The Search for Ancestors...
For over 80 years, the ancestry of the Rosenthal part of our family was unknown. We had traced the all the family except for Jahn Rosenthal, father of Alex and John Rosenthal. He died in 1929, and the first records of him that we had was a marriage certificate to Marie Fortney in 1917, in Manitoba. The marriage certificate noted that he was born in Riga, Russia. In June of 1917, he was 32 years old. His father's name is recorded as Georg Rosenthal and he is deceased in 1917. His mother's name is Louise. Her maiden name is Smelg. As far as we know he never communicated with his family in Latvia after he came to Canada. Beyond that, all we knew were a couple of stories that were handed down from Jahn Rosenthal to his wife and then down to his children after his death. Most of these stories were quite short, not much more than anecdotes.
The Stories...
1. Jahn Rosenthal was from Latvia. He left home at 15. He filled up his coat with apples and walked into town, where he secured a position on a ship.
2. Jahn Rosenthal was quite strong. He could do a chin up with one hand.
3. Jahn Rosenthal was known among his peers as being a master with a broad axe.
4. Jahn Rosenthal was a very good blacksmith.
5. Jahn Rosenthal had two uncles that died while they were fishing in winter, in Latvia. When the bodies were recovered, they were taken to Jahn Rosenthal's father's house. The bodies were frozen stiff.
6. Jahn Rosenthal had either a twin or a brother that he was very close to. This brother died in France at some point.
7. There was some confusion between Jahn Rosenthal and his wife with the recording of the name of Alexander Martin Rosenthal, their first born. She recorded the second name as Martin, and he wanted the second name to be that of his “twin” or “close” brother. As to what that name was, nobody knew.
8. Jahn Rosenthal never met anyone in Canada that spoke his language.
9. Jahn Rosenthal was adamant that he was not German.
10. At some point Jahn Rosenthal was aboard a ship that sank at sea. He spent three days drifting around on a timber with a friend of his before he was rescued.
With this in mind we began the search. The standard genealogy sites were searched, and all came up negative. We had contacted the Latvian Archives, but were told that unless we knew which parish he was from, there was nothing that they could do to help us. We did find a website. www.lvva-raduraksti.lv that had scanned into the computer, all the church records (births, deaths, and marriages) from Latvia from the 1830's to the 20th century. We thought we had found a gold mine until we realized that there were over a million pages scanned. Each page held up to 40 individual records. The records were mostly hand written in German, so there was no way to do a search without examining each and every record. We decided to scan every parish in the country for 1885 to see if we could find his birth record. Three of us worked for three months to complete the scan but we still had not found the right birth record. We did learn:
1. His mother's name was not likely Smelg, but rather Smilga, or Smilge. The name Smelg never showed up. Smilga and Smilge showed up frequently. A bit of research revealed that a smilge in Latvian means the tuft of seeds on a grass stalk. Considering the Smelg name was relayed via a Latvian with a heavy accent, to a French Canadian wife, to a priest in the Catholic church, the misspelling is no big deal.
2. His mother's first name was likely Lihse, not Louise. While scanning the records, we did find the occasional Louise Rosenthal, but Lihse was far more common. Again, the transfer of information from heavy Latvian accent, to French Canadian wife, to priest would account for that.
3. His fathers name could have been Georg or Geert or Girt. We ran into all combinations of letters with that spelling. Again, the transfer of information from heavy Latvian accent, to French Canadian wife, to priest would account for that.
4. Jahn Rosenthal was Lutheran.
5. Jahn Rosenthal was a news hound. He always paid attention to world events.
6. The closest find that we had was a Girt Rosenthal with a wife by the name of Lihse, having a male child Jan 10, 1885 that they named Jahn. There were also two Rosenthal men that died within days of each other in 1887. We could not decipher the way they died, but could it be the two uncles that died fishing? We thought we had it until we traced it back and found out that the maiden name of this Lihse Rosenthal was Buvkoge. To add irony to the situation, one of the god parents was a Smilga. As the maiden name was so far off, we had to disqualify this find.
As we scanned the records, we kept a data base of all the “finds” of Rosenthal's, Smilge's and Smilga's. We had accumulated almost 1000 potential relatives. Many times we would find a Georg Rosenthal, but we could not link him to a Lihse nor a Louise. And vice versa. When we found a lot of Rosenthal's and Smilga's, we would move back in time in the records to see if we could find something that linked it together. Still we had no match. We then started to scan 1884 records, on the chance that he was born in 1884 rather than 1885. By this time, I was already in Latvia. I had hoped that by November we would have been able to identify the parish he was from. I started in western Latvia.
Liepaja, Latvia
My first stop in the quest for ancestors has been Liepaja, Latvia. A city of about 80,000 people today. It boasts a long history as a port and fishing town going back as far as 1292. It has been severely damaged by German bombs dropped from dirigibles in WW I, and had troops move through and back many many times. The population has been eradicated several times over the course of history, most notably, the Germans and then the Russians..In Latvia it is known as “the city where the wind is born”. Damn it is windy every day here. Not to mention cold.. It may be beautiful in summer but in late fall, not so nice.....
From the point of view of ancestry quest, it is of note, because a Louise Rosenthal shows up as Godparent to many children in 1884-1886. It appears she was a busy body for those years! At least popular in her social circle. Louise is not a common Latvian name, hence the interest. So far, (Nov 12, 2010) no other records of her, nor Georg, nor Jahn Rosenthal have surfaced.
This location also fits in with some of the folklore stories that we are trying to piece together.. Jahn Rosenthal's uncles were fisherman. Apparently two of them died fishing and their stiff frozen bodies were returned to Jahn's parents place after they were found. This is a story that was passed down from Jahn, to Alex Sr, to us. Whether it happened while Jahn was living with his parents or before he was born is unknown. No record of 2 Rosenthals or Smelg (Smelga or Smelge) brothers has been found yet. Liepaja had a population of 29,000 in 1881, and considering it is one of the few ports in Latvia, it would be fair to assume that it had an active fishing fleet on the Baltic Sea. So that story fits.
