An 'Accidental Genealogist' on a Persistent Journey to Discover his Estonian Family Roots

John Clark

A year ago I had no solid information about my grandparents: where they were from, who their children were, and what they looked like. Today my family history reaches back to the 1700s and I've acquired family photographs from as early as the 1870s.

My interest in my family history was awakened in mid- 2005 when my attention was drawn to a photograph and obituary in the Denver Post - a photo of a man that looked a lot like my own father. A halfpage history of the man's life accompanied the photo of him standing on a mountain trail. Like my father, the man was born and raised in Montana. My dad grew up on Montana ranches and had picked the name Clark from a foster family in Montana who he hoped would adopt him.

The Clarks never did adopt my father. I was already in high school when our true family name was brought up in a conversation between my father and my uncle who was visiting from Alberta. I learned that originally our name was something like Kirkendall and that my father had lived in a home for orphans when he was a boy. My dad told me that his father had raised one family with his first wife and started a second family with my grandmother Mary who died in 1916 when my dad was two years old. Widowed, my grandfather farmed and cared for his five young children. In debt with a failing farm, my grandfather was forced to place my father, his three brothers and his sister into the care of the Montana orphanage.

From Lime to time my grandfather visited and wrote to his children at the orphanage. In vain he battled drought and locusts to bring in a big crop that would get him out of debt. The orphanage joined the list of his unpaid creditors. Since he was unable to contribute to their support, he lost his parental rights and his children became eligible for adoption.

In December 1921 my dad wrote to his father,

"It would be very good to see you on Xmas". (I am) "hoping to get an ink pen and pen holder for Christmas." A week before Christmas my father's letter was returned to him "address unknown". My dad and my uncle said that their father had "disappeared" - or "ran out on the family."

Gustav Krikendal taking his children to the Twin Bridges orphanage in Montana, August 17,1917.

I wondered if my grandfather had dodged his bill collectors and started a third family when he "disappeared". If so, the man I noticed in the newspaper photo might be my uncle. I decided to do some research. Among some old family papers I found three documents that were sent to my father in 1968 by his sister with her suggestion to have them translated from German.

I showed the papers to my friends Sandy and his German wife. They translated the "old German" and established that the document was a 1908 Estonian "Character Reference" for Liso, or Liisa Reimer - probably issued by the parish to support an immigration effort. I didn't know any ancestors or relatives named Liisa, so I wondered why this document had been kept and handed down.

Only Liisa's Character Reference was in German. Sandy thought the other two documents might be Estonian. Through mutual friends I tracked down Helvi, an Estonian refugee, who lives in my neighborhood. Helvi's translation showed the second document to be a letter to my aunt Pauline, signed "your parents in Montana". Helvi thought the letter was originally sent to "Aunt Pauline" with a new Bible. She also recognized that the third document was written in Russian. In searching the Web on "Denver" "Russian"

"Translation" I found that Denver's 50,000 Russian emigrants had their own Cultural Center. Sophia, the Center's librarian, offered to translate the third document while I waited.

My excitement built as Sophia rendered each line into English. The first paragraph showed that she was translating a church document listing the members of the Krikenthal family. It named Gustav Krikenthal and his wife Julie (Paarmann) Krikenthal and their children Pauline, Julia, and Mary - Those were my aunts! AND! two boys that I had never heard of - August and Mihkel who were born in 1892 and 1902. Both were my uncles!

So now I knew the spelling of the family name, that my grandfather was named Gustav, his first wife, Julie, was born in Parnach, and that their children were baptized in Boz Koz. But where were Boz Koz and Parnach?

I searched in vain for Parnach and Boz Koz on Estonian maps. I Googled for Boz Koz - and found nothing. The web only referenced Parnach once. A soldier had written in his memoir that his platoon had camped outside Parnach during the Crimean War. A dead end I assumed, since Crimea was thousands of miles from Estonia.

