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CRIMEAN CATHOLIC RECORDS OBTAINED FROM THE RUSSIAN STATE ARCHIVES IN SARATOV - by Merv Weiss and Matt Klee, 2012

We are very excited to share this new and unique information with fellow German Crimean researchers. Although these are Catholic Church records, there were many mixed-faith marriages among the Germans in Crimea. And therefore this publication may benefit Protestant and Mennonite researchers as well. The focus of this publication is the 1852 Rosental Parish Catholic Family Listings which are preserved in Fond 1166 (Opus 1, Delo 358) of the Russian State Archives in the city of Saratov, Russia. All of the Catholic Churches of South Russia belonged to the Diocese of Tiraspol, and all of the parishes conducted a household listing of practicing Catholics in 1852. The administrative offices for the Diocese of Tiraspol however were re-located about 1855 to Saratov, and those Catholic Church Books which have survived are located in the Saratov Archives. You can read more at: http://www.blackseagr.org/church-catholic.html
Rosental was the only strictly Catholic colony in Crimea, although significant numbers of Catholics were also found in Kronental and in Zurichtal. Catholic families were scattered around other colonies like Neusatz, and even Sudak and Yalta. The Rosental Catholic Parish included most of the German Catholic colonist families of Crimea for much of the nineteenth century. The inventory of the 1852 Rosental Parish families includes 827 individuals: 456 from Rosental, 223 from Kronental, 121 from Zurichtal, and 27 from Neusatz. As you read through the family groupings in the 1852 Parish, keep in mind that the absence of a husband or wife’s name does not necessarily mean that he or she was deceased in 1852. The absence of spousal names may also indicate that the spouses were of the Lutheran faith, and thus they were not listed because they were not accepting Communion in the Catholic Church. The same can be said about any children that were raised in the Lutheran spouse’s faith.
To help bridge the gap between 1852 and the original settler families of Rosental Parish (as found in Stumpp’s chronicle), we have also obtained all of the 1840 baptism records (40 in total) registered in Rosental Parish, as well as the surviving records of all of the marriages (20 in total) which occurred in Rosental Parish for the years 1830-1840. Unfortunately, there are no marriage books for Rosental Parish for the years 1833, 1836, 1839, 1840. All of this has required negotiations with a reluctant Archives administration, and would not have been possible without the services of our facilitator, Mila Koretnikova, who lives in Rastatt, Germany.
To further assist researchers of the Catholic families of Crimea, we have contributed our individual family baptism and marriage records obtained through Saratov to this publication. These specific family records span the years 1831 to 1915. We hope that this publication aids and encourages further family research of the Crimean Germans.

I am thinking this would make a perfect Christmas gift for the Crimea researcher! Go ahead and treat yourself. All proceeds go to GRHS.

Thanks Matt. It was a pleasure working with you on this joint project. It has only been a few short years since I became aware of you as a first-rate researcher. I am as excited as you are to make this unique body of information available to researchers of the Catholic families from Crimea. The information in this publication will allow many researchers to trace their lines directly back to the 1816 census which Dr. Karl Stumpp published. As well this information meshes with, and verifies, much of Matt's previous work with the 1829 Birth-Marriage-Death records, as well as Matt's work with the Founding Families of Rosental and Kronental. Good luck to all researchers, and please remember, to share your results! Please consider submitting your databases to the Black Sea German Research database.