Research Communities

When I have a question about one of our ancestors, I look to our Germans from Russia research communities. I do this because I know that we all know our respective ancestral neighborhoods, our surnames, our records, our place names. I know that those that are maintaining websites care about what gets put onto them. They take the time to locate, extract, transcribe, and translate records to make it easier for people to build their trees with good data. I know that no one is going to try to tell me that a Glückstaler family member’s baptism in 1874 happened in “Novorossiisk, Black Sea Guberniya, Russian Empire” or in “Alaska, Vereinigte Staaten.”

This is old news to many but new to me since I do no search FamilySearch often. I use it mainly to go to specific films. At least a year and a half ago (I know, where have I been?), their “Russia, Lutheran Church Book Duplicates” index began to include event places in some incorrect places, namely Novorossiisk, Black Sea Guberniya, Russian Empire and Alaska, United States (not even Russian America). They are wrong.

The search result and the record do not even match up. The name of the colony where these baptisms occurred was just a few images prior to this record. It should be Kassel, Kherson province, Russian Empire. 

Novorossiisk, Black Sea Guberniya, Russian Empire is a city in the Caucasus region on the Black Sea. I kinda get where they might have been thinking. They (am assuming it was a human and not AI) saw “Novorossiysk” and thought New Russia. Okay, that was indeed a name for the southern part of Russia in the 19th century. And then they saw “Black Sea Guberniya” and thought, oh, that must the Black Sea region where all those Black Sea German Lutherans were. But it’s not. 

Alaska, Vereinigte Staaten or Alaska, United States. Yeah. There is so much wrong with this, I can’t even. Before you try to defend this, yes, there probably were Germans in Russian America and in the settlements in Alaska. However, I doubt there were Lutheran parishes in Alaska, and if there were, they would not have been a part of the St. Petersburg Consistory and been sending duplicate church books to St. Pete. Why would this even be an option in the dropdown menu?

No one looked at the actual records to transcribe and translate the origin of the records. Newbie genealogists under the impression that FamilySearch is an authority on the subject may just pick it up and use it as it. This is how bad data propagates in trees in FamilySearch and elsewhere. 

Please use Germans from Russia research communities. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use FamilySearch or Ancestry or MyHeritage or any of other big genealogy sites. You absolutely should. I, too, sometimes have complicated relationships with these sites. Forget about other people’s trees, in the end, these big genealogy companies offer the largest repositories of records at your fingertips, some of which you may not find anywhere else. But use them in conjunction with a GR research community that knows your ancestral neighborhood. And continue to fight the good fight about using our ancestral place names in your trees and not letting our history be erased. 

On my map, I have an “About” pin for each layer that often gives sites where you can find out more about the people who lived in the colonies and other settlements. Below is a list of some of the research communities that know their German ancestral neighborhoods in the Russian Empire, have translated records, and will help you figure out your family tree.

American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (AHSGR) https://ahsgr.org/

Black Sea German Research (BSGR) https://www.blackseagr.org/

Eastern European Genealogy Society (EEGS) https://eegsociety.org/

Germans from Russia Heritage Society (GRHS) https://www.grhs.org/

Glückstal Colonies Research Association (GCRA) https://www.glueckstal.net/

GRanDMA https://grandmaonline.org/

Mennonite Genealogy https://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/

Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe (SGGEE) https://sggee.org/

Volga Germans https://www.volgagermans.org/

Volga German Institute https://volgagermaninstitute.org/

Volga Records https://www.boydhouse.com/darryl/volgarecords.com/

# # #

Last updated 12 March 2025

New Video: German Settlers of the Black Sea Region (Thickets)

In my inbox this morning was a link to this new video by Thickets (Huschi) titled “German Settlers in the Black Sea Region.” Many thanks to Dmytro Yesypenko, Research Assistant at the Kule Folklore Centre and PhD candidate at the University of Alberta, for making me and several of my colleagues aware of it.

The video is well done. Honest and raw about the historical narrative of those who lived in the Odesa area, what it was like, what’s left there now, who among those who occupy the old German houses even knows about the history.

The question of “founding” or “renaming” Odesa struck a bit of a chord with me. In my own research, I've found German colonies on old maps that were there under another name before they were “founded” per Karl Stumpp. Where did the original residents go before the Germans were moved in? Who were they? There are many historical narratives competing in Ukraine. The Russian narrative is just of them, albeit the most destructive one at the moment. Stumpp, the “father of Russian-German” research was, among other things, an German ethnographer with an agenda. His is another narrative to confront.

