Germans from Russia – Page 6 – A Deck of Ancestors

52W Mark II – Week 5: Oops

This week’s theme for the 52 Ancestors Challenge is “Oops”. A true “oops” does not readily come to mind, although I know I’ve had a few over the last many years. This is about more of a mistaken conclusion based upon incomplete information than it was an actual “oops”, but it was a misleading error nonetheless.

When I was about four or five, my maternal grandmother, Helen Lerner, went to England. At the time, my mother told me that grandma was going over to visit relatives. To me, it seemed reasonable to conclude that grandma must have been English. On top of that, at that young age I had no idea what my grandmother’s surname at birth had been, I just knew her as “Grandma Burgess”, and Burgess sounded like it could be English (spoiler alert: it wasn’t).

Meanwhile, I only knew Helen’s mother, my great grandmother, as “Grandma Wright”. Again, I had no idea what her surname at birth might have been or that she had previously been married. Wright also seemed pretty English to me, which only reinforced my belief that Grandma Burgess was English.

By eight or nine I developed my interest in genealogy. I even bought a book to help me along, Digging for My Roots, by Michael Scheier and Julie Frankel, which I still have to this day. When I started, I unknowingly did what one is supposed to do as a beginner in genealogy: ask your parents or other close family members. In addition to asking my mom some questions, I also copied what she had written in the family bible. In doing so, I learned my grandmother and great grandmother’s surnames at birth; however, I didn’t realize that “Lerner” and “Anton” were German. It seemed to me that those surnames could also be English. Moreover, my mother had not entered the place of birth for either of her maternal grandparents. When filling out the pedigree in my book, I can’t recall asking my mom where her grandparents were born. However, what little space there was to write place of birth remains blank. (Needless to say, it is recorded in my desktop database!)

My copy of *Digging for My Roots*, which I still have. On the right, you can see that I don’t have a place of birth for my great grandmother Ameilia Anton.

When I was in grade seven, I started taking French in school. However, when I started high school in grade eight, there were many other language options. I decided to drop French and take German. By that time, I had already begun trying to teach myself Dutch, so I figured studying German would help me with that goal. I also knew that, for some reason, my Grandma Burgess knew German. How or why she did, I had no clue. It clearly didn’t cross my mind to ask. It seems pretty daft in hindsight, but there you go.

Emelia Anton, around 1920. Also not English.

During Christmas break in grade eight, we visited Grandma Wright. During the visit, my mom said, “Grandma, guess what? Sean is studying German in school!” My first thought was to wonder why great grandma would find that particularly interesting, but my train of thought was quickly interrupted by my great grandmother immediately starting to speak to me in fluent German. I’m sure you could have knocked me over with a feather, I was so surprised. (I was also pleased with myself that I understood some of what she was saying.)

After we left, I asked my mom how it was that great grandma spoke German. My mother responded, “Because she’s German.” She was?!?

Later on, my mother told that my great grandmother was born in Russia. Of course, that confused me further. My mother then explained that her grandmother’s family was actually from Ukraine, but weren’t Ukrainian. That is when I learned about the Germans from Russia, who were colonists who settled in territory held by the Russian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Fortunately, none of these misunderstandings resulted in me wandering aimlessly down the garden path. Rather, learning the correct facts sparked my interest and put me on the correct path.

52W Mark II – Week 2: Favourite Photo

Happy New Year!!

Hold on, that was already two weeks ago – or was it? It was under the Gregorian calendar, but under the Julian calendar, it’s…five minutes from now as of the time I write this. Break out the bubbly!

So if this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge is “Favourite Photo”, why all this talk of the new year?

I’ve written about my great grandmother, Emelia Anton, many times. She was born on January 1, 1903; however, to this day I am uncertain as to whether it was under the Gregorian or Julian calendar.

Emelia Anton (1903 – 1997), most likely around 1920.

