Sibling Saturday Part 5 - Helena Verno

This is part five about the Verno-siblings, siblings of my great-grandmother Julia Verno. This is about Helena Verno. She was born July 30, 1889 in Pskov, Russia. As with the others of the Vernosiblings I don't have much information.

She married Jan Christian Ugur. He was born October 30, 1883 in Estonia and later on moved to Pskov where they he and Helena got married on January 15 in 1918.

They had three children:

Heinrich - born Pskov (Russia) April 15, 1919
Eduard - born in Pechory (at the time Estonia, today Russia) August 25, 1920
Magdalena - born in Pechory (at the time Estonia, today Russia) November 12, 1923

Helena Verno with husband Jan Christian Ugur and thier
three children Heinrich, Eduard and Magdalena

So, when I started my family history research to me the children was known as Genja, Eddie and Magda. A couple of years ago I found relatives of Eduard at geni.com. In thier documentation Genja was known as Heinrich. I got it explained to me that since they lived in an area where Russian was the main language he was addressed Gennadi, or short, Genja, even if his given name was Heinrich.

When we went to Tallinn in Estonia in August this summer one of the genealogyrelated things I wanted to do was to visit the Pärnamäe cemetery. Heinrich and his wife Roosa was supposed to be buried there. Estonia has a really nice database for locating tombstones, http://www.kalmistud.ee/Cemetery-Portal-of-Estonia. Not only if you are lucky to find what you are looking for, there are zoomable maps where the tombstones are marked out. I had both printed out maps and screendumps of the maps in Evernote on my iPad. Pärnamäe was the second cemetery we visited and I am glad we had the maps because even with maps this tombstone was really hard to find. Walking around that cemetery there were many stones with photographs of the person/s and I was thinking that perhaps there would be a photo on Heinrich's stone as well. Now, I am happy we found the stone at all. We found the area where it should be, but no stone. Spent at least 30 minutes looking around like 50 stones. On the map you could see exact row and what number it should be but it was not there. Well, not until C decided to look inside an overgrown bush. There it was, totally invisible from the path. There were no photos on it but I was so happy we had found it.

The tombstone was hardly visible.

Heinrich Ugur 1919 - 1983 and his wife Roosa 1920 - 1994

Earlier posts of the Verno siblings:

Part 1 - Sonja Verno (Oeberg)
Part 2 - Maria Verno (Belinski)
Part 3 - Valentina Verno (Kiljar)

Part 4 - Pavel Verno

Motivation Monday - September goals

Remember the goals for August?

1. Order muster rolls for Andrew Richardson from the Wisconsin Veteran Museum. (15 minutes) 
2. Do the DNA test. (15 minutes) 
3. Finish the research from my friend 
4. Register headstones at Fleninge Cemetery at http://www.genealogi.se/gravproj/Gravsoklist.php

1: No

2: No

3: Part 1 and 2 done

4: Yes

And then it was the familyreunion the last weekend of August, had a great time meeting some relatives I had never met before.

Another thing I did this month, I got really inspired by Genea-Opportunities 2013 by Thomas MacEntee. Those posts are really worth reading.  I also got inspired by on how to use Excel for track tasks, projects and progress, a video made by Thomas MacEntee as well. I watched the video, loved the idea and built my own spreadsheet for my projects and tasks. I like using Excel and I wish I could use it more. Anyhow, I have so many things I want to do, just writing them down in my spreadsheet made them seem less overwhelming. Now I check my projectspreadsheet while having breakfast so I know what to do during the upcoming day. It might be a special email I need to write or ideas for upcoming blogposts.

Goals for September:

1. Order muster rolls for Andrew Richardson from the Wisconsin Veteran Museum. (15 minutes) 
2. Do the DNA test. (15 minutes) 
3. Write at least seven blogposts

Unknown place and unknown people

Wedding Wednesday - Unknown couple

This couple is in a photo album that has belonged to either my great grand parents Nils Anton Berlin and Hanna Persson in Farstorp or perhaps thier son-in-law. The photo is taken at Atelier Söderholm in Kristianstad so the couple probably lived somewhere in the Skåne area.

