TO:

TO:                 Krasna Researchers

FROM:           Ted J. Becker and Rosemary (Mack) Ternes

                        Village Research Co-Coordinators

                                    Krasna, Bessarabia, Russia

                                    Emmental, Bessarabia, Russia

                                    Karamurat, Dobrudscha, Romania

DATE:            Winter 2004 - 2005

 

Great News!  Rosemary has completed the transfer of the English translations of the diocesan church records, which we acquired from the Saratov State Archive in Saratov, Russia, into two files in the computer, 1) in the Microsoft Word program, and 2) in the Word Perfect program.  Further, she has placed all of the church records (English translations), which we have acquired over the years, onto CD’s.  Therefore, we can now offer to researchers on CD,

-                     All church and civil records we have acquired for Krasna and Emmental;

or

-                     Just the diocesan church records from the Saratov archive.

 

CD “A”  The diocesan church records (in English translation) from the Saratov archive consist of the following, and are available on this one CD in the Microsoft Word program only:

-                     1851-1897 Krasna Births/Baptisms

-                     1851-1899 Kasna Marriages

-                     1851-1899 Krasna Deaths

-                     1900-1915 Krasna Births/Baptisms

-                     1900-1914 Krasna Marriages

-                     1900-1916 Krasna Deaths

We cannot vouch for the completeness of these records.  As mentioned in a previous newsletter, these records are not extracted from the original church records for Krasna.  They are, rather, extractions from diocesan church books, which were held at the Roman Catholic diocesan office in Tiraspol, Russia.  These particular church books contain records for many other Roman Catholic parishes as well in the Tiraspol Diocese.  The Krasna records found in the CD “A” are extractions from these diocesan books.

 

CD “B  ALL church and civil records (in English translation) we have acquired over the years, for Krasna and Emmental, consist of the following, and available on this one CD in either program, Microsoft Word or Word perfect:

-                     All of the extracted records from the Saratov archive, listed above

-                     1814-1837 Krasna Births/Baptisms (A-L) (L-Z)

-                     1836, 1839, 1840, 1846, & 1847 Krasna Births/Marriages/Deaths (civil)

-                     1835 Krasna Auditing Register (Census) (civil)

-                     1850 Krasna Census (civil)

-                     1918-1938 Krasna Births/Baptisms (A-C) (D-H) (H-K) (K-M) (M-R) (R-S) (S-T) (T-Z)

-                     1918-1938 Krasna Marriages (A-M (N-Z)

-                     1918-1939 Krasna Deaths (A-K (L-Z)

-                     1889-1896 Emmental Births/Baptisms

-                     1919-1937 Emmental Birth/Baptisms

-                     1886-1893 Emmental Deaths

 

The cost for CD “A” is $90.00 U.S. funds.  The cost for CD “B” is $335.00 U.S. funds.  If you would like to have one of these CD’s, with the records as listed above, please send your check or money order, payable in U.S. funds, to

Ted J. Becker

                                    P.O. Box 1524

                                    Williston, North Dakota  58802-1524   USA

If you have questions about the records on these CD’s or about the records themselves, contact Ted at the address above, or at his e-mail addresses, which are

                                    tbecker@nemontel.net

                                                     or

                                    krasna@nemontel.net

His telephone number is 701-572-5715.

 

It has taken us about 17 years to acquire copies of all of the above records.  When Rosemary and I first started this “labor of love”, which we call “The Krasna Project”, we did not know if any civil or church records existed for these villages of Krasna, Emmental and Karamurat.   So, we have come a long way since we first started.  We feel that the time and effort, not to speak of the money involved to acquire these invaluable records, have been well spent.  No one can take these records away from you and me.  Further, they are available for all researchers, present and future. 

 

Over the years you have heard us speak so often of the “Krasna Master Census, 1814-1940”.  This is the database we have been developing.  Actually, Rosemary has been developing it.  I have worked to find and acquire records for our villages.  She extracts data and information from them and inputs them into the database.  As we have mentioned before, the Krasna Master Census, 1814-1940, database is in the Personal Ancestral File program.  The program can produce a number of charts, charts, which can show family groups, descendants, pedigrees, and the like.  Some of you have received from us various charts it can produce.  We still offer to produce charts for you if you wish.  Feel free to contact Ted if you like to have any chart produced for you.  Several researchers have asked if they might purchase from us the entire database, which we call “Krasna Master Census, 1814-1940”.  We have not made the entire database available to anyone because we continue to add new data and also tie unattached people into their appropriate family groups.  Thus, this database is still a work-in-progress.  Furthermore, if it were made available to researchers at this time, it would be incomplete tomorrow, as we find new data and information, often daily.

