[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Archives in St. Petesburg & Zhitomir

[Jerry Frank]

The following information from Harold Kwast is being forwarded to this list 
at his request.

Please note that in spite of the comment about no detailed records being 
available in St. Petersburg, we *know* that additional books exist in St. 
Petersburg Archives covering Volhynia for 1886 and later.  They may be 
indexed in the collection as St. Petersburg Lutheran Consistory records 
rather than specifically as Zhitomir or other parish records.  It is also 
*not known* if there is more than one archival repository of records in St. 
Petersburg and if this researcher only checked one or all of them.

Comments below are from one satisfied customer (research could be 
expensive, depending on time required to do it) and do not carry any 
endorsement from either myself or from SGGEE.


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 From Harold Kwast:

Two years ago I hired Efim Melamed, a genealogist who lives in Zhitomir to 
research the Zhitomir Archives for information regarding my family. He 
found a great deal or information previously unknown to me. When he ran out 
of "new finds" he suggested I contact Elena Tsvetkova, a genealogist in St. 
Petersburg. She works for/with Blitz, Russian Baltic Information Center.

Mrs.Tsvetkova researched the Central State Historical Archives in St. 
Petersburg, and found many new facts about my family that had not been 
available in the Zhitomir Archives. The new information had to do mainly 
with real estate transactions and matters regarding applications for 
Russian citizenship by the German colonists. There was also redundant 
material that had been found earlier in the Zhitomir Archives.

I asked her to look into the Lutheran Church records for 1885-1915, for the 
parishes of Zhitomir and Heimthal. She stated that she found only 
"statistical data" of births, marriages, and deaths for various church 
parishes of the Russian Empire written in the German language, but 
unfortunately nothing was listed for the parishes of Zhitomir and Heimthal 
for that time period. Yesterday I asked her to make one last try to find 
these records for the parishes and dates noted previously. Her answer came 
today, "The people from the State Historic Archive of the Zhitomir Region 
even suppose that they [the records] were not preserved." I hope they are 
wrong but it appears that I am out of luck for now.

For those who may be interested in their services, Efim Melamed can be 
reached at mefim at online.zt.ua, and Elena Tsvetkova at blitz at peterlink.ru.
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Jerry Frank - Calgary, Alberta
jkfrank at shaw.ca