Unknown couple

Tombstone Tuesday - Two blind siblings

Last weekend I was at a two day long familyreunion in Tving in Blekinge. Day two we all went to the cemetery in Tving to look at some tombstones related to the family. We went there a bit early so I had time to add the cemetery to Billiongraves.com and upload a couple of photos. It was a very sunny day, not suitable for tombstone photography.

Anyway, I found a really special tombstone, it says: Two blind siblings, Allgot 11 year, Matilda 20 year, 1899.

2 blind siblings, Allgot 11 year, Matilda 20 years, 1899.

I decided to try to see what I could find out. Allgot or Olof Allgot that was his full name was born September 25 1887, in Tving. He died January 26 in 1899. Matilda was born February 24, 1879, in Tving. She died June 17 in 1899. They were both noted as blind in the churchbooks.

Allgot and Matilda with thier parents and siblings.
Tving  (1895-1911) page 358 

Follow Friday - Arkiv Digital - free this weekend

This weekend is a big weekend for genealogy in Sweden. It is time for the genealogy event of the year. This year it is held in Köping. Everyone will be there. Well, I am not going this year but I am sure it will be a great time.

So, if you are not going, you could try out Arkiv Digital that will be free of charge this weekend (August 24-25).  If you have Swedish ancestors and you know where they lived you could try and see if you can find them in perhaps a brithbook or a deathbook. I am a subscriber to Arkiv Digital, but I also uses the Swedish National Archives site (Svar) and at times I use Genline (records also available on ancestry.com) as well. The nice thing with Arkiv Digital is that the pictures of the book/records are in color.

They also have an iPad app which I wrote about in an other post).

So, have a look at arkivdigital.net this weekend. You would need to register and then you will have to download the software (available for Windows, Mac and Linux).

This is a screen dump from birthbook of Nättraby, Blekinge. Henrik was married to my
great grandaunt Hilma Charlotta Hansdotter. They were both deaf.

Travel Tuesday - I went to Estonia

This year much of my research focus has been on my Estonian side of the family. My grandmother was born in Tallinn. Her father, Eduard Seck, was born in Estonia and her mother, Julia Verno,  in what is today Russia. They all came to Sweden in mid 1940s. My grandmothers first husband was killed during WWII and after she came to Sweden she met my grandfather.

Coming to Sweden I think they lost contact with more distant relatives back in Estonia which became a part of Soviet Union. I need to mention I never met my grandmother (or grandfather). They had both passed away when I was born. My connection to the past has been my mom of course but Eduard died the same year as she was born and Julia when she was only five. My aunt who is five years older and also a cousin have provided me with most of the names and dates. Some I have been able to find out more about some I still don't have a clue.

When I got bitten with the genealogybug in 2007 I also had some focus on my Estonian side of the family. I discovered that some documents was only available in Russian. So, I took a Russian language class. All the time along I have also been meaning to take a class in Estonian language, every spring and fall I have signed up and everytime when the class was supposed to start I got an email that it has been canceled due to too few participants. Well, except this spring, I got an email they didnt have a teacher.

Anyway. I decided I wanted to visit Tallinn. I was in Tallinn in 1989, when it was a part of the Soviet Union. It was a project with young people from all over Scandinavia called Next Stop Sovjet. We had people coming from Soviet in the summer of 89 and then in September we travelled to Soviet. Living with local people in thier homes. First I was in Pärnu, then we went to Tallinn, back to Pärnu and then Moscow. We went by Sankt Petersburg also, well, back then it was called Leningrad.

I felt it was time for a reunion with me and Tallin. One of the first thing that crossed my mind was that is would not really be a genealoytrip. I was not going to visit any archives or do any research.  I was only going to visit two cemeteries looking for three tombstones. But I wanted to find interesting places to see and visit as well.

