the above example) may have been used to distinguish between families resident in the same village (e.g. between father and son) and it is quite possible that there may be a shared ancestor where surnames with a common root are found in the parish registers and other records of a locality.
If during the days of the Ottoman Empire the churches of the subject Christian peoples could not ring bells to call parishioners to prayer (see this blog), then how did the faithful know when to attend? In the days before pocket watches and public clocks, should we imagine a specially employed person rounding them up, or the pious telling the time by the position of the sun or being blessed with an innate homing instinct that would draw them to the church on time?
One traveller, the physician Adam Neale, writing circa 1805 à propos of Iaşi or Jassy, the capital of the principality of Moldavia, comments in passing:
“During the daytime, the clatter of the wooden mallets beating the tablets at the doors of the Greek churches, calling the people to prayers, the use of bells being prohibited in the Turkish provinces, produces a most disagreeable effect.”
(Travels Through Some Parts of Germany, Poland, Moldavia and Turkey, Longman & Co, 1818)
In this context, the “Greek churches” are the Eastern Orthodox churches of the Romanian and Russian inhabitants of Iaşi.
The “tablet” is the semantron, also variously known as talanton, klepalo (in Bulgarian and Serbian) or toacă (in Romanian). It can still be found, especially in monasteries, and is still used, even when bells are available, perhaps out of habit and tradition, perhaps out of continued assertion of Orthodox freedom of worship long after the centuries of Turkish rule.
Sakhalin Island, in the Russian Far East, north of Japan, was of interest to the Tsarist Empire for a multitude of reasons: its proximity to the mouth of the Amur River, its mineral reserves, its strategic location in the push and shove of its relations with Japan, its potential value as a hub in the development of a navigable northern sea route which would join the sea ports of European Russia, such as Archangel and Murmansk, over the top of Siberia, to Manchuria. Russia was keen to colonise the island but it was not a natural destination for settlers – even discounting its utter remoteness, its climate and landscape were not exactly hospitable. Russia therefore pursued its traditional policy of establishing a penal colony, which it did from 1857.
Chekhov visited Sakhalin in July 1890 and, fascinatingly, in order to understand the human geography of the island, conducted his own personal, unofficial census of the population. He printed his own census forms on which to record the place of residence, the name, the status of the individual (convict, exile or “settler”, peasant formerly exiled, or free person), relationship to head of household, age, religion, place of birth, year of arrival on Sakhalin, occupation, literacy and marital status. He covered the island singlehandedly over three months. The Island of Sakhalin, the fine book that resulted from his stay, was published in Russia in 1895 and is available in an English language translation by Luba and Michael Terpak.
The Russian presence in Sakhalin was barely 30 years old when Chekhov visited and the writer found a frontier society with all the usual trimmings (drunkenness, gambling, prostitution, boredom etc). A distinction was maintained between convicts and exiles, the former being criminals (including army deserters) and the latter ex-convicts. The exiles were also termed “settlers”, as if they had come of their own free will. After 10 or six years, an exile was freed and legally acquired the status of a “peasant formerly exiled”. A “free person” was an individual who had voluntarily arrived in Sakhalin: this category covered wives and family of a convict or exile, but also traders, seafarers and the civil and prison service administration.
The political exiles came from all across the Russian Empire. Chekhov mentions Finns, Polish Catholics, Ukrainians and Armenians from Yerevan guberniya, for instance. Many of the other types of resident were vague or evasive about such details as their place of birth, their age or their date of arrival on Sakhalin. Not a few were unsure of their names, or had acquired new names. Chekhov lists the following surnames:
Besprozvaniya – “Nameless” Bezbozhny –