Alex Rosenthal Sr tells a story of how Jahn Rosenthal was known with his workmates in Canada for being extremely proficient with a broad axe. There are a lot of old log homes here built with timbers and logs that have been built with logs that have been squared with a broad axe.. And very well done at that. It is possible that he learned his skills with a broad axe as a youth. The area south of town is mostly forested, and there was a timber industry here.. So that kind of fits.
The records that we have found that depict Rosenthal's are the Latvian records of St Anne church.
St Anne Church originally on the north side of the river was relocated to the south side (old town) of Liepaja. Originally a church for both Latvians and Germans, when St Trnitatis was built, most of the German congregation moved there and St Annes remained predominantly Latvian. Today, there are no records at the church. There are only the records on the web to go by. The older graveyards are located on the north side of the river just a half a kilometer from the bridge.. A morning of tromping around the gravestones revealed nothing. The first graveyard is very poorly maintained. I found graves where people were buried as early as 1849. Others as recent as 2007. Some graves have tombstones with writing and dates on them, but most do not. Most are unmarked, or marked by a little granite pillar with no writing on them. Many of the marked tombstones were granite markers with bronze plaques on them. At some point in time, grave robbers have gone in and pried the bronze markers off, obviously to turn them in for scrap metal value. Sad to say the least. Out of perhaps 500 graves that I looked at, there were only 25 that had identification on the grave. There is not official record of who is buried where.. The local municipal government is working at trying to get that together, but they have scant information to work with. I walked to the second graveyard and found it to be in a poorer state of repair than the first.. After a morning of tromping through knee high weeds, in driving rain, I decided to call it quits. All in all, I think the graveyards here are a dead end. I shall return to birth, marriage and death records...
I tried the route of looking in a phone book for Rosenthals. I made a couple of calls, but as I did not speak Latvian, and most Latvians do not speak English, this led to a dead end. Every time I met someone in Latvia, and could communicate my quest, I would ask them if they knew any Rosenthals.. Again all dead ends. We continued scanning the records of the whole country for 1884. All in all, we probably scanned 10,000 pages of chicken scratch miniature writing by the priests. Most of the records were barely legible. I think that Alex and I each averaged at least 4 hours a day (sometimes 6) scanning these records. We were getting frustrated.
When I was in Riga I decided to go down to the Archives to see if they could help in any way.
So begins the Latvian Archives adventure...
Nov 30, 2010
I found my way down to Latvian Archives on Slokas Iela in Riga. Kind of a dilapidated building... One would never guess from the signage etc, what was inside. Typical old country bureaucracy, one reports to the reception desk, and is ushered into a little room where one fills out an application to use the reading room. Not a lot in the applications.. Name, purpose of research etc... The secretary then take the application and me to another room and she hands it to an archivist.. The first archivist does not speak English, so I strike out.. She hands the application to the second archivist who tries to speak to me in German... Strike two... She hands the application to the third archivist who does speak moderate English.
She sits down with me and asks what I am looking for. I explain that I am on a quest for finding records of my ancestors. She asks what I have for information, I tell her not much. I showed her a copy of the marriage certificate to Marie Fortney, where it is stated that he was from Riga, Russia. She looks at it, hims and haws for a few minutes and suggests raduraksti. She also suggests that his name would have been Jahnis or Jannis, not Jahn or John. I explain to here that we have been there and show her the negative results so far. She says to wait, and goes to her computer and looks the name up. She comes back with information that there was a passport issued to a Jahnis Rosenthal that was born in 1884, and another for a Jahnis Rosenthal in 1881. I ask if I can look at them, and she explains that she will order them in and they will be here tomorrow (Dec 1). We talk a bit more and she suggests that I go over to the Riga History and Navigation Museum as they may have some records over there. She gives me the name of Miklaus Iaiger to contact. I ask her if she has a map of Latvia, showing the parishes. She says she does not have one, and does not know if there is one. I stumble on that one. She said she would order up a list of sailors that went to school for navigation in Riga in that time frame and bids me farewell.
Next morning, I am there when the museum opens at 11:00. I ask for Miklaus, and they phone him up. A few minutes later, he comes down to the lobby and he does speak some English. A good natured fellow in his late 50's. He takes me up to his office and we chat for a while about what I am looking for. He says he has records of Captains and Officers, but as we chat, he doubts very much that Jahn would have been an officer. He explains that any Russian ships (Latvian ships) would have had to file crew registers when they were in port. Those registers, he said, were over at the Archives. He wrote down “187 fonds” (whatever that means) on a piece of paper and told me to take that to the Archives. He then toured me around the museum exhibitions of scale models of sailing ships, steam ships and various related artifacts. A full trip to the museum is recommended.
On the wall of the lobby of the museum is the first panoramic drawing of Riga on record. Surprisingly, the drawing depicts over 20 ships in port. This was a busy little place, way back then....Now back to the Archives.
Ok, so I made a mistake.. The archives do not open until 1:00 PM.. So what if I am an hour early...Finally they open. The archivist and I talk for a bit.. She sits me down at a table and computer and brings out three passports. Each passport is the original, complete with initial application papers all stored neatly in envelopes. I open each of them. The passport holders were all born in the right years, but unfortunately they were all issued after the Republic of Latvia was formed in 1919. Considering that Jahn was married in Canada in 1917 and he died in 1929, the passports were a strike out...
