To:                        Krasna Researchers
From:                        Ted J. Becker and Rosemary (Ternes) Mack
                        (Krasna Village Research Co-Coordinators)
                        (Emmental Village Research Co-Coordinators)
                        (Karamurat Village Research Co-Coordinators)
Date:                        Fall/Winter 2002

 

A new book about Krasna, Emmental, Balmas and Larga has recently been released in Germany. It is entitled Erinneerungen an Bessarbbien 60 Jahre nach der Umsiedlung (Memories of Bessarabia, 60 years after the Resettlement). It has been produced by the Landsmannschaft der Bessarabiendeutschen Rheinland-Pfalz, e.V., with a forward by its director Alex Hein. The book has been published in German. It contains 285 pages in a paperback edition. It is a compilation of articles taken from other publications. They are about the history and heritage of Krasna, Emmental, Balmas and Larga. If any of you would like to help pay to get the book translated into English, your help would be GREATLY appreciated. Send your financial help to Ted J. Becker, P.O. Box 1524, Williston, ND 58802-1524 USA.  An English translation would be a welcome addition to the Krasna Library. If you would like to order a copy of the German edition from the Landsmannschaft, let Ted know and he’ll send you the address of the Landsmannschaft.

 

A web site of interest is one in which the Alberta, Canada, Heritage Digitization Project can be found. The site is  www.alberta2005.org    The site will eventually digitize about 15,000 local history books from across Canada. The site is very user friendly. Actual pages of books are given on the site. In addition to local histories, early newspapers, maps, aerial photographs, art, legal documents and Alberta folklore can be found in this site.

 

Two other web sites of interest are

            Canadian National Archives            www.archives.ca

U.S. National Archives

                        www.nara.gov/genealogy/gemindex.html#online

 

Recently we received copies of extracts from church books, which are part of the Tiraspol Consistory of Roman Catholic church documents. They consist of births/baptisms, marriages and deaths for Krasna, Bessarabia, Russia for the years 1913, 1914 and 1916. The final cost for these 41 pages of copies was $945.00. We are now waiting for similar copies of church documents for the years 1850 to 1860 from this same archive. It is hard to say when these copies will arrive.  It took about 14 months to get the 41 pages of documents. An interesting note!  The cost of making photocopies of documents in the archive is $5.00 per page, U.S. funds! (Costs for acquiring copies of documents in the former USSR are going through the ceiling.) The archive in which the Tiraspol Consistory documents are located is the Saratov Sate Archive in Saratov, Russia. It is estimated that the copies of the 1850 to 1860 church documents will cost about $1,200.00. It goes without saying that any financial support you could give us would be GREATLY appreciated. The Krasna Records Acquisition Fund does not have quite enough money to pay for these copies. Could you help?

 

U.  S. Federal Censuses 1790 to 1920

These censuses are now on line and head of household indexes are in production for the years 1840 to 1880 and 1900 to 1930. For more information go to

www.ancestry.com/htm

Click on “U.S. Census Records”. Heritage Quest magazine has put all 12,555 rolls of the U.S. Federal Censuses on CD’s. They are available now. Information is available at

WWW. heritagequest.COm

 

The Minnesota Historical Society (USA) has posted an index of death certificates from 1908 to 1966 on line. You can search by name, year or county of death at

                        http://people.mnhs.org/dci                                 

Click on “Search.cfm”

 

To find out what records are available in the state of South Dakota, USA, go to  http //www.state.sd.us/

In the “Search this site” box type in “genealogy”. This web site lists, county by county, records available locally as well as contact information.

 

The Germans from Russia Heritage Society of Bismarck, North Dakota, USA, has a new web site. It is  http//delta.cs.vt.edu/grhs/ You might want to check it out. The Society has “upgraded and updated” its web site to better serve the needs of interested parties as well as researchers. Some sections of the site are available only to members of the Society via passwords. However, one of the many interesting sections in the web site is the section, which lists the names of the articles, which have been published in the Society’s quarterly publication Heritage Review, which began publication in 1971, and is still being published. Ted is the current editor.

 

A web site of great interest to Roman Catholics is “Catholic Church History and Genealogy Research Guide”

                                                http://home.att.net/~LocaICatholic/

This site gives contact information for respective churches and some cemeteries throughout the world. Note that some small churches have only one parish priest who ministers to members in several different main and mission parishes. Doing genealogy research in their church records is not their main responsibility. Reasonable financial donations to cover their time and respective copies would be of help to them.

 

The official web site for the services offered by state government of the state of North Dakota, USA, go to

                                                http://discovernd.com/

Click on “Help and FAQ”. Then click on “Index” Contact information plus respective e-mail addresses, snail mail addresses, phone numbers, etc., can be found on this web site. Information about naturalization/citizenship records, death/marriage certificates, etc., is available on this site.

 

Hamburg Emigration Records. The Hamburg emigration records are being made available on the following web site:

        h ttp://www.hamburg.de/fhh/behoerden/staatsarchiv/link_to_you_roots/english/start.htm

 

Thus far the years 1890 to 1900 are available to be searched. There is a fee for the search for and acquisition of copies of records. For 1-3 copies the fee is 22 Euros or U.S. dollars, payable either by check or credit card. The archive is working to make further years available.

 

Recently Ted completed an index of the Krasna Photo Collection. This was quite a task. There are over 4,000 photos of people and places associated with Krasna, Emmental and Karamurat. The Microsoft Excel program was used for the index. The index is arranged by surname/married name, given name, maiden name, second husband’s surname, photo album number, page number in photo album and basic genealogical data of the individual or general description of the place associated with Krasna, Emmental or Karamurat. If you would like a copy of this index on disc, please let Ted know and he will send you a copy - $5.00 U.S. funds. Further, if you would like a copy of any photo, just contact Ted. There may be some small copying and mailing costs. He is not yet capable of sending photos over the Internet. Someday he would like to scan the photos and save them to CD-Rom. Hopefully he will live long enough to do that! Retirement has proven to be busier for him than when he was employed!

 

Peace to you. God bless you.