Krikenthal family, 1903. L to R: August (3), Gustav (35), Pauline (ll), Julie (32), Mihkel (I), Mary (7) and Julia (8).

Because Sophia had struggled a bit with the translation, and the villages or districts were not familiar to her, I was anxious to get a second opinion. Over the next months I actually listened for people that might have a Russian accent. At Office Depot I noticed that Maria, the cashier, sounded Russian. She read my document and said that she thought the towns might be near Moscow.

At my favorite sushi restaurant I interrupted two young Russians on a dinner date. Their big mistake was speaking in Russian within earshot of me! They recognized that the document named other villages or districts in addition to Parnach and Boz Koz, but they had no idea of their location. I continued listening for Russian speaking people who might recognize a town or city from the document.

At my gym I overheard, Alex and Michael conversing in Russian as they were lifting weights. I intercepted them leaving the gym and showed them the document. Standing in the gym's parking lot Alex immediately recognized that the country was Crimea. He knew that hundreds of German colonies had been established in Crimea in the 1800s. He took the document home, translated it, and emailed me the Krim-GR Research Website that identified Gustav's birthplace as Kontschi-Schawa, a German colony founded in Crimea in 1860.

Was I German? It seemed to fit. When asked about his heritage, my father would say he didn't know for sure, maybe Estonian, Finnish, or Swedish. To me the family names sounded more German than Estonian, particularly the names Paarmann, Krikenthal, August, and Gustav. I also seemed to have the German trait for order "everything squared up and always in its place ".

I poured over the wealth of information on the "Germans from Russia" websites (GRHS, AHSGR). With folks from both organizations helping, we located Crimean church records from the 1860s for the birth of Gustav and his sister Mina and for the death of his brother Mihkel. Almost every evening that I searched on the Internet I found another piece to the puzzle.

To learn more about German settlements in Montana, I contacted Barbra, with the Chester Branch of the Montana State Genealogical Society. Instead of information on German families that I had expected, Barbra sent me a list of Chester area Estonians. Her research showed that the Krikenthals were part of the Estonian community in the early 1900s.

Now I was confused. Gustav was born in a German colony. I had Julie Reimer's Estonian character reference written in German, and a letter to my aunt Pauline written in Estonian. Barbra suggested I research Lethbridge, since many of the Montana Estonians had come from Canada. I searched the web on combinations of "Krikenthal, " "Alberta, " and "Lethbridge"- and found nothing.

Then I got an idea. Maybe searching the web for some of the other Chester family names might indirectly help. I searched on the family "Keldrauk & Lethbridge" and found a list of surnames referenced for "Wheat Heart of the West; Lethbridge". In the list alphabetically below Keldrauk was "KRIKENTAL., G. " - it had to be Gustav Krikenthal!

I emailed the Lethbridge Alberta Genealogical Society's website to see if there was any more information regarding the person referred to as KRIKENTAL, G. Shirley answered my email:

There wasn't much information in this book and it is as follows:

"Mr. and Mrs. G. Krikental and family of Crimea, with five girls and one boy Gus, came to homestead in the Barons area in 1904 or 1905. Their farm was just east of Ernie Allen's farm, where they first built a sod house. The girls went to Lundy school when it opened, while Gus, being younger, went to Wheatland Centre. All the family went to Chester, Montana in 1910 to homestead, where each adult could get 320 acres."

"I hope that this is of some help to you. "

WOW! It was official and in writing. The book confirmed that these were Estonian families who had emigrated from Crimea - I was Estonian!

I next searched the Barons phone listings for the family names of the Estonian settlers whose lives were described in the Barons history book.

My story continues with my finding the Erdman family, including Martha Munz Gue. Following this contact, Martha sent an email to some Albertans of Estonian extraction:

"Isn't this wonderful! Tom Erdman and I were introduced to John Clark, when, last Saturday, he phoned each of us from Colorado! His father was raised by a foster family so he only recently found his paternal grandparents birth names, and he has discovered that they were of Estonian descent. He learned this fall that he is connected to the Krikenthal family that emigrated from Crimea. They lived about five years in the Barons area and then immigrated to Montana along with many other families of Estonian-Krimean origin. I guess there is quite a settlement in Montana.