 

Sybille and Ambrose Leinz recently finished translating into English the over 800 articles and letters to the editor Ted extracted from the Der Staats Anzeiger newspaper for the years 1909 through 1932.   “Thank you” doesn’t even begin to express our gratitude to them for this massive project.  We just say “Thank you!” to them.  They have said to us, “Our help is our way of helping the larger effort of preserving our Krasna heritage.”  Ambrose was born in Krasna and has taken a special interest in them, for he knew some of the people mentioned in them.  These articles and letters are associated with Krasna, Emmental, Karamurat, as well as the towns and villages in which the Krasnaers’, Emmentalers’, and Karamuraters’ relatives and descendants lived in far-flung regions of the world.  These regions are the USA, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, and Australia.  (Ted found 4 letters to the editor that his maternal grandfather wrote, and 2 that his maternal great-grandfather wrote.  Both of them immigrated from Krasna to North Dakota, USA.)  Faustina (Dirk) Chandler has placed these translations into one file, arranged chronologically.  She is currently developing an index of these articles and letters.  This index will contain, in addition to the name of the author/writer of the article/letter and the dates of writing and publication, a listing of all names found in each article/letter.  When she has completed this project, the translations and the index will be placed on one CD, and will be made available to Krasna researchers.  Stay tuned for progress reports on when it will become available to researchers.  My hat is off to Faustina for her dedication to this project, and for her kind and generous help.  Rosemary continues to find new data and information in these letters to the editor and articles, for they are filled with data and information about the “Krasnaers”, “Emmentalers”, “Karamuraters”, etc.  This new data is then included in the Krasna Master Census, 1814-1940, database.

 

Word has come to me from George Dorscher, newsletter editor of The Alberta Chapter of the Germans from Russia Heritage Society, of two web sites on the Internet that might be of interest to Krasna researchers.  One of them is a web site, which houses a project “whereby the University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada) Press was making local histories available on the web in digitized form”.  It is found at the URL 

http://www.ourfutureourpast.ca/

He points out that two volumes of the history of Wilkie, Saskatchewan, Canada are found there, as well as one for Allen, Saskatchewan, Canada.  In addition to this web site, he points out another, which is still being developed, though some data and information can be found in it.  The site contains a transcription of the 1906 census of three provinces in Canada, namely, Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.  A little over 50% of the names from the 1906 census for these provinces can be found on the following Alberta Family Histories web site:

                        http://www.afhs.ab.ca/

 

You may wish to view our Krasna web site.  It can be found at

                        http://14ushop.com/krasna

We have added an updated inventory of the Krasna Library.  The Krasna Library contains books, booklets, primary documents, copies of primary documents, microfilmed copies of primary documents, etc.  In one way or another, these materials reference Krasna, Emmental, and Karamurat in some way.   We have expanded several sections in the inventory to better describe some of the materials in the Krasna Library.

 

We wish that those Krasna researchers who do not have computers would also contact Ted if they have an interest in accessing the materials mentioned above.   If you feel that you might want copies of any of the above, feel free to contact Ted.  We can work out something so that all of the Krasna records can be made available to you as well.  Also, as we have mentioned on occasion, if any of you might want from us printouts from the “Krasna Master Census, 1814-1940”, just contact Ted.  We do not want any Krasna researcher to feel that he/she is being left behind just because he/she does not own a computer.  After all, the work Rosemary and Ted have been doing these past 17+ years is really meant to be available to all of you and of help with your research.

 

If the photos in the Krasna Photo Collection are of interest to you, be reminded that we have developed an index of the collection.  This index lists all people who are in the 4,700+ photos.  For you computer users, the program into which we placed the index is Microsoft Excel.  Rosemary assures me that there are other programs, which are compatible with the Excel program, so that if you want the index of the photo collection, we would be happy to share it with you.  For those of you who do not have computers, we would also be happy to print the index for you.  There are about 175 pages to the index, thus it is not small by any means.  However, we still would be happy to accommodate your wish to have a copy.  Please contact Ted if you are interested.  $15.00 U.S. funds will cover the cost for the index on floppy disc, if you would like to have the index.