The maternal side of my mother’s family were Germans from Russia, German colonists who settled in the Russian Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries. For the most part, my ancestors all settled in the Beresan district of Kherson province in what is now Ukraine. By the 18th century, all parts of what is now Germany had adopted the Gregorian calendar. However, the Julian calendar was in use in Imperial Russia until the early 20th century.

From time to time over the years, I have tried to determine whether the German colonies used the calendar of their homeland or had adopted the calendar of the Russians, particularly given that the German colonies were of many decades’ duration. However, most of my inquiries have been inconclusive.

While I have recorded Emelia’s birth in my database as January 1, 1903 under the Gregorian calendar, it might be more likely than not that her birth was recorded under the Julian calendar. While Emelia’s parents were born in the Beresan colonies and five of her older siblings were born in the Beresan as well, by the time Emelia was born the family had migrated to Russia, albeit with other Germans. The family spent about twelve years in Selo Suchoi, Veronesch, Russia, where Emelia was born.

I only discovered this photo of my great grandmother a few weeks ago, when I was visiting my parents over Christmas. While I was there, she pulled out a box of some of her parents’ possessions, looking for some photos of her mother. While many of the photos my mother pulled out I had seen before, I had never seen this one before. Given the composition of two photos side-by-side, it appears that it is a stereogram. If you’re good at those Magic Eye pictures that were the craze in the 90s, you might be able to see the stereo image without using a stereoscope.

Whichever calendar Emelia was born under, this month would have been Emelia’s 100th birthday. Happy 100th!

52W Mark II – Week 1: I’d Like to Meet

Happy New Year! It’s time for another trip around the sun and another year of Amy Johnson Crow’s “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks“! We’re starting off the year on the theme of “I’d Like to Meet”.

I’m grateful that the challenge is not which ancestor we would “most like to meet”, but simply an ancestor we’d “like to meet”. For anyone who has been doing genealogy for a while, it would be hard to narrow it down to just one. Rather than choose a single ancestor, I’ve selected a category of ancestor: my great grandparents.

While I would love the opportunity to meet ancestors further back in my tree, they seem so much more remote and abstract than my great grandparents, who seem more tangible and real. I know people who knew them, and I even had many visits with one of them. My great grandparents would be able to shed a lot of light on things I don’t know about them and their immediate families. It would open a gateway to improving and expanding my research.

1. Johannis Albertus van der Fluit (my father’s paternal grandfather)

Johannis was born in ‘t Veld, North Holland, in 1894. He was an agricultural worker most of his short life. While I don’t have a lot of the details, he sustained a head injury that resulted in a mental disorder. He spent the following years suffering from delusions and passed away in a sanitorium in 1932. My grandfather was eight years old.

2. Theresia “Teetje” Pater (my father’s paternal grandmother)

Teetje was born in Waarland, North Holland in 1894. That is the same village where my father was born. Teetje was 37 when she was widowed and was left to raise eight children on her own, the youngest of whom was one year old at the time. I don’t know how she supported herself or the family. She passed away in 1947, a few months before my father was born, so he never knew her.

3. Adrianus “Arie” Komen (my father’s maternal grandfather)

Arie was born in Zuid-Scharwoude, Noord Holland in 1888. Arie spent his whole life as an agricultural labourer. Arie was only 59 years old when he passed away in January 1948, when my father was only a few months old. I don’t recall my grandmother ever speaking about her father, so most of what I know about Arie is from the documentary evidence I have found over the years.

4. Elizabeth Bakker (my father’s maternal grandmother)

Elizabeth was born in Den Helder, North Holland, in 1888. I have little information about her prior to her 30s. Prior to marrying Arie Komen in 1921, when she was 32, she had worked as a domestic servant in Den Helder and Amsterdam. While Elizabeth died in 1976, when I was in grade four, I never met her, but I was quite familiar with “Oma Komen”. She wrote often to my parents and every December she would send us a package of goodies for Sinterklaas and Christmas. My father remembers her well. During a trip to the Netherlands in 2017, my father showed me where she had lived.