Next she brings me a catalogue of data files that they have. They are all written in Latvian, so it is difficult to understand what is in them. I figure out how to read the years that the data covers, and order them up. From what I gather, they are the crew lists for the time frame 1895-1907. Apparently Russian ships (Latvian) from that time frame were the only ships that had to file crew lists. Ships flying a different flag were not required to file a crew list. Passenger lists are not available. I am informed that it is going to take at least a week to dig those files out of the archives.. Hmmm sounds like my trip to St Petersburg and then back to the archives. She also hands me a list of other people who have done searches and been successful at finding relatives. Mostly it is people who were trying to establish ownership of land which was confiscated by the Russians in 1941, so they details of their ancestry does not go to previous to 1919. Strike two! We sit and talk a bit about a map of parishes in Latvia.. She insists there is no such thing. All church records are stored at the archives and she seems to know her stuff. I am insistent that there must be a map, so she brings out the catalogue of maps for me to go through.. Yikes! Ten big books, each with 200 pages, and each page with 50 different maps listed.. I start to go through them, even though the lists are in Latvian.... Every kind of map imaginable from the first time they started making maps in the 1300's. After an hour or so of walking through the lists, it dawns on me that I would probably not recognize the title of a parish (draudze) map even if I saw it.. Strike three!.... I finally give up and talk to her again.. This time she pulls out a little map book from under her desk. It is a contemporary map showing all the highways etc in Latvia today. The one big benefit is that it also shows churches. So I sit down with my magnifying glass and work through the map, trying to identify churches, the town that they are in and then go to the computer and try to establish the parish name.. I guess there was some benefit to that, as I found a couple of parishes that were on or close to the coast, that we had not scanned fully...... I left with the confirmation that the archives would be there Dec 13....
Day 1 at the Archives. It was an interesting day.. Looking through records, looking for a Latvian. Some records were written in Russian, some in German, on Russian forms, by an German.. Hmmmm Do you think much gets lost in translation? I think I am on the right track. But I think it will only count if he served on a Russian ship. The crew lists for ships of other countries will be in the country whose flag, the ship flew. From the sounds of it, there is about a 50/50 chance that he signed up on a Russian ship, at least at the beginning. There is a series of books of payroll for the sailors. That is interesting, where the time worked is logged, the amount of money owed, the amount of money advanced, and the balance owing. Many sailors left their ship with just pennies (kopecs) in their pockets. Others left with considerable sums. A lot of blank entries too.. Where seamen signed on, and either were lost at sea, or jumped ship in a foreign port, and never got paid... I have to study my Russian alphabet tonight, so that I am better at recognizing Rosenthal, when it is written in the Cyrillic alphabet.. Even in Russian, the name does jump out at you. The good news is that the writing is much better than the monks with their crayons that we are used to at raduraksti. I can pick out Rosen, but cannot tell when it is written in cursive, if it is Rosenberg, Rosenstein, or Rosenthal. They payroll books are good because they had to sign for their receipt of wages. I am guessing it will take a week to go through the documents that they have dug up. I do have a copy of his signature with me for comparison. The question is, what years should I be looking at. The stack of records, is about 3 feet high, and the books are the size of a small coffee table. I asked them to dig out 1895-1910. I am thinking about doing 1900-1905 first...
Day 2 at the archives may have been a little more productive than Day 1. There are two sets of records.. The Russians love bureaucracy....I have Johann Rosenthal showing up in 1900 in the payroll book. And a Johan Rosenthal showing up in the other "Crew Only" list in 1903. He has had a pay raise, and is now listed as a "sailor". We also have the names of the ships that he served on. We know nothing about them yet. And apparently he comes from Puze, or that could be Puce, or Puces. That is the good news. The Russians would normally keep the records as "Johann Georgovitch Rosenthal" Which would mean Johann, son of Georg Rosenthal. His records show Johann Trihne Rosenthal which means this guy was probably born out of wedlock and his mother's name is Trihne....
I am beginning to get the feeling that this guy was a bit of a slippery fellow. 1905, in Latvia, (about the time he left) was not a good time. The Latvians were getting the short end of the stick from the Russians. Latvian Nationalism was starting to show up a little bit, and several peaceful demonstrations were staged. The Russians took a very dim view of this and sent in their commando forces and executed anyone that had anything to do with the demonstrations or even were just accused of having anything to do with them. Immediately following this counter attack by the Russians, huge numbers of Latvians left the country for America. It may be coincidental that Jahn Rosenthal also left at the same time. My guess at this time, is that he was somehow involved or could be implicated, and so he left the country to "lay low" for a while. It might also explain why he did ten years in Canada and there is nor record of him with any of the authorities. Dad said he was an avid news hound... That kind of tells us that he was probably somewhat politically astute at the time..
I will dig further on the records tomorrow, to see if I can get any more details, and tonight, at raduraksti.com, I will dig around Puces.
I think I will ask again for the original passports that they dug up for me when I first went to the archives. One of the passport holders did look somewhat like him and was born in 1885. I just wonder if that passport holder disappeared for a 25 year interval 1905-1930? Ah.. the plot thickens...
Day 3 at the Archives
More dusty books and records...I have pretty well written off the Jan Rosenthal from Puces that I found. Nothing about him is fitting the picture nor the stories. The good news is that there is another one. I think we may have a couple of pieces of the puzzle falling into place. Nothing definitive yet... I have a Jans Rosenthal, father's name Geert, showing up in May 1900, as a cook.. It looks like he was on that boat for 2 years. He then signed on to another boat as a sailor in January, 1902. He only served on that boat for three months and then he deserted ship. No details on that. I am guessing that a position aboard any ship would be better than a position aboard a Russian ship! The piece that pulls it all together is that he is from Nogales, which appears to be about 10 miles form Nurmuiza. The time frame fits. This also fits in with our original find there, except for the maiden name of his mother. It is sure adding fuel to that fire..... The archivist said she would dig out any info that she has in that parish. I have my fingers crossed. I ordered up a copy of that record.
