Intention
Shortly after my mother passed away in November of 2007 her collection of family photos sparked my interest in putting together a family tree. Then in 2013 on recognizing the worldwide tree building potential of “Findagrave.com” I decided to post all of that on Find A Grave.
This presented a brand-new problem. Find A Grave had no provisions for selecting birth and/or death locations for the ancestral villages of interest to me such as; Tarutino, Kassel, Johannestal, Paris, Neu-Elft and so on! Other than the city of Odessa there was no other selection(s) listed for the province (Oblast) of Odes’ka, Ukraine. So in working with Find A Grave’s geography department I was instructed to ask for the inclusion of no more than four at a time current name locations such as; Tarutyne, Velykokomarivka, Ivanivka, Veselyi Kut, Neu-Elft and so on. Hence the birth of the cross-referencing “Germans from Russia Settlement Locations” list.
In March 2016 after learning that German-Russia ancestral village locations were not being harbored behind locked doors by various heritage organizations I decided to try my hand at greatly expanding my meager four page list of one hundred and three settlements. At that time I had no idea there were thousands of additional German settlements that extended well beyond the immediate Odessa region, the Crimean peninsula or the area known as Bessarabia. “Good thing I didn’t know then, what I know now.”
Almost immediately this became a labor of love. I was hooked . . . my household and yard chores were disrupting my time on the computer. Every day was filled with the anticipation of cross-referencing at least twenty to thirty more villages. With Sandy (Schilling) Payne doing a great job of mapping my work online in just eight months we had determined GPS coordinates for twenty-three hundred German-Russia settlements. Pretty good, if I do say so myself.
Descendants of the Germans from Russia and eastern European community were stirring with anticipation hoping that their region would be next in line. Plus special requests submitted by various individuals and the “Galizien German Descendants” (GGD) were given priority.
Over 6 years later with six hundred and eighteen pages that include over 17,750 settlement locations the “Germans from Russia and Eastern Europe Settlement Locations” list is and will continue to be a work in progress. Therefore suggestions, corrections and/or comments are welcome.
Mail: dg_bender@hotmail.com