5. Milton Leo Burgess (my mother’s paternal grandfather)

Milton was born in Vernal, Utah, in 1891. He came to Canada with his parents when he was 14. Milton was Mormon, so when he was 20 he spent two years in Adelaide, Australia on a mission. Even today with air travel, Australia is pretty far away, so it must have felt even more so when Milton went there. A few years ago, someone reached out to me on FamilySearch and said that he had some of Milton’s calling cards from his time on the mission. I was quite surprised and very grateful when he sent me one of the cards through the mail!

In his 20s and 30s Milton was a farmer. Later in life he had several other occupations. Sometime before 1941 he as a plumber. He worked in a woolen mill, where he lost a finger of his left hand due to a work injury. Milton also worked for a short time as a grave digger around 1950.

Milton died in 1964, a few years before I was born. My mother has told me many stories about Milton over the years. I also have a small cache of letters he wrote to my grandfather in the 1940s. Most of them were gentle admonishments, such as disapproving of my grandfather working in establishments that served alcohol, coffee, and tea, or telling him that it was time to stop seeing the Catholic girl he had been dating and to find a nice Mormon girl to settle down with. Fortunately for me, my grandfather did not follow that advice, as that Catholic girl became his wife and my grandmother!

6. Hazel Nelson (my mother’s paternal grandmother)

I’ve written a lot about Hazel in this blog (in particular, in this post about “Sisters”). She and her sister Irene were twins, born in 1899, and were the first twins to be born in Cardston, Alberta. Sadly, Irene died a little over a month after she was born. Hazel passed away in 1967, three days before I was born. While she might not have met me, she knew I was coming. My mother literally went from her grandmother’s funeral to the hospital to give birth to me. As far as I’ve been able to determine, I was Hazel’s first great grandchild. I’ve often asked my mother about what Hazel might have thought about her approaching status as a great grandmother. My mother has lots of stories about Hazel. It sounds like she was the quintessential grandmother.

7. Heronimus Michael “Jerome” Lerner (my mother’s maternal grandfather)

Jerome Lerner was born in Henrietta, Texas in 1895. His parents were Germans from Russia and Jerome was the first of their children to be born after they emigrated. Jerome immigrated to Canada when he was 22, where he took up farming outside Fox Valley, Saskatchewan. Many of his siblings, as well as his parents, followed Jerome to Saskatchewan over the following few years.

Jerome developed a mental health condition in later life, which contributed to the breakdown of his marriage. Nevertheless, Jerome managed to continue farming until he died in 1954. My mother never met her grandfather. Fortunately, I had the foresight to interview my great aunt about her father.

8. Emelia Anton (my mother’s maternal grandmother)

Emelia was born on January 1, 1903; however, I don’t know if that was by the Julian or Gregorian calendar. Emelia’s parents were Germans from Russia, who lived in one of the many German colonies in Imperial Russia, in what is now part of Ukraine. Sometime in 1900, Emelia’s parents and older siblings moved to Selo Suchoi, Veronesch, Russia, where Emelia was born. The family emigrated to Canada in 1912 and settled in Rastadt, Saskatchewan, just outside Fox Valley.

Emelia lived to be 94, outliving my grandmother by 13 years, so I knew her quite well. When I was a kid we visited her every time we were in Lethbridge, Alberta, which was at least once or twice a year. To this day, I am perplexed as to why I did not ask her more about her family and her life story, given my interest in genealogy since childhood.

I will never forget my amazement when I learned that she was German. During a visit when I was in grade eight, my mother said, “Grandma, guess what? Sean is taking German in school!” My first thought was to wonder why great grandma would care. To my great surprise, her reaction was to start speaking to me in German. Until that time (for many good reasons), I thought she was English!

52 Weeks – Week 49: New Horizons

It’s Week 49 of the 52 Ancestors Challenge. As we approach the horizon of a new year, this week’s theme is “New Horizons”.