Day 4 at the Archives
Today was a good day at the archives... Some plus, some minus. The bottom line, is I think we found our boy. Lets start with the minus side.. The two Rosenthals that died close together.. They did not drown... Johann Rosenthal died of cramps, whatever that is. Willie Rosenthal died of bone something (Broken bones?). So those were not the uncles that were brought back to Geert Rosenthal's place after drowning while fishing. We may have to move into the Russian records to find them. Now for the plus side.
Starting with the birth record. It shows Geert Rosenthal as a farm hand. This could mean that he was renting land off the manor, or he was literally a farm hand for someone who was renting land, or that he was a farmhand for the manor itself (Nogales Pils). The record shows that he was from the farm named Sluka, or something like that. Tomorrow will tell as we dig into the civil records.
Jahn Rosenthal put Nogales down as his home town in all his sailing records. Yet our birth records have him being born in Nurnhusen (Nurmuizas), ten miles away. It turns out that Nurmuizas Manor and Nagoles Manor were both owned by the same German family. So moving from one manor to another would not be a big deal whatsoever. Had the manors not been related, it would have proven to be more of an obstacle.
Jahn Rosenthal sailing career started on a ship called Dzimtene. She was built in 1899 in a town called Kaltene, Latvia. This is only about 15 km from Nogales. Coincidentally, Kaltene was also a sub manor of Nogales Manor. So the story of putting some apples in his jacket and walking to town is not far fetched. Although he signed on to the 8 man crew as cook, he also signed on with another boy/man from Nogales who signed on as sailor. His name was Indrikis Krish Reinberg. It is entirely feasible that Indrikis was in Nogales enroute to sail Dziteme on her maiden voyage. He likely ran into Jahn Rosenthal who tagged along and snagged a job as cook. I would guess that from the size of Kaltene, that they were always hard pressed to find crew to sail the ships they built, off to their owners. He signed on May 13, 1900. Our boy would have just turned 15. Not to mention it would have been quite a nice season for the walk to the coast with spring in the air. The ship was based in Riga, with a Latvian crew. She was a small freighter. Two masts, gaff rigged, about 200 tons, she sailed the Baltic to St. Petersburg, Lipsberg, Copenhagen, Narmouth, and even Plymouth England while he was on board. The ship eventually grounded and sank off Roja in 1906.
Long before the Dziteme sank though, in January of 1902, Jahn parted company in good standing with the ship. He signed on to another Russian (Latvian) ship while he was in Klapeida, Lithuania. This was the Marcus. It also had a Latvian captain and crew. The Marcus was also built in the same boat yard as the Dziteme. The Marcus was a bigger boat. Three masted and about 300 tons. Coincidentaly though, , another young Latvian signed on the day after Jahn Rosenthal did. His name was Alexander Rosenstern. Alexander was from Libagi, approximately 30 km from Nogales. They may not have known each other before they signed onto the Marcus, but they both deserted ship the same day, in Blyth, England. I would hazard a guess that this was the man that Dad mentions Jahn Rosenthal as being almost a twin. In fact, I would hazard another guess that Dad was named after Alexander. They served aboard for four months after signing on at virtually the same time. As they were both rookies aboard the ship, and both from the same area, probably close to the same age, that they struck up a strong friendship. For a Latvian speaking sailor to jump ship in Blyth by himself, would have been a very brave move. For two Latvian speaking sailors to jump ship in Blyth and go on a foreign vessel, sounds to me like two young men looking for adventure. The search down this avenue will have to continue in Blyth. We have the day they jumped ship. Blyth had a significant ship building industry. Latvia produced much high quality timber used in ship building. It is likely that they took a load of timber to Blyth, and there they found another ship that was just being launched that was looking for crew for the maiden voyage. We should have enough information to go into the records there and find out what ship they jumped to. Miklaus, at the Navigation museum, here in Riga, figured it was most definitely because the foreign ships were paying considerably more money. So that puts our boy in England, which makes Canada just that much closer.
The story of Jahn Rosenthal's good buddy who was almost a twin had me stumped. If he was a childhood friend, and if Jahn never returned home after he went to sea, how did Jahn know that his “twin” died in France? Could it be that on one of their ports of call in France, Alexander got himself into a bit of trouble and met his demise? If that was the case, I would surmise a guess that it was about that time that Jahn Rosenthal decided to come to Canada.
Port records are incredibly detailed. We should be able to follow him and his exploits on the sea to the point where he arrived in Canada. We may be able to tackle that on the internet, who knows? Without a doubt, the next place to look would be Blyth harbour authorities and archives.
We still have nothing that seals the deal 100%. There is no conjecture in the facts about the sailing career so far on Jahn. And I do not think there is any doubt this Jahn's father's name was Geert and his mother was Lihse.. The translation of the first names to Grandma's French then to English, and then to the Pastor do not raise a lot of heckle with me. The big fly in the ointment is Lihse's maiden name. By the way, the name “Buvekoge” in Latvian means “good hewn wood” or “well milled wood”. “koke” or “koge” means tree or wood. Back to the story. From the parish records we have not seen any Buvekoge names show up. Not as god parents, marriages, nor deaths. I suspect that young Jahn did not have a lot of Buvekoge relatives around. Judging from the number of Smilges in the area, and that his god parent was a Smilge, I suspect he did have a lot of Smilge relatives. I would not be surprised at all if we go back in the records that some Smilga married a Buvekoke. So for a 32 year old man to remember his mother's maiden name when he has not been home for close to 20 years to remember an obscure relative name is not unreasonable. Nor is it unreasonable for him to assume it is Smilga, as they seemed to be everywhere in his life.
I would hope that in the Blyth records, we find something that has his signature on it. I would consider that to the final nail in the coffin.
By the same token, we should be able to expect to find records in Canada from the Port Authorities or archives concerning men that went missing from a ship while in Canada. I think we should be able to track our boy, via ship records, to our shores, unless the story of him being shipwrecked and floating on a log for three days gives us a stumbling block that we cannot get over. The key will be to try to narrow down the time frame and the ports of call of the ships that he served on.