He was enthralled by the (Barons area history) book and has read quite a bit online. Afer reading and reading, he found the only Erdman in the Barons phone listing and talked with Tommy, who suggested he phone me. We had a great chat and have been emailing since. He is keen on learning more about Estonia, Crimea, and family history. He asks some questions that perhaps some of you could provide some help with. Any anecdotes would be of interest."

Through Martha, I met Livia and Helgi who helped me understand my ancestors' journeys from Estonia to Crimea and to Lethbridge. Their translations of key documents from German and Russian accompanied one of their emails to me:

"We spent several hours yesterday deciphering and translating the documents you had sent to us. The diffculty lies in the poor quality of the reproduction, deciphering German Gothic handwriting, and trying to guess the specific circumstances surrounding the original document. ...

We were not entirely successful with your excerpts from the (Crimean) Neusatz parish birth and death records because the headings for various columns are missing.

. . . We persisted and did our best. "

Martha told her cousin Leongard Salman in Crimea about my search and I sent him everything I had learned so far. About a month later I received from Leongard a big envelope full of information including a list of Gustav Krikental's brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nieces, and nephews in Crimea. Leongard's research showed that Gustav's father Mihkel was born in Aggeri, Estonia in 18 19, and immigrated to Crimea with his wife Mina and their four children. They were part of the "White Ship" Estonian families that walked from Estonia to Crimea between 1861 and 1863.

Having traveled so far so rapidly along my research path, I reflected on the power of serendipity. Why had I been drawn to that newspaper photograph? I felt a connection to the man in the photo who started me on my journey and maybe a little sony that we turned out not to be related. The man was not Gustav Krikental's son after all. My grandfather had not started a third family - and he had not completely "disappeared".

Wanting to learn more about Kontschi-Schawa where Gustav was born, I called the AHSGR "Germans from Russia" organization and met Margaret who is with its Denver chapter. I told Margaret that my father had said that his brother Louis "might have seen" their father years later in Chicago. In my mind I pictured my uncle Louis passing an old man sitting on a Chicago park bench and later wondering if the man might have been his father, Gustav.

It took Margaret about 5 minutes to find where Gustav had "disappeared" to.

Knowing the tools of genealogy, Margaret quickly found the Web site for death certificates issued in Cook County, Illinois. Gustav Krikendal died in Blue Island, Illinois in 1938. In the next five minutes Margaret used the Heritage Quest Web site to bring up the 1920 Montana Census and the page showing Gustav as an immigrant from Russia, his native language was Estonian, he was literate, and he had become a US citizen in 1916.

Margaret also gave me some great advice, "As you do your research always think about the story. In your story you should ask, why would Gustav leave his kids? Was he in deep debt with no way to pay? Was he being sued for payments on farm equipment, seed, or building materials?? Why would Gustav have picked Chicago? What reason? Ofen, as parents get older they go to live near their children. Did Gustav have children or other relatives in Chicago? Do you have relatives in Chicago? "

An aunt, I thought, might have lived in Chicago. My dad and his brother had lived in Chicago for a few years around the time of the stock market crash. I needed to find out who my cousins were and get them involved in my project.

I guess like a lot of people, my interest in my family history developed late. My father, all his brothers and sisters, and many of the next generation are already gone - along with their first hand accounts of our family's history. I had started my research using the Internet because I had never maintained contact with any cousins - not even Christmas cards. After a gap of over 50 years, I called my cousins Shirley in Montana and George in Alberta. They told me where to find 10 more cousins that I'd never met. I called each one, introduced myself, and found everyone to be enthusiastic about contributing to the family genealogy project. I also started calling and emailing folks that came onto my radar in Montana, Alberta, and across the USA. My network expanded to include Martha, Helvi, Livia, Helgi and Dave in North America, and Leongard in Crimea and Heldin and Kaii in Estonia. Their help and knowledge allowed me to compress my search into a number of months compared to the multi-year search had I focused only on the Internet, courthouse records, and microfilm research.