I’ve written before about my mother’s maternal lineage, who are all Germans from Russia. This is the story of my mother’s immigrant great grandparents, Michael Lerner and Barbara Schmidt, who sought new horizons in not one, but two countries.

Michael Lerner (1862 – 1947)
Barbara Schmidt (1865 – 1936)

Michael and Barbara were both born in the Beresan district of Kherson province in what is now Ukraine, but which at the time was part of the Russian Empire. Michael was born in Rastatt and Barbara was born in nearby Karlsruhe. As should be apparent, the colonies were generally named after the cities and towns in what is now Germany from where the colonists came.

The German colonies in the Beresan district in 1890, as seen in relation to Odessa.

Michael and Barbara married in Rastatt in February 1865. They lived there for the next ten years, where Michael was engaged in farming. Michael and Barbara had six children together during this time.

The family emigrated from the Beresan to the United States in 1893. They travelled across the Atlantic on the S.S. Lahn, landing at Ellis Island on May 12, 1893, where immigration officials did not change their surname.

The passenger list for the S.S. Lahn showing the Lerner family.

The family settled in Henrietta, Clay County, Texas, where Michael continued farming. Census records show that he farmed on Jacksonboro Road. The name must have changed over the years, as I cannot find it on any map. Michael did not waste any time in applying for American citizenship, as he filed a Declaration of Intention in 1894. However, he took no further steps towards that goal for another thirteen years, in 1907, when he filed a new Declaration of Intention. Michael and Barbara became naturalized American citizens on May 23, 1907.

From 1895 to 1908, Michael and Barbara had eight more children while living in Henrietta. My great grandfather, Heronimus (Jerome) Lerner, born March 12, 1895, was the first of their children born in the United States.

However, most of the family did not stay there for long after the youngest child was born. In 1913, Michael and Barbara’s son Rochus (1892-1970) moved to south-west Saskatchewan, where there were many other settlements of Germans from Russia. Rochus took up farming near Fox Valley, Saskatchewan. According to my mother, Rochus sent word back to Texas saying that there was a lot of good farmland available in Saskatchewan.

My great grandfather, Jerome, followed the call and moved to Fox Valley in 1917. Michael and Barbara followed in 1918, where they settled on land just outside of Fox Valley, near Rastadt. (See how the names followed the settlers around?) Most of the family ended up in Saskatchewan, but a few of Michael and Barbara’s children remained in Texas. As well, some of the family who moved to Saskatchewan later returned to Texas.

Fox Valley, Saskatchewan is in the oval on the left. The land Michael and Barbara farmed is to the east, marked in the box on the upper right. The smaller nearby box shows where Rastadt once stood.

Michael and Barbara became naturalized British subjects domiciled in Canada in 1896 (there was no “Canadian” citizenship until 1947).

Naturalization of Michael and Barbara Lerner in the *Canada Gazette* 1929-1930, page 692

Barbara died on October 21, 1936. Michael died just over ten years later, on January 16, 1947. Michael is buried at the Fox Valley Cemetery. There is some insistencies in the records as to where Barbara was interred.

Records show that “Barbara (Schmidt) Lerner” is buried in both Rastadt Cemetery and the Fox Valley Cemetery. It may be more likely than not that Fox Valley is the correct location. The record for that cemetery gives her plot as W23-2, which is right beside where her husband, Michael, is buried (plot W23-3). As well, other close Lerner family members are buried in Fox Valley Cemetery, including their son Jerome Lerner (plot W13-1). On the contrary, there are no other Lerners buried in the Rastadt cemetery. As well, there appears to be inconsistency in the plot in which she is supposedly interred in Rastadt. An older listing (ca. 1997) indicated plot 61; in 2004, it was said to be plot 70. This inconsistency is consistent with the conclusion that her being buried in Rastadt is less likely to be reliable.

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