I ordered up the government records for Nogale. They should be at the archives tomorrow. I will go through them and see if we can figure out which farm he was from. The birth records show him from Skulte farm. But exactly where that is, nobody seems to know. Nogale Manor would have had many farms. Some would have been rented out to Latvian farmers, some would have been farmed by the Manor.
I am going to head up to Nogales and Nurmuiza on Saturday morning. There is a guest house about a kilometer from Nurmuiza. Both Manor's are in private hands these days. Nogale Manor is closed completely to the public, and apparently the owners are assholes. I should be able to get permission to get into Nurmuiza Manor. Considering that is where our Jahn Rosenthal was born, I will get in and shoot off a couple of thousand pics for Dad.. Transportation may be an issue. I do not have an international drivers licence. I will have to figure out how to move around when I get there. In rural Latvia, I am not going to run into many English speaking people. I don't have a lot of time left. I have to be in Warsaw, next Friday. So I think that is the best way to cover the ground up there this weekend. With any luck, I should also be able to come up with a Rosenthal relative.
I did order up copies of the documents, but they are going to be little more than photocopies. I also took pictures of the documents in various light conditions. I don't have a tripod and proper lighting with me, but I did the best I could. They are quite readable, but they are huge files. I am reluctant to reduce them as they have to be enlarged to read the details.
Although I really do think this is our man, I think we should change tactics and have a two prong approach. One would be to continue looking through the coastal parishes until we have something solid. The other approach would be to follow through with the sea records of this Jahn Rosenthal. I think it will do Dad a world of good to know that some sort of contact has been made on this side.
Houston: We have lift off...
Well, I think I nailed it today. We have our man. I think somebody should pour a drink.
It turns out that the Civil Records are in conflict with the Parish Records. In the civil records, Geert Rosenthal married Lihse Smilge, not Lihse Buvekoke. I think that should about seal the deal here.. How many Latvians, by the name of Jahn Rosenthal were born in 1885, to Geert (Georg) and Lihse (Louise) Rosenthal, borther's name of Martin, best friend at sea by the name of Alexander, that left home at 15 and went to sea, last seen in England, working on a foreign ship? The odds against finding another one are pretty damn slim.
Now for the details. The real birth dates, I have recorded separately from the details below.
The Nogale Civil Parish List for 1870 shows Gottfried Rosenthal, age 45, married to Anne Marie Rosenthal also age 45. They had seven sons, Anson, Geert, Ans, Fritz, Kristjahn, Fridde, and Jan. There is a bit of confusion with Anson. It shows his father as Gottfried, but his age as 37. That would make Gottfried only 7 when he had him. I suspect Anson is Gottfried's brother. Anson moved to Riga in 1870. So that leaves 6 sons for Gottfried. There is a record of Fritz's death in 1916.
Geert Rosenthal marries Lihse Smilge who was born in 1849. Her parents were Jane and Anne Smilge. They have four children, Fritz, Jahn, Martin, and Anne. The interesting thing is that the Latvians, typical of them adding letters to the end of a root name, pronounce Martin as “Martinsh”. He is only 1 1/2 years younger than Jahn. That fits with the confusion about Dad's middle name being Martin and he was upset when Dad's birth was registered because Grandma got the name wrong. He would have wanted the name to be spelled so it was pronounced Martinsh. This is the brother that Jahn would have considered his “Twin” and must have been the one that died in France. We are going to have dig through the Russian Civil records and the parish records to find that one out. Surprisingly, the Russian records from 1910 forward are not very complete. And if the body was never returned home, then I doubt it would be in the parish records. So our father, Alexander Martin Rosenthal Sr. would have been named after Jahn's sailing buddy, Alexander, and his second name would have from Jahn's younger brother, Martin, who died in France.
It will be possible to go further back in the records than this, although the strategy changes a bit. Before the 1830's most Latvians did not have surnames. They had family numbers. During the transition from numbers to surnames, the Rosenthals were family #60. Before that, they were family # 3.
I also found some records of a Buvekoke family. The spelling is a little different than before, but the archivist assures me that typical of Latvians, the spelling of the last name is just not a big deal. She re-emphasised to me that it is a phonetic language, not a hard and fast language like English. There is a daughter Lihse in that family, born in 1849. She would have been just about the same age as Lihse Smilge. I suspect it is the parish priest who made the mistake.
I also found civil registry records from 1918, that show residents in the area when the Latvian republic first started. Not much.. Anna Smilga, age 61. Anna Smilga age 76. Jahn Smilga age 72, Kristaus Rosenthal age 66. I am not hopeful of finding relatives.
So there you have it. Most of the family tree...And now to pursue further back on raduraksti, and to find the missing links from Blyth England to Canada.....I am off tomorrow to Lauciene (Nurmuiza Manor)
Journey home....
Thus begins the final leg of tracking down our roots. The journey to Nogales, birthplace of my grandfather. Apparently, Nogales is nothing more than the manor house these days. No village, no town, no services. A couple of miles off the highway, surrounded by a couple of farms. Lauciene is the closest village. I have made arrangements for a room at a guest house about a kilometer from Nurmuiza. They have made arrangements to have a driver and car meet me at Lauciene bus stop, and to drive me out to Nogales. I hope they speak a bit of English. The plan is to arrive there today, check into the guest house, and then head over to Nogales. The day starts off crisp and cold with a bit of ice fog and snow. I am running through my mind, the things I want to do today. Are any of the old farm buildings around? Does the manor house have any records from back then? Pictures perhaps? Where is the church? Where is the graveyard? Are there any individuals still living in the area that carry the name Smilga or Rosenthal? Do they recognize the name of the farm that my relatives lived? Throw in a little anxiousness about the day, and there is no way that I can sleep on the bus.
I believe the name of the farm is Kristmatfoh. I hope it means something to the locals. Apparently mailing addresses here and legal addresses still use the name of the farm No street number and name, just the name of the farm and the civil parish.