I tracked down descendants of the Barons and Chester Estonians including the families Palkman, Erdman, Musten, Sepp, Keldrauk, Bader, Kotkas, Reinson, Laas, Arick, Orraw (Orav), and Yurman (Jiirman). Most of them had already done some research on their Estonian roots, and were of great help. Sally, the granddaughter of Maria Kotkas Sepp, sent me three pages of her grandmother's writings - all specifically about the Krikental family in Barons and Chester between 1905 and 1918. I guess it was because of our common heritage, but I felt welcomed by each family - like I was a long lost cousin. Lots of people went out of their way to help me with my research. Even the folks at Montana courthouses always seem to find more information on the Krikentals than the land, court, or naturalization records I had originally requested.

Among the most satisfying findings came from my cousins who had a handful of old photographs of both my grandparents. I finally knew what they looked like. I recognized my father in Gustav. I thought that my brother, sister and I shared some of my grandmother's features. My cousin Linda had saved her grandmother Pauline's family photographs from Crimea - some as old as 1875!

Gustav Krikental in Chicago, 1937.

To my surprise. Linda had photos of Gustav from the 1920s in Chicago where he had gone to work in a sugar refinery and later for a cigar company. Then, to my complete astonishment, Linda suggested that we call Pauline Krikental's son Floyd to learn fust hand about my grandfather Gustav. We called my cousin Floyd who is 89 years old and was a teenager when Gustav lived in Chicago. Floyd crisply remembered his grandfather Gustav visiting on Sunday mornings. His mother and grandfather would sit at the kitchen table and entertain him by speaking together in "that Estonian language". Floyd also remembered my father from 1929 -"my uncles Eddie and Louie came from Montana to work in Chicago and slept out on our porch. "

What a journey! Not just birth, marriage and death records, but photographs, diaries, and living cousins who had their own personal and hand-me-down stories about the Krikental family. And it was amazing to be able to track the family back so far. Back to 1785! Back to the time when Gustav's grandfather Hinrik was a serf and who was the human property of the estate that owned the Kulli farm where Hinrik worked as a watchman. Carefully preserved parish records for the Estonian peasants provided much appreciated knowledge of the Krikental origins.

Heldin, Leongard and Dave, who could read German, Russian, or Estonian, were of particular help in finding the Krikental family in the old Crimean church records on the Odessa Web site and the Estonia parish records from the Saaga Web site. Helvi, Livia Alex, and Helgi translated parish records, my aunt's Estonian notes, and letters from Leongard. This group's efforts led to the discovery of the first use, in 1819, of the name Krikkenntaal.

They found Gustav's mother and her parents, Gustav's grandfather, and my great grandmother. The background for Julie Paarmann, Gustav's wife, and the first person buried in the Baron's cemetery remains obscure. Paarmann families are listed in the parish books in Estonia but we have found no records of any of them emigrating to Parnach, Crimea. We also found Estonian families named Paarmann who lived in Simferopol, Crimea at the turn of the century. We don't yet know if the Simferopol Paarmann's were Julie's. The Paarmann name also shows up in Swiss or German families - both countries had colonies in Crimea. I've ordered the "Simferopol mamages" microfilm from the LDS Family History Center and I'm optimistic that we'll find where Julie Paarmann's parents were from.

Oh, and by the way, I did find out who Liisa Reimer was and why her character reference was kept in the family the last 100 years.

To be continued.. ....

About the author.. ....

John Clark on Mt. Bierstadt, Colorado

John has lived in Colorado his whole life. He has worked in marketing and sales for many Colorado software and technology companies. He's presently developing a business plan for a software company he wants to launch in 2006. John, who is single, enjoys trail running and backpacking through Colorado's mountains. John's email address is: JohnClark-TTI@comcast.net