[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] [BESS-GR] SOAR online from AHSGR now available

[Ron Neuman]

I believe that some further information is in order with respect to 
these obituary files.  There are quite a number of obituaries from 
the Edmonton Journal included here from the period of the late 1960's 
to about 1992.  I was actively involved with the Edmonton Chapter of 
the AHSGR during most of that period, and the Edmonton Chapter 
contributed extensively to the AHSGR Obituary Project.

The work for the Edmonton Chapter was done ENTIRELY by a fine lady 
named Martha Burgess (who coincidentally happens to be my second 
cousin).  Martha clipped ALL obituaries from the Edmonton Journal for 
people with German surnames, and recorded/sent them to the AHSGR 
Headquarters in Lincoln, NE.  She stopped doing it in 1992 as she was 
finding the work to be a bit too demanding for her.

Martha (Bulhofner) Burgess was born on April 18, 1906 and will be 
celebrating her 100th birthday four months from now.  She remains 
active with the Family History Center in Edmonton (LDS), and can 
still be found working at one of the research computers at the FHC at 
the Bonnie Doon LDS Church every Tuesday morning.  She works with a 
computer named "Martha" which she donated to the FHC.  Martha "fanned 
the flames" of genealogy with me in the early 1970's, and I will 
always be indebted to her for getting me started in this wonderful hobby.

Martha and I are related through our Arndt ancestors from the 
Sompolno Lutheran Parish in Poland.  Her grandmother, Karolina 
(Arndt) Ehlke (first husband)/Fielhaber (second husband) and my 
grandmother, Wilhelmina (Arndt) and her husband Wilhelm Neumann, came 
to the Edmonton area from Poland in 1901 with their families.




At 01:32 PM 1/16/2006, gpvjem wrote:
>        The following was passed to me by someone who subscribes to 
> BESS-GR Listserv.  It may be of interest to SGGEE Listserve 
> subscribers whose research takes them into these areas.
>
>John Marsch
>SGGEE.
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>From: "Michael Miller" <Michael.Miller at ndsu.edu>
>To: <BESS-GR at LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU>
>Sent: Monday, January 16, 2006 10:14 AM
>
>  16 January 2006
>
>  Subject: SOAR is on-line>
>  Researching obituaries and other records of Germans from Russia
>  is now available from your computer thanks to the SOAR (Saving Our
>  Ancestral Records) On-line Project of the American Historical 
> Society of Germans
>  from Russia International (AHSGR). The address for this new website is
>  www.ahsgrsoar.org. (There can be a delay in the updates for all domain
>  name servers (DNS) on the Internet so if the site is not available 
> today, try
>  the address later - I'm told it can take up to 48 hours for the 
> entire  Internet
>  to be updated. Cox Communications and Qwest are updated now.)
>
>  Searching SOAR via the Internet is a free resource for everyone, but fees
>  will be charged for downloading specific records or pages for the personal
>  use of the researcher. Fees for members of AHSGR are considerably less
>  than fees for non-members.
>
>  Internet technology now permits SOAR to begin providing the 
> dissemination of many of the records held by AHSGR beginning 
> with  beginning with more than 131,800 obituaries currently on file 
> at Headquarters in
>  Lincoln. Additional obituaries from the Central California Chapter 
> library in Fresno will soon be added.
>
>  The obituary database is indexed by keywords such as surnames, given names,
>  and locations of events like birth and death, plus significant 
> dates of birth, marriage, immigration and death.
>
>  Obituary records are available for persons from various German
>  Russian regions including Bessarabia, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, Poland,
>  Ukraine, Volga and Volhynia. Obituaries are from newspapers in states with
>  large German Russian populations such as Washington, Oregon, California,
>  Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska,
>  Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Wisconsin and Michigan and countries such as
>  Argentina, Brazil, Germany and Canada.
>
>  Other databases such as scrapbooks, cemetery records and
>  numerous historical records from the North Colorado Chapter library are
>  being processed for future new database releases. Items will such as the
>  AHSGR Workpapers and the first 20 years of the AHSGR Journal are
>  additional candidates for the on-line materials. New database 
> candidates are readily
>  identified and their availability is limited only by the volunteer 
> support necessary to prepare the data for use by the project.
>
>  Over the past five years or so, volunteers have spent thousands
>  of hours, planning, scanning, indexing and preparing valuable genealogical
>  resources for online use. Special appreciation goes to the coordinators of
>  the project: Marge and Bob Benson, Ken Leffler and Ron Greenwald, as well
>  as to the many dedicated volunteers across the country who have helped and
>  continue to help with indexing, translating and revising. Recognition and
>  appreciation also goes to the chapters and councils providing funding to the
>  project (California District Council and the Denver Metro, Northern
>  Colorado and Lincoln Chapters) and to the many AHSGR members for 
> their special
>  donations to SOAR.
>
>  Dennis Zitterkopf
>
>
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