Russian Empire/Pale of Settlement/USSR/Russia

Randy Schoenberg,

Can you please have a look at it.

Kevin

The portal is as good as we make it. if you want to start up a sub project for Russia, please do so. We've been waiting a long time for people to get going on those projects. Maybe you will be the one to get it done?

I second The Motion Randy Schoenberg I hope Susan B. Urban (Goldstein) will implement. I will help, but will not accept leadership. I have found many cousins living in, and/or born in The Former USSR. DNA, research, and acquired Russian literacy were all needed since we don't have many digitized databases. Susan, I will connect you with genealogist cousins living in, and/or born in Russia. Kevin Lawrence Hanit

This is a good point. My cousin was confused about our grandparents having been born in "Russia," which I explained was the old Russian Empire, and that their birthplace is now part of Ukraine.

I had a great grandmother whose married surname was Goldstein. She was a widow with several children who came to America. The family was supposed to have come from Kiev. Her husband had owned a mill where the farmers brought their wheat to be milled into flour. Her husband died, either in the late 1890s or early 1900s. What records would exist regarding the ownership of a mill in Tsarist Russia? Would anyone know where to look?

Re: My cousin was confused about our grandparents having been born in "Russia," which I explained was the old Russian Empire, and that their birthplace is now part of Ukraine.

3 out of 4 great grand parents born in "then Russia.". The countries are now Poland, the Ukraine, Belarus, but we all knew it as only "Russia.". No Polish or Ukrainian language.

Same for Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania).
Many North American documents will state Russia, but when you search Wikipedia, etc. for the town/city in the document - you will find the location in "current" country - needed for further genealogy search.

The word "pale" comes from the Latin based "Poll" which was a stick or boundary marker, similar to the Greek Hermes. So "pale" came to mean the boundary between lands, and "Pale of Settlement" means the boundary of settlement. Just as "beyond the pale" means someone has gone out of bounds. The Jews were not allowed to live in Russia itself, and were therefore forced to live on the other side of the Russian boundary or in the Pale of Settlement. In the late 1700's Catherine the Great of Russia, Frederick the Great of Prussia and Maria Teresa of Austria divided up what is today Poland and Lithuania - so those two countries ceased to exist until 1919 after WWI when they were reborn as nations. That is why people could not come from "Poland" or from "Lithuania" because those towns and cities were then part of the Russian or Prussian (later German) empires.

Thank you to all for the history/geography lessons — much of which I already knew, but many visitors to this portal may not, hence my chagrin at the major omission.

As you folks may have noticed, I don't have a great deal of time available to devote to genealogy pursuits. If someone else wants to pick up the mantle and add the missing region to this portal, I encourage you to go for it.

P.S. to Kathryn James: Unfortunately my Goldstein forebears originate from an entirely different locale (Skarzysko-Kamienna). I wish you good luck in your genealogy quest.

I have several ancestors who moved from Poland to Russia proper (Saratov Oblast) in the 1870s/80s. There were numerous exceptions to Pale of Settlement restrictions for particular classes of Jewish tradespeople.

Tracing details for them is a real nuisance though.

For instance, I've found a site that catalogues Jewish cemeteries in Russia (http://toldot.ru/urava/cemetery/), and some of the surnames match, but the tombstones do not bear their Hebrew names (i.e. no luck with patronymics), so it's difficult to determine who they were.