 

The Fox Valley/Liebenthal History Book Committee of Box 10, Fox Valley, Sasketchewan, S0N 0V0, Canada, has recently released their two-volume, 1,268-page, history books.  It is entitled simply Remember When…..  There are about 900 pages of family histories in these books.  The books contain histories of organizations, local governments, maps, cemetery inventories, lot and block histories for the towns themselves, and countless photographs.  We do not know if any books are available for purchase, for when we ordered ours, we made a down payment, assuring the Committee that we would indeed purchase our books.  The narratives throughout the book are extremely well written.  The quality of the photos is above normal.  The research that went into the numerous histories was done in depth.  The index is an invaluable tool for the researcher or just the casual reader.  The Fox Valley/Liebenthal area is one of the major areas in Canada to which former Krasna, Emmental and Karamurat residents migrated at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

 

 

Charlie Miller of the USA has shared with Ted photos and historical materials for the people and the area around Raleigh, Grant County, North Dakota, USA, over the years.  His knowledge about the people and the area is vast, to say the least.  His memory about them recalls so many details about them and their lives.  His passion for the gathering and preservation of our common Krasna roots in that are runs deep.  As most of you may know, the Raleigh area is where so many of the original immigrants from Krasna settled.  A number of current residents who live in that area are keenly interested in learning more about their roots in Krasna, Emmental and Karamurat.  They, with Charlie, are working to gather others from the area at a special time and place so that Ted can spend time with them.  Ted will bring to this gathering most of the Krasna Library, maps, his computer, which contains the Krasna Master Census, 1814-1940, and other materials.

 

Ted, Ambrose Leinz and Joann (Erker) Baroh will definitely join Bob Schneider of Schneider Tours of Spearfish, South Dakota, USA, in May/June 2005 for a  “pilgrimage” (to use June McDonald’s word) to Krasnoe/Krasna, and visits to other former German villages around Odessa, Nikolaiev and the Crimea region.  To walk the streets of Krasnoe/Krasna with Ambrose will be a very special time for us.  We will spend three days in Krasnoe/Krasna.  No doubt this time will seem too short, but we will relish these special times.  After the time in Ukraine, Ted and Joann will travel, after a side trip to Italy, to the Koblenz, Germany, area.  Ted’s “cousin” Maria Budean, as well as Margret Cremer, Max Riehl, Paul Wingenbach, Alois Speicher, Eduard Volk, and hopefully others, will “take care” of them while visiting.  Without a doubt, there will be much talking about Krasna, its people and its history.

 

Recently, one of Ted’s relatives shared with him a video, which he had made of an old 8 mm film that he had since he was young.  It is a film of some of the resettlers who returned to Germany during the 1940/1941 Resettlement of Germans.  It was made in the Resettlement Camp in which they lived for a short time.  His ancestry is in Colelia, Dobrudscha.  He shared it with Ted knowing that it would be preserved in a library, for the use of researchers as well as our children and grandchildren.  Ted asks all of you to consider sharing with him, for preservation purposes, any materials, papers, films, audiotapes and videotapes, photographs, and the like.  Some people have said to Ted that they are not entirely certain that there might be someone in their families who would want to keep their research materials.   Some have also said that they did not know if anyone in their family or extended family would continue their work.  Ted assures you that anything you share with him will be preserved.  It, along with all materials in the Krasna Library, will eventually be donated to the Germans from Russia Heritage Society of Bismarck, North Dakota, USA.  The materials will be kept together there in a special collection, which will be called “The Krasna Project”.  It will mean so much to your children and grandchildren, as well as researchers, that you had the foresight to place your materials in a safe place, to be preserved for posterity.  Too many times I have heard about children and grandchildren who had materials of a relative or ancestor and did not know what to do with them.  There are so many stories of potographs being tossed into the garbage because children and grandchildren did not know the people in the photos.  So, would you consider sharing with Ted any of your materials, or at least copies of them?  Feel free to contact him to discuss your wishes to preserve the results of your hard work.

 

 

 

Peace.

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