We were staying five nights with no time for sighseeing the same day as we were leaving. I used Evernote for my planning, a shared notebook. I put copies of the flight tickes, hotel reservastion, maps, links and specially links for genealogy in there. I also made a rough schedule for each day. Some things needed to visited a special day since it wasn't open every day, some sightseeing tours was only a certain day a week, some tours only certain times in a day if you wanted it to be in English and so on. So, I made that puzzle and it looked quite nice. Ofcourse, looking around I found some interesting places to visit. A couple of relatives were into theatre and when there, why not just walk passed that theatre and take a picture. Why not take a picture of the church where my grandmother was christened. Why not in case of time drop by the Music and theatre museum. And ofcourse, after founding on-line, one relative which I had no photo of would have a picture in the Jewish museum. He would also have a small biography in the Encyclopedia of Estonia, the 2008 edition. I was sure I could find that a the national library. I carefully typed down open hours and when I was done I had a couple of more genealogy related must-dos:

• Taking picture of: Nikolai church, Russian Theatre, Estonian Drama Theatre, Russian school.
• Museum: Jewish museum to look at a photo of my relative.
• Cemetery: Visit two cemeteries, looking for tombstones, in case of time, visiting a third one
• Library: Look into the Encyclopedia of Estonia for my relative

Besides from using Evernote to plan everything I also used Google Earth. Since I wasn't at all familiar with Tallin I felt I needed to pin out all the places on a map. That made it easier to see what places that were close to eachother and plan the days. I marked genealogy related things with one color, other places I wanted to visit with another color and I also looked up a couple of restaurants. When I was done with the map I exported it as a kmzfile, emailed it to myself so I could open it on my iPad.

My planning in Google Earth

So, success? Well, I got the pictures all right. Coming to the Jewish museum in the morning it was closed and opened two hours later. That day we had already two different tours booked but we managed to squeeze the museum in between. Cemeteries, check, all three of them. Coming to the library it was closed. That was the last day and I wanted to buy some souvenirs. So, while I did the shopping my nice boyfriend went back to the library when they had opened. When they finally found the right edition of the encyclopedia it was all in Russian and the liberians at the library at the time didn't understand Russian. So no luck at the library.

Anyhow, pictures and more posted in upcoming blogposts.

Motivation Monday - My goals for August

I knowAugust has already started but today is also the first day of a three weeks long vacation for me. I was looking at my goals for July, perhaps I should have done that more often during July as well.

1. Order muster rolls for Andrew Richardson from the Wisconsin Veteran Museum. (15 minutes) 
2. Do the DNA test. (15 minutes) 
3. Write minimum three blogposts a week. (+ research about 20 hours work). 
4. Spend at least 5 hours to organize my digital documents.
5. Register headstones at Fleninge Cemetery at http://www.genealogi.se/gravproj/Gravsoklist.php

1: No
2: No
3: Yes
4: Well, I bought a new computer so that meant I had to spent a lot of time organizing all my genealogy moving it from the old one to the new one.
5: No

I have spent most of my genealogy time this month doing research in Sweden for a friend. It has been (and is still, Im not done yet) very interesting. It is nice to look into other databases than I normally do, look into other parishes and cities that I am not all familiar with. New mysteries to solve with minimum of clues. And then putting it together in a nice format for presentation which I usually don't do with my own stuff. I want to do research but this time I have been pushed out of my comfort zone (popular expression right) and work a little more with design. I use Swift Publisher for mac (I have had it for a while) and watching their youtube-presentations on how to really use the program was a motivator by itself. Since I work at a newspaper I am familiar with the Adobe CS package but at IT you don't exactly use it at a daily basis.

Something else I found very interesting was listening at the latest episode (158) of Genealogy Gems Podcast with Lisa Louise Cooke. She talked to the producer of the American Who Do You Think You Are? show and it was cool to hear about how they put those episodes together.

So, goals for vacation and August (Pretty much July Copy - Paste)

1. Order muster rolls for Andrew Richardson from the Wisconsin Veteran Museum. (15 minutes) 
2. Do the DNA test. (15 minutes) 
3. Finish the research from my friend 
4. Register headstones at Fleninge Cemetery at http://www.genealogi.se/gravproj/Gravsoklist.php

Besides that Im invited to a family reunion that I am really looking forward to. I am also sure I will be able to come up with a couple of interesting blogposts in a couple of weeks. With vacation I hope I will have some more time to keep up with genealogy news and discover more interesting genealogy blogs.