This is the same text as in chain: Anybody here with Huguenot or noble German roots in St.Petersburg?
It seems to me that these roots are rare even if you could think they were not. Somebody needed to collect information about these as such seems to be difficult to find. I sometimes found some Huguenot Centre somewhere, maybe in Germany, but they don't seem to know anything about this kind of an affair.
My family has a home-kept archive of about all family members in our line as far as it has been possible to keep since the year 1764 in Gross-Glogau, Lower-Schlesien. In those notes there are not only the dates of birth and death but also confirmation and marriage dates but also the names of the churches and graveyards as some hints to pages in some church books. I am getting old and I don't know where to leave all this information. Do you get in mind some place you could think of for this kind of a material? There, however, is some Archeological and Historical Museum in Glogau, Poland area nowadays. There is even some 'Schifflein Christie' church in that place that is evangelic and its building started in 1764 