All that aside, it is always nice to see recent video of our ancestral colonies since visiting there is not an option. Those mentioned in the video include the following: Grossliebental, Kleinliebental, Alexanderhilf, Neuburg, Josefstal, Mariental, Peterstal, Freudental, Liebental, Lustdorf, Blumenfeld, Alt-Annental, Selz, Kandel. If you have visited the Odesa area, you will undoubtedly recognize some of the architecture seen in the video. And even if you haven't been there, you will recognize the churches. Notably, and I had never thought about this, the Catholic church in Selz was truly a cathedral. As the narrator says, “Now we are actually in Salz [Selz]. This is the village that today is called Lymanske. And here is the largest Catholic church, or the ruins of the largest Catholic church, in the entire South. This is not in Kherson, not in Mykolaiv, not in Odesa, or in any other large cities of southern Ukraine. Even though the Catholic community there was much larger,  the largest Catholic church in the entire south of Ukraine was built here.”

One story toward the end made me laugh and that was about how the Germans produced so much wine that they filled their wells with it to keep it cold and drank wine instead of water. I laughed because that was not the first time I had heard that story. 

The video is in Ukrainian, but you can turn on captioning and have the captions translated into English or German. Here is a short video on how to do that. You may also want to scroll down and click on “show transcript” and follow along that way, too. I have included a full transcript here for anyone wanting to read it.

This video project is one to watch. They’ve produced several others, too. Check out those on their YouTube channel.

# # #

Last updated 4 June 2024

SLIG Fall Virtual: Slava Ukraini! Genealogical Research in Ukraine

I am pleased to be a part of the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy Fall Virtual class “Slava Ukraini! Genealogical Research in Ukraine” where I will be teaching a session on the German colonists who lived within the historical borders of modern-day Ukraine. 

A description of the class, a short video, and the full schedule is available. (archived link)

# # #

Last updated 12 March 2025

Pending Toponym Changes in Ukraine

Ukraine’s Parliamentary Committee on Regional Development is in the process of evaluating and recommending renaming some of the country’s toponyms (place names—cities, villages, districts) to comply with its law “On condemnation and prohibition of propaganda of Russian imperial policy in Ukraine and decolonization of toponymy.”

To date this year, it has recommended 347 toponyms be renamed because they “contain symbols of the Russia imperial policy, or do not meet the standards of the state language.” Some of the current names of our German ancestral colonies will be renamed if all the recommendations are approved by Ukraine’s Parliament. 

This is not the first time Ukraine has renamed its cities, villages, and regions. Prior to this in 2016, Ukraine passed a law decommunizing toponyms. Two years later when comparing the current places names on the maps of this project with the official new names, there were several that were changed but not yet updated on Google Maps. It takes a while for place name authorities to catch up and for them to filter into online maps and genealogy software that uses current place names. 

I will update the maps of this project when parliamentary approval has been obtained and a final list of changes is available. Until then, I’m keeping tabs on it. If you’re interested, you can read the committee’s meeting notes here. Let your browser translate the page for you and then search for the word “renaming” on the page. Click on “All news” to see previous news posts. 

None of this should matter too much in your family tree. Ideally, you are recording the historical name of the place and country as it was at the time of your ancestors’ life events, be it imperial, interwar, Soviet, or modern. If you are recording current names or have written narratives of your family’s history using current names, you may have some updates or annotations to make.  

More on this to come as it becomes available. 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Related Posts:

1. Map Update — De-Russification of Ukrainian Place Names (posted 11 January 2025)
2. Map Refresh: A Living Document (posted 6 January 2018)
3. Map Refresh: Place Name Changes in Ukraine (posted 26 January 2018)

# # #

Last updated 22 August 2025

Remembering the German Settlements in Ukraine

 

Remembering the German settlements in Ukraine on this day, 24 February 2024. Between 1766 and 1942, Germans lived in over 3,000 places within the borders of Ukraine today, in both urban and rural settlements. Many were established by Germans after 1804. These places—whether they still exist or not, whether their names are the same or not—remain in the hearts of the descendants as one our ancestral homelands.

Slava Ukraini!

🇺🇦🌻

# # #