The adventure continues. The arrangements for my accommodation were made online from Riga. As arrangements were also made for a ride to pick me up at the bus stop, so I did not really pay a whole lot of attention as to where I would be staying... The places that we went through on the way here, do show up as a "town" on the map, but in reality are nothing more than a little unheated shelter and a sign, calling it a bus stop. The town or village is typically a kilometer or two off the highway. So when I saw the Lauciene sign (where I was supposed to get off), I got off. Nobody here... Hmmm -10 C and a 20km wind. Not a nice day and me in the middle of nowhere.. I noticed a cluster of buildings over the hill and down the road, so off I hike... It turns out that this is there is actually a small village.. Damn. I got off at the wrong stop.. What a dink! By the time I get there, obviously my ride was gone. What to do now? I do not have the phone number of the guest house. There is a small cafe, but it is closed until 12:00. It is only 10:00 now, so I will be damn cold if I hang around outside for two hours. I walk around and find a small small little drugstore that is open. I try to explain to the lady behind the counter what my situation is, but we cannot communicate.. She speaks zero English.. and me, well, zero Latvian.. She picks up her cell phone and calls a friend that speaks English. When she passes the phone to me, I explain to him and it goes back and forth a few times. She does not recognize the name of the guest house. She says she likely knows the people, but not the name of the guest house. Eventually we get it across that if I can get on the internet, I can get in touch with the guesthouse and re organize a ride out there. They allow me to log into my email from their computer and I fire off an email. While we are waiting for a response, I ask about Rosenthal or Smilge. With a bit of sign language, they get the idea that I am looking for either name. They jabber back and forth for a bit, then she gets on the phone to her English speaking friend again, who interprets. Aha.. The owner of the cafe is a Rosenthal. She makes a couple of more phone calls and makes me a cup of coffee.. She chatters with a couple of customers that come in about Rosenthal and Smilge. I can pick that out of the conversations. Within minutes she gets a phone call from somebody else asking if I know a Karhlis somebody... a Latvian living in Canada... Word travels fast in a small town... Next she gets a phone call from the owner of the restaurant who tells her that he will send over one of his waitresses to pick me up and take me back to the restaurant to wait for him. As it is a small village and the drugstore is only 200 feet from the restaurant, the waitress arrives shortly and takes me over to the restaurant. So here I sit, cup of coffee in hand, sitting in front of a real wood burning fireplace, chatting with the waitress between customers.. waiting for the owner to show up. The waitress and her husband worked for two years in Gurnsey, so her English is not bad at all.... that is my day so far..
So everything always happens at the same time. The woman from the guest house arrives at the same time as the owner of the cafe. Neither one speaks English.. The owner of the restaurant does speak German. I know a few German words, so between us we communicate enough that we find out his father's name was Ernst, and he has passed away. His grandfather was Kahrles. I open the records, but do not find any Kahrles in the family of Geert... It looks as if we are not related. Onward and upward. So the woman and I disappear out to her van. She drives like a maniac straight out of town. The kilometer from town stretches into two or three before she turns off the road into what appears to be a small lumber mill. I raise my eyebrows at this one... She drives right through the lumberyard, to a building out back. It appears to be a guest house. When she lets me in, I see it is huge. It has a full kitchen, five bedrooms all sleeping at least six people, two huge washrooms and a huge common area. All built of logs, it is quite cozy actually... Well it would be cozier if I was not the only person here. One of the yard workers comes in and they converse in Latvian for a bit. He speaks reasonable English so he explains to me that she has organized a ride to Nogales for me at 2:00, an hour and a half from now. There is a clock in the kitchen and a clock at the bottom of the stairs. Neither one of them is showing the correct time, nor are the minute hands moving.. I know I have been carrying around a couple of spare batteries for my mouse. I think I will donate one to the cause so I know what time it is.. So until then, I have this huge ranch house to myself... They must heat it all winter as it does not have the feel to it, that it was just warmed up. Considering it is sub zero outside and there are water pipes in side, that makes sense to me. I think I will jump out at the cafe on the way back from Nogales, and have dinner there.
First sensation of the area, is that it is very quaint. Most of the buildings in town appear to be from the 20th century. There is a church, that might be older. There are a few old mortar and stone barns around looking like they are in a reasonable state of repair. A couple of skeletons of buildings that were of the same masonry/stone construction, that I would assume was the farm house of the time.
Considering it will be dark by 5:00, I suspect I will have a long evening totally to myself here.
1:30 rolls around and she shows up and we try to chat. I do manage to learn she has a son and daughter. One is living in England, the other in Norway. Latvian economy is very bad. Her husband shows up and apparently he is the one taking me for the drive, so off we go. He asks me before we leave if I would like to have a Russian sauna tonight. I agree, why not? His English is better than hers and we do manage to communicate a bit as we drive out to Nogales. Just before we get to Nogales, we pass a very very old church. It has been closed up as there is not even a trail in the snow up to it. Beside it, a big grave yard. I stop take some photos of the church and graveyard. I do trudge around the graveyard a bit, but with so much snow it is difficult to walk around. There are obviously some more modern graves there with upright granite tombstones. But there are many more that are just concrete type conical markers of graves. If this is a family graveyard, this will be a summertime project to try to identify any of our relatives.
