[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Introduction: Searching for info on surname FLATT from Marianowka

[Stacy Flatt]

Hello,

My name is Stacy and I'm researching my father's family history,
specifically the surname FLATT.  This is what I know from family
stories:

Catherine the Great invited Germans to settled Russia, so my ancestors
did.  They lived as farmers in an area not far from Lviv.  It may have
been Russia, Poland, Germany, or Ukraine, or any combination of those
at the times my ancestors lived there.  Things got bad and in the
early 1900s, my great grandparents moved to the United States where
the settled in the UP of Michigan, near other friends and family
members.  They had many children, and the children grew up speaking
Low German as their first language.  They learned English in school.
They were Lutheran.

This is what I'm able to document:

Adolph and Lydia Flatt came to the US through Ellis Island in 1905.
Their names are sometimes spelled Adolf and Flat.  They are Flat on
the Ellis Island site.  Their previous home is listed as what I can
best read as Marianowka Crest in Russia.  In the 1930 census records,
their previous country is listed as Poland (NOT Russia, which
indicates to me that their town was affected by the Poland/Russia
border changes happening in the early half of the century).

There are no parents listed and though I can find other Flatts in
other people's genealogies, I cannot connect them to these two since
I'm missing so much information.  I want to try looking at village
records for where they lived, but Marianowka Crest does not seem to
exist.

However, there is a Marjanowka Kreis Luck that I've seen reference
too.  I wonder if this could be it?  It doesn't seem far from Lviv,
seems like it was a Lutheran community, and the Kreis could sound like
Crest.  It also looks like it could have been in Russia in 1905 but
Poland in 1930.  It is now in Ukraine.

My questions: Does this sound like a reasonable theory?  What does the
Kreis Luck designate?  Where can I access records for Marjanowka Kreis
Luck?  Has anyone else done research on the FLATT surname and what
have you found?  Has anyone else researched the Russian Germans in the
Upper Peninsula of Michigan?  (FLATT, SEIB, MATSCHENSKI, SCHMIDT,
etc?)

Thanks!
Stacy

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