[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] geography assistance: "Gruec"?

[Richard Stein]

Craig,

Copied below is a brief report on the availability of Volhynia records, particularly for Rozyszcze parish.  Your circa 1900 Schiller records should be in the AGAD archive in Warsaw.  You can request searches and digital scans of records by e-mail in English.  Their reply will be in Polish.  Their fees are quite reasonable.

Dick Stein

Rozyszcze Indexing Project

This is an update on the availability of Evangelical (Lutheran) church records from Volhynia, in particular for the portion of Volhynia that became part of independent Poland after 1920, and of SGGEE's progress in indexing these records.?This includes Rozyszcze parish.?

Most researchers with ties to Volhynia are familiar with the St. Petersburg Archive microfilms.? The Evangelical parishes in Volhynia were in the St. Petersburg Consistory and each year a duplicate copy of the church register books of baptisms, marriages, and deaths (BMD's) was sent to the administrative office in St. Petersburg.? These books are now in?the St. Petersburg Archive.? Some years ago, LDS filmed the books up to 1885 and made them available on microfilm.? A group of people indexed the BMD's?in?the microfilms and published the data?on the website http://www.odessa3.org/collections/stpete/? The data is for the parishes of?Zhitomir, Rozyszcze, and Heimtal, the only ones existing in Volhynia in 1885.

?When Poland became independent after the first world war, Volhynia was divided with the western half in Poland and the eastern half in Russia (or more accurately, the USSR).? At the end of the second world war, all of Volhynia was again in the USSR.? Of importance to us is that during the interwar period, Evangelical parishes in western Volhynia were administered from Warsaw.? As a result, many of the church register books ended up in the AGAD archive in Warsaw.? (AGAD stands for Archiwum Glówne Akt Dawnych
or, in English - Central Archives of Historical Records).
 Some of these books (only those older than 100 years in accordance with Polish law) were filmed by LDS and are available in?the series of microfilms numbered 2380017 to 2380038.??For a list of these microfilms as well as the original St. Petersburg microfilms and the years covered by each one see http://www.sggee.org/research/parish?and click on Lutheran Church Records in Volhynia, Kiev and Podolia.

?For information about AGAD, see their website at http://www.agad.archiwa.gov.pl/??which has an English version.??The AGAD?posts a complete inventory of their Evangelical (Lutheran) church records from the former Russian areas, including the west half of Volhynia, at http://www.agad.archiwa.gov.pl/pomoce/KsEA439.xml? The title of the site is Ksiegi metrykalne gmin wyznania ewangelicko-augsburskiego z zachodnich guberni Cesarstwa Rosyjskiego/(wschodnich woj. II Rzeczypospolitej) 1790 - 1940.
 (English translation: Register books municipalities Lutheran religion of the western provinces of the Russian Empire / (eastern province. Second Republic), 1790-1940).? Included in their holdings but not on microfilm are some register books for Lutzk Parish (founded in 1899) and some kantorate registers from various locations in Rozyszcze parish and near Rowno, Tutschin, and Dubno.? AGAD will do limited searches and send digital scans upon request.? (There are also some church register books in archives in Ukraine in Lutzk, Rowno, and Zhitomir which unfortunately are not available on microfilm.)

Now we come to the SGGEE involvment in Volhynia BMD record indexing.? Several years ago,?SGGEE obtained a copy of Odessa's original Volhynia index database and recast it for more flexible searching. SGGEE has since indexed records from the adjacent Kiev and Podolia parishes and added them to the database.  This augmented database?is now known as the VKP database (for Volhynia, Kiev, and Podolia).? It can be accessed at??http://www.sggee.org/research/PublicDatabases?

Following release of the AGAD microfilms, SGGEE started the?Rozyszcze Indexing Project with the objective to index these records and add the data to the existing VKP database.? While the project name is Rozyszcze, the films include Wladimir-Wolynsk parish records from its inception in 1891?in addition to the?Rozyszcze parish records?starting 1862.? Note that certain years, notably 1865, 1871, and 1884, were missing from the St. Petersburg Archive microfilms and consequently from the Odessa index.? Therefore, the Rozyszcze Indexing Project is able to add the following to the VKP database:

                    the years after 1885 for Rozyszcze parish (B to 1899, M&D to 1895)

?????the missing years prior to 1885 for Rozyszcze parish

?????confirmations for Rozyszcze parish (1862 to 1886)

?????the early years for Wladimir-Wolynsk parish (B to 1895, M&D to 1894)

Note that the records are?hand-written in German to the end of 1891 and thereafter in Russian cyrillic script.? A bonus for researchers is that marriage records contain full data, i.e., ages and birth places of the groom and bride and their parents' names, although this extra information is not added to the SGGEE VKP index in order to conform to the original format. It is necessary to obtain the microfilm in order to view the full marriage records.? The duplicate marriage records sent to St. Petersburg were only lists of?the names of the groom and bride and the date.

Status Report: 

The Rozyszcze Indexing Project is a work in progress being carried out by a team of dedicated volunteers. The newly-indexed data is being added to the VKP database as it is completed. As of today, indexing of the German language (prior to 1892) records?has been?completed and added to the VKP database. All available Wladimir-Wolynsk records have been indexed and added to the database. Still to be indexed are the Russian-language Rozyszcze parish births for years 1896-99 and deaths for the year 1892.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Craig Schiller" <craigbear at gmail.com>
To: <ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2012 1:24 AM
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] geography assistance: "Gruec"?


A bit of an update, because I'm going to need some further assistance
here -- basically, so far my Schillers seem to have a pretty
consistent pattern of not showing up in any given area until after
your database indexes end.

My great-grandfather was the oldest of his siblings for whom we have
known or estimated birthdates, and he was born in 1885, which unless
I'm missing something puts him after the range of anything that's
currently accessible in your Polish database indexes. Further, the
confirmation certificate from Rozhische was filed in 1900, which seems
to put him after the range of anything that's currently accessible in
the Volhynian ones too. And as far as we know his father Christian was
from Düsseldorf, so as things currently stand we have absolutely no
information to suggest that any of the Schillers who do actually show
up in either databases would be useful leads to pursue at all.

Ironically, the databases were more helpful on my great-grandmother's
side (which is more cleanly Volhynian); I found birth records in the
St. Petersburg database for her and all but one of her siblings. (I
also found a marriage record for her parents in an index on a
different website, though the specific year in question isn't
currently available in yours.)

So here are my new questions:

(1) On the Polish side, I'm getting completely lost in trying to
navigate the relevant archive website; even when I try to search from
the English welcome page, I still have to select the actual search
options (religion, etc.) in Polish. Is there anyone who has prior
experience with that website who's willing and able to help me out?

(2) On the Volhynian side, does anybody know what the status is of
Lutheran church records for the Rozhische area in 1900 and later? Are
they in St. Petersburg but just not indexed by you guys (or not public
at all), are they in a different location, or have they just plain
disappeared off the face of the earth?

Thanks.

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