Tag: Texas

52 Weeks Mark III – Week 7: Immigration

My mother’s maternal line are all Germans from Russia. The Russian Empire expanded significantly during the 18ths century. When Catherine the Great came to power in 1763, she encourage immigration, partly to re-establish farming in regions that had laid fallow during periods of warfare, modernize the country, and to populate regions the Empire had absorbed.

Catherine the Great

Catherine’s manifesto inviting settlers bears some resemblance the homestead schemes introduced in the United States and Canada over a century later.

Among other things, she promised land, free transportation to Russia, and economic incentives (including freedom from taxes for a period of time and interest-free loans for the purchase of equipment). As well, settlers were promised that they could freely practice their religion, retain their language, and be free from military service. The settlers were also promised a degree of self-government.

While settlers came from several places in Europe, a majority were Germans. At the time, there was no “Germany”. Rather, the region was primarily composed of a multitude of principalities, dutchies, and other small states. While Catherine’s promises provided a significant pull, economic and political conditions in the German states provided a significant push.

Germany in 1789

The first wave of settlers formed colonies in the Volga region (“Volga Germans”). The next wave occurred after Catherine’s grandson, Alexander I, issued a similar manifesto with many of the same promises. My ancestors were part of this wave of settlers, who formed colonies in what is now southern Ukraine, particularly in the area north of Odessa (“Black Sea Germans”).

The German colonies in the Beresan district in 1890, as seen in relation to Odessa. All four of my maternal grandmother’s grandparents came from Rastadt and Karlsruhe, located in the upper right-hand corner.

The German colonies were usually composed of members of the same religion. The main colonies were Catholic, Lutheran, and Mennonite. These colonies thrived for decades. However, in 1871, Czar Alexander II repealed the manifestos of Catherine and Alexander I. The German colonists lost many of their privileges. Shortly afterwards, they lost their exemption from military service. The next Czar, Alexander III, took further steps to incorporate the German population into general Russian society, which included discouraging the German language and encroaching on the school system established by the colonists.

Needless to say, this immediately sparked waves of emigration of the German colonists, many of whose families had been in Imperial Russia for decades. Many of these Germans left for the United States and Canada, relocating to the plains stretching from Texas to Saskatchewan. Other colonists left for Argentina and Brazil.

My grandmother’s paternal line originally settled in Texas, starting with my great great grandparents, Michael Lerner and Barbara Schmidt and their six children. They came over in 1893 on the S.S. Lahn, which landed at Ellis Island – less than 18 months after it had opened. Michael and Barbara had six more children after settling in Texas, the first of whom was my great grandfather, Heronimus “Jerome” Lerner. Over time, many of their children relocated to Saskatchewan, including Jerome. Michael and Barbara ultimately made the same move themselves, leaving behind several of their adult children.

My grandmother’s maternal grandparents,  Jacob Anton and Margaretha “Margaret” Heck, came directly to Canada in 1912 with all their children and settled in Saskatchewan. This included my great grandmother, Emelia Anton, who was nine years old at the time. She lived to be 94 and I knew her well.

The Anton family, circa 1910. Likely taken in Selo Suchoi, Veronesch, Russia. My great grandmother, Emelia, is the little girl standing at the edge of the right side of the photo.

Emelia had not had much schooling before coming to North America, but was very religious. She said that she was frightened and nervous during the journey, as she did not know anything about where she was going and did not fully understand what was going on. However, on reaching New York, she said her fears subsided when she saw “the Madonna”. When she saw that, she knew she would be safe and all would be well. Of course, the “Madonna” was the Statue of Liberty. As she had never heard of it before, she thought it was a statue of the Virgin Mary.

There are many well-known descendants of the Germans from Russia. They include Lawrence Welk, who married my grandmother’s fourth cousin. While I am generally disinterested in celebrity, I was excited to learn that Hayley Wickenheiser is a descendant of Germans from Russia. Her great grandparents lived in Rastadt, where Mike and Barbara had lived before emigrating. However, her family was there decades after mine left, as the did not leave until they fled Stalin’s regime.

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.
A brief editorial comment.

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.

Heronimus (“Jerome”) Lerner (1895-1954)

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.

The family group for Michael and Barbara.

52 Weeks – Week 25: Broken Branch

For this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge, Amy Johnson Crow wrote “Are you researching a branch that it feels like there is nobody else in the world who is researching them? What about a collateral line that seems to have gotten lost?”

Turns out that line was mine!

Through sheer chance, through a random encounter with a farmer in the middle of nowhere, I discovered that my great grandfather, Heronimus (“Jerome”) Lerner and his descendants had “gotten lost”. I thought I was looking for them, it turns out they were actually looking for me!

Jerome Lerner was born in Henrietta, Clay County, Texas on March 12, 1895. His parents, Michael Lerner and Barbara Schmidt, were Germans from Russia. They lived in one of the many German colonies in Imperial Russia, in what is now part of Ukraine. These colonies usually bore the names of the places in Germany the original settlers had come from. After Michael and Barbara married, they lived in the village of Rastadt, where their first six children were born. In 1893, the family emigrated to the United States and settled in Henrietta, Clay County, Texas. Jerome was the first of eight children Michael and Barbara had after coming to America.

Michael Lerner (1862-1947) and Barbara Schmidt (1865-1936)
Jerome Lerner (1895-1954)

During the mid-1910s, members of the family began moving between Texas and Saskatchewan. Jerome was one of the first. Ultimately, Jerome, his parents, and at least four of his siblings ended up permanently moving to Canada and settled in the area of Fox Valley, Saskatchewan.

