Kautz AHSGR Annual Report for 2014 Research continues. I processed 29 obituaries received from contributors, mainly Henry Schmick, which matched against my Kautz database. Unfortunately, many were for people I knew while growing up in Walla Walla or those with whom Ive corresponded over the years regarding Kautz genealogy. As of today, the database now contains 30,458 individuals and 9,716 marriages. The software I use is Family Treemaker for Windows - 2006. I correspond with many people from the United States who have Kautz ties and I am normally able to provide substantive information to them from their initial query. In many cases, I’m able to get additional information on their families from the requestors which then updates my database. On October 9, 2013, Mila received funds for my acquisition of Kautz parish records from the Volgograd Archives, births 1902-1918, and marriages 1903-1918. Kautz births for 1852-1898 have been misplaced and should hopefully turn up sometime in the future. Those records would complete the links of Kautz individuals to Kautz families. The translation and posting of Kautz records has kept me busy. Some of my time in 2014 was spent transcribing church records for the village of Dietel, a sister village of Kautz where permanent unions were made among families of the two villages. For the period of 1870-1916, I have translated all death records written in German. Of these, there are about 16 years (most of 1893-1910) in which the records are written in Russian only. For these, the translation of death and burial dates and the computation of birthdates has been completed. I am having some difficulty with the names of individuals in these records because of both the Cyrillic language and the poor handwriting of some of the pastors. There were over 5,300 death records written from 1870-1916. I have created a visual database of handwritten Dietel surnames and first and middle names to match against the actual Russian records which has helped tremendously. My transcriptions of Dietel death records has been forwarded to Karen Bouton, Dietel village coordinator, for inclusion into the new Dietel database which she has created. She is well into the incorporation of these death records into that database. Ive started translating Dietel marriages (1836-1904). Dietel births 1891-1896 and 1903-1911 will be translated last. Of the Kautz and Dietel records I current have, all have been scanned and indexed. It is so much easier to deal with the electronic copies than copies of the originals on paper. The Kautz group in Facebook continues to attract members. I posted a lot of Kautz material to that group in 2014. It’s located at: https://facebook/groups/425613657484126/. My activities have also involved membership on the Board of Directors for the AHSGR Oregon Chapter and publication of the Oregon Chapter Newsletter which comes out every two months. I have accepted the job of 2nd Vice President for the chapter, beginning January 2015. In June, 2014, for the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the first Volga-German villages along the Volga, including Dobrinka, I gave a couple of presentations on satellite imagery of the villages. Those included a discussion of the two mileage charts for Volga-German villages, which I completed...one for villages west of the Volga, and one for those east of the river. Michael Frank Village Coordinator for Kautz (Werschinka)
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 23:49:00 +0000