Latvian country roads are not like Canadian country roads that are laid out on a square grid. They twist and turn constantly. So after only getting lost once, we finally arrive at Nogales Manor. The manor itself is huge, with many out buildings in various stages of disrepair. I get out and snap photos. There seems to be a bit of a small cluster of houses just to the south of the manor. I would guess it is where the manor servants and farm hands lived. Most of the buildings in the village appear to be 20th century, but scattered amongst them are remnants of older houses and what appear to be barns. Nogales manor is privately owned. It has a huge fence around it, with a locked gate, and it didn't appear that anyone had been there since the last snows. We did not try to get into the manor, and eventually drove back to Lauciene. When we got to Lauciene, I told him that I was going to walk around town a bit, and walk out to Nurmuiza Manor. That I would walk back to the guest house later in the early evening. It was about a 15 minute walk out to the manor. I shot a few pics of Nurmuiza church as I walked past it. The manor itself was all locked up and gated, so I shot a few pics around it. I was getting a bit cold and it was starting to get dark, so I figured, I would walk back to the cafe, have dinner, and then walk back out to the guest house afterwards.. Just as I was turning the last corner to the cafe, a little van was sitting at the stop sign with two men in it. They were pointing at me, and as I went to walk around the van, they honked the horn and waved at me. My first gut reactions is “uh oh, this is not good”. Some genetic mechanism fired in my brain that said DANGER. The fellow in the passenger seat rolls down his window. My gut wrenches at the thought of possibly having to deal with a couple of bad assed locals. I hear the driver asking me if I am the person looking for relatives. Ok, so they have already heard about me... I say yes, and he says “Get in”. I think about it for a few seconds and figure if word travels that fast in a small town, that there might be a chance that this is genuine. I throw all caution to the wind and climb in. We talk for a minute or two and apparently they do have a genuine interest. The older fellow suggests we go over to his place to talk. Again the genetic mechanism fires. DANGER Hmmm what to do... I quickly analyze that there has not been any overt warning signs, so I agree, but I tell myself that at the first sign of anything untoward, I grab my day pack and bolt. We drive a couple of blocks and park. They usher me into a small apartment building and then into a small apartment. Their English is better than the people at the guest house so we slowly start figuring out what I am looking for. And to be perfectly honest, I do not know exactly what I am looking for. I am now comfortable about the situation with them. They pour me a cup of coffee and the conversation continues until the younger one (Ardis) tells me that his great grandmother was Anne Rosenthal born in Nogale parish. Well that gets things rolling and we sit down and try to figure out if there is an Anne Rosenthal in the research I had done. They both get excited when I open the files of Russian hand writing. It is great entertainment to have both of them sitting there arguing with each other, about what is written. They pull out paper and pen and both sound out the letters, trying to figure out names. After an hour of digging around we decide that we will have to do more research to figure that one out. The older gentleman (Arvis) wants to drive me around tomorrow to a couple of museums and he says he can get me into the church at 1:00 to look at records that they have there. That sounds like a plan to me. We talk of their families, my family etc, and it is getting on to 6:30, so I suggest that we go over to the cafe, and I will buy them dinner. So off we go.
When we get to the cafe, they tell me Aldis has to be somewhere, and that the Arvis will take him there, but he will be back in a half an hour. I insist they should come in for dinner, but they are rigid. Ok, I will go in, have a beer and wait. The waitress at the cafe greets me, and asks me how it is going.. I explain to her how the day went and that Aldis may possibly be a relative. I sit down order a beer and digest a bit of the afternoon. There are four tables with people at them. I noted this as most restaurants in Latvia to date are empty. Often if I have a meal, I am the only person there. This waitress does everything. She cooks the meals, serves the meals, does the dishes. She has everything rolling so that she opens the doors at noon, works until 9:00, closes up and then rides the bus back to Talsi. In Canada, it would take three people do to that. She never missed a beat as the restaurant filled up. Eventually Arvis returns. I ask if he wants a beer or coffee or to look at the menu... He says no.. I insist. He says no. I insist again, and he says no.. Ok.. enough is enough. He explains that he is going to a sauna that evening and he does not like to eat before a sauna. Uh oh, I figure, I am going to a sauna too. What am I in for? I figure it is the last opportunity to eat anything, so I told the waitress to bring me something good. She did... pork cutlet, potatoes, sauerkraut, vegetables, and salad heaped onto a plate. It was excellent. Arvis and I talked away. I asked him about him and his family. His wife had died a year ago, and I think he is just lonely. He had been headmaster in the school in town for 25 years and had just retired. He explained how he had to join the Communist Party to get the job, and we talked at length how the country had changed since Perestroika. Interesting gentleman, to say the least. He is on pension now, and busies his days by working on the reconstruction of Nurmuiza Manor. Apparently it is owned by “Russian” money. He suspects it is money that is being laundered, Through the conversation he tells me that he has a key to the manor and after the church records tomorrow, he will take me up to the manor. After dinner, we jump in his van and he drives me back to the guest house. This time it seems like 5 km from the cafe. It would have been a very long walk in the dark..
When we get to the guest house, the two owners are standing there, waiting for me. He asks me if I am still interested in a Russian sauna, and I say sure. Arvis takes his leave, and the three of us go through another doorway that I had not noticed before. We walk through it and there is a 30 x 60 indoor pool. Great! I figure. We walk through that room to another room and he points to the sauna. Then down a little hallway to a sitting room. We sit down and there on the table is a bottle of Russian vodka.. He pours a shot, and the conversation starts to roll. He explains that he did three years in the Russian army and speaks good Russian. His wife concurs that she does too. We talk about his little sawmill operation and how he exports the wood to England. The guest house operation is moderately busy in summer. It sleeps 35 people, if need be. It is a big building. Conversation drifts around to my research, and I ask them if they want to take a look at the Russian documents and give me their interpretation. Well, their eyes lit up and away we went. Out came the notepaper and pen as they worked their way through it. I am beginning to see a pattern how these folks just love to utilize some of their skills. The hours tick away, the level of vodka in the bottle gets lower and lower.. Then it is sauna time. We get into our swim suits and she jumps in the pool. He hands me a felt Robin Hood hat, and tells me to put it on. The hat, by the way is to keep your brain from frying in the sauna. He and I head for the sauna. It is hot in there. I mean hot.. but it is a sauna. We sit and chat for fifteen minutes or so, and by this time, I am just too damn hot. Up I get and jump into the pool. Ahh.. relaxing. She is still floating around in the pool, and I swim around for a while She turns on jet at the end of the pool that is truly powerful. It creates a stream of water down the centre of the pool and a back eddy down the sides. The idea being that you turn this on, and then swim against the current. Although you swim like mad, you don't really move relative to the sides of the pool. One can adjust the power of jet, and the speed of the water to accommodate whatever swimming speed you want. Pretty cool. This is probably a normal thing for new pools, but I had never seen this before.