Jerome married my great grandmother, Emelia Anton, in 1920. They separated sometime around 1937. As far as I can tell, they never formally divorced. I thought that being Catholic, they might have simply separated without divorcing. However, my great aunt Adeline (their third child) told me that it was more due to the difficulty in obtaining a divorce at the time. Prior to 1968, divorces in Canada were granted through a private act of Parliament, through a difficult and expensive process.

Jerome and Emelia, likely sometime around 1931.

I’d known my great grandmother since I was born. We visited her almost every time we went to my parents’ hometown. As she lived until I was thirty, she was the great grandparent I knew best. I’ve written quite a lot about my Anton ancestors in this blog. They were also Germans from Russia. They came to Canada in 1912 and settled in Rastadt, Saskatchewan. All that is left of Rastadt is the schoolhouse and the cemetery.

Rastadt, Saskatchewan Cemetery, April 1, 1997. 

While I knew Emelia, I never met Jerome. He died in 1954. My mother never even met him. From what I know, Jerome may have had some mental health problems from sometime around the time he and Emelia separated. As well, from what my mother has told me, the Lerner side of the family was none too pleased with Emelia after she and Jerome separated.

After the separation, Emelia moved to Alberta. I doubt she had much contact with her former Lerner relatives, although it sounds like my grandmother and her siblings might have. Nevertheless, it is easy to see how the Lerner branch of the family might have lost track of Emelia and Jerome’s family. As well, while I know my grandmother, her siblings, and my mother all seem to have been in close contact with their Anton relatives, the fact that branch of the family relocated may have made for a much looser connection. So it seems that Jerome and Emelia’s branch of the family became lost, or lost-ish, to both the Lerners and the Antons.

How were we “rediscovered”?

First, the Antons. In the mid-90s, I made contact online with a Paul Antone of Washington state. It was the early days of online genealogy, so we probably met on a message board or something similar. I wasn’t even using Netscape yet! Paul’s father was one of Emelia’s first cousins. I don’t know if they knew each other. Paul and I sporadically exchanged emails. Through him, I learned of Gordon Anton, a nephew of Emelia’s. At the time, he was compiling a history of the Antons. I don’t know if Gordon ever met Emelia, but it was apparent he didn’t know much about her branch of the family. Apparently he had been in contact with one of Emelia’s sons, my great uncle Herb, but he never got much information through that contact. Gordon ultimately published a history of the Antons, but it was pretty sparse when it came to Emelia and her descendants. Gordon was hoping to publish a second edition, but it never came to be.

Nowadays, finding a lost branch online – even if you are the missing branch being found – is hardly unique or exciting. In comparison, the rediscovery by the Lerner side was largely a matter of coincidence, even though it was because I had been in the right place at the right time. Even today, it would be an unusual occurrence.

In 1997, I left a long-term job and was taking a few months off before embarking on a short-term gig and a return to university. One of the things I did during that time off was visit my parents, who had returned to living in southern Alberta. I had not been to Fox Valley since I was a child, so I suggested to my mother that we go there for a daytrip.

Upon arrival in Fox Valley, we stopped at the village hall where we gathered a wealth of information. Among other things, I was able to discover the exact place where my grandmother was born. After visiting the Rastadt schoolhouse and cemetery, my mother and I made our way to the place where my grandmother was born.

Beautiful downtown Rastadt, Saskatchewan. Actually, this is suburban Rastadt, but no one really is counting. If the middle of nowhere has a middle of nowhere, this is it. Where I am standing once stood the farmhouse where my maternal grandmother, Helen Lerner, was born.

I was not surprised at all to find nothing but a field of wheat. We snapped some photos of the site and decided it was time to head back to Alberta. We drove a bit down the narrow road to find a place to turn around. We soon found a farmhouse with a driveway that provided the opportunity to turn around. After I pulled in, the farmer who lived there saw me and came out, thinking anyone he didn’t know who was out there must be lost.

He seemed surprised that we actually meant to be in his part of the world. We got to talking. It turned out he was a cousin of my grandmother’s. He and his wife invited us in for coffee and they showed us all sorts of interesting family photos and mementos. Talk about serendipity! He even told me the farmhouse my grandmother was born in still existed – a farmer had bought the building and moved it to his land.

Even more fortuitous, he told me that a family history was being put together of the Boechler family. Jerome’s maternal grandmother was a Boechler. The farmer gave me the contact information for the author. My timing was another stroke of luck. I made the call not long afterward and learned that the book was being finalized and would be going to press in a matter of days. It also turned out that Jerome and Emelia’s branch of the family was a huge mystery to the authors. I was able to supply most of the information about Jerome and Emelia’s branch in time for publication.

Not only was Jerome’s branch lost to the family, he seems to have been lost by both the United States and Canada. Upon learning of Jerome’s death, the US consulate in Winnipeg submitted a “Report of the Death of An American Citizen” to the American Foreign Service. The Foreign Service stated that it did not have any evidence that Jerome had American citizenship beyond the statement in the registration of death issued by the province of Saskatchewan. This, despite the fact the United States issued Jerome a passport when he first left for Saskatchewan in 1916. Meanwhile, there is no indication that Jerome was ever naturalized as a Canadian (or, at the time, as a British subject in Canada) or that he had renounced his American citizenship (which he was, as evidenced by his US passport).