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Eastern Armenia Churches and Their Records
Camille Andrus has put together a Google MyMap of towns in Armenia in the former Russian Empire with churches and then grouped them by denomination and district (uyezd). Each town includes the name of the place as it was in the Russian Empire, the district, the denomination, a link to the church records at FamilySearch and the coordinates for the place. Many also have a link to the entry in the online version of the Spiski Naselennykh Mest Rossiiskoi Imperii (gazetteer of Imperial Russia circa 1880). I like that there are active links in the entries that take you to your next steps in your research journey. This map is currently being updated.
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| Eastern Armenia Churches and Their Records |
Maps of the 2019 Volga German Tours
Custom tours of the Volga colonies have been led by Brent Mai and and Mila Koretnikov since 2016. This year, Sergej Koretnikov's maps of the Volga German Tours had a nice surprise: markers for the locations of former buildings and other landmarks in the colonies that were visited on the tour. I had heard he was planning on something like this using a handheld GPS to record the locations, but this is the first time I'd seen the resulting maps. So instead of just one pin for Yagodnaya Polyana, there are six – one for each of the following landmarks: the old cemetery, the German school, the new cemetery, the old German school, the old mill and the site of the church. This is a great way to include historical context to modern maps. Although I wish the coordinates were included in the information for each so that they can be used with other maps, I think what he's doing this is a really great idea. I hope those who do research on individual colonies will consider creating similar maps with markers on sites where known buildings, farmsteads and other landmarks once stood. The real value of GPS is the precision that you can apply and say "this stood exactly here."
There are three tour maps, all made with Google MyMaps. The screenshots below are in satellite mode, but the default maps were in plain map mode. You can switch the view mode by going to the bottom of the legend on the left and clicking the little map.
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| Volga German Tour A, June 9-10, 2019: Yagodnaya Polyana, Pobochnaya, Kutter, Huck, Norka, Kolb, Frank. |
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| Volga German Tour B, June 18, 2019: Bangert, Stahl-am-Tarlyk, Kukkus, Warenburg, Seelman. |
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| Volga German Tour C, August 3, 2019: Friedendeld, Ährenfeld, Reinwald, Krasnoyar. |
Germans from Russia Settlements Worldwide
Justin Ehresman has been working on a map that plots every place that Germans from Russia lived, from their origins in the Germanic states, to the generations who lived in the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union, to their migrations worldwide up to the present day. Although still in progress, you can clearly see how far and wide the descendants of Germans from Russia have migrated since the mid-1700s, including some surprises – Africa!
This map is made with the mapping service ZeeMaps.
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| Germans from Russia Settlements Worldwide |
Historic Place Map of Germans from Russia and Eastern Europe Settlement Locations
This map is by Otto Riehl using data provided by Dennis Bender. These two have been working together for a while now on a list of places that has become a part of the Historic Genealogical Gazetteer (GOV), a part of the even larger site of everything-German-genealogy, CompGen (Verein für Computergenealogie). There is a lot going on with this map, and while it's not the easiest to navigate, it's worth spending some time on it. You can browse to locations if you know where your'e going, but ideally, the site's instructions suggest that you search the spreadsheets first, find the colony, then click on the map link to take you directly to it. From the icon on the map, click on other icons to link to more information, view the entry in GOV, or view the place on historic maps (external sites). There is a lot of good colony information in here. Well worth your time.
This map is hosted on the site Historic Place, which uses OpenStreetMap as its mapping service.
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| Historic Place Map of Germans from Russia and Eastern Europe Settlement Locations |
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