After I tire myself out swimming, I sit up on the edge of the pool, and he suggests we go back for another round of sauna. Sounds like a plan to me. This time he brings in a beach towel and lays it on the bench. He tells me to lay on my stomach on the towel. In one corner of the sauna were some birch branches soaking in some water. He picks them up and slowly rubs them on my back. He then pours a liter of water on the sauna rocks and the temperature increases significantly. By now he is flogging my back with the branches. It actually feels quite good. Again he adds water to the sauna rocks and the room is full of hot steam. He alternates between rubbing the branches on my back and flogging my back with them. I am beginning to get too hot again.. He then takes a basin of warmish water, not hot, and douses my back with it. What a wake up call!!! I have had enough, so we go out to the pool area again. I am jelly at this point. So off we go for another swim. I have now officially had a Russian sauna. It is quite the experience.
After the swim, it is back to the common area for more vodka, and more conversation... By 11:00 it is bedtime. They walk through the plan for tomorrow, and we say good night. Considering that earlier in the day, I had been telling myself it was going to be a long evening, it certainly has turned into an enjoyable evening.
Next morning, I am up early. Trying to digest and document a little bit of what happened the day before. The woman from the guesthouse brings me eggs, sausage, tomatoes and rye bread for breakfast. I think about walking into town, but it is snowing and blowing out, and decide to wait for Arvis at 1:00. He is punctual and on time and excited as hell. Driving into town, I get a feel for how much snow has fallen. The road has been plowed, sort of. There is one lane and on either side of that lane are 6 foot snow banks. I have no idea what would happen if one met another vehicle on the road, and I hesitate to think of the accumulation of snow when it starts to drift with the wind. We head to the church.. The gate at the outside is locked, so we trudge over to the care taker's house in town and pick up the key. When we return, we find the key is for the church, not the gate, so we have to wade through three feet of snow to the back of the church where we can enter the church yard at a small gate in the back. Right behind the church is a big graveyard. I don't bother going into it, as it is just a couple of tombstones poking through the top of the snow. We finally get into the back vestibule of the church. Great, it is warm and cozy inside. There is a tall porcelain furnace, 8 feet high and 4 feet square with a wood fire in it. The furnace is half in the vestibule, and half into the catechism classroom behind it, heating both rooms. There is not a soul to be seen inside the church although apparently there had been a service that morning.
Arvis gives me a tour of the church. First built in the 1300's, it is a little on the crude side. Walls made of mortar and stone, four feet thick, and plastered on the inside. The altar and pulpit are beautiful though. Deep relief carved wood. Very well done. Directly in front of the altar, on the floor is a casting, full life size, of Count von Fricas and his wife. Casting is of them horizontal on the floor, but the detail is incredible. Arvis tells me that they are buried under the altar. A bit strange, I think. We are wandering around the church looking at things when the caretaker, Arvids arrives. We greet each other, Arvis explains what I am up to, and Arvids proceeds to roll back the carpet on the main aisle just in front of the altar. There in the middle of the floor is a huge trap door. We move a pew around and lift the door, leaning it against the pew. There is a 5 foot wide stair case leading down with a steel gate at the bottom.. The dungeon? I think. We have to duck as we go down the stairs. Arvids opens the gate at the bottom and we are standing in a small room with five coffins laid out on the floor. The coffins are laid kind of haphazard across the floor. Obviously over the centuries, and the various occupations of the country, the grave robbers have been into the coffins and taken anything of value. It was a spooky little room directly under the altar. Two “shafts” lead off to the left and right up to ground level. We could see light through them, but they were closed off with a wrought iron grating. At the back of the little room was a closed off tunnel. Apparently the tunnel went 2 km to Nurmuiza Manor. Why the Manor and the Church needed that level of communication, I have no idea. The tunnel would have been big enough for two men to walk side by side. Of to the side of the little room were two other little rooms. In these rooms, were another half dozen coffins, laid about hap hazardly. I am guessing it has been some time since any relatives of the von Fricas family has visited this tomb. We climbed out of the crypt, locked the iron gate, closed the trap door, and rolled the carpet back over the trap door.
Next we went into the vestibule at the back of the church. Arvids pulls a big key out of his pocket, goes down on his knees in front of a desk, and opens the door on the desk. Inside there is a stack of big old dusty books. He lifts them out, one by one and passes them to us. We lay them out on the table and look at them. Mostly they are confirmation records and various church records. Some of the books date back to the 1840's. I figure that I have come this far, I may as well go through these records while they are available to me. We soon realize that half the records are in Russian, and half are in German. I elect to tackle the German records and Arvis tackles the Russian records. He and Arvids go at it and get into the typical arguments about what is written in Russian. Each time they find a Rosenthal or a Smilga/Smilge, I photograph the page. There are hundreds of pages that we go through. Finally just as we finish up, we notice that the sun is going down. I remind Arvis that I must get back to Riga tonight, as I have new documents at the archives arriving in the morning. We close up the books and put them away. Lock up the church, and he drives me over to the bus stop. We sit in his van waiting for the next bus. He talks about when I come back in the future that I must stay with him. As the time approaches for the bus to show up, we get out of the van. There are several people standing at the bus stop. Arvis knows all of them. Former students, mostly, returning to Riga after a weekend at home. He makes a special point of talking to each of them and telling them who I am.. I am sure everyone withing ten miles now knows of my quest.. And finally, the bus arrives. We shake hands..hug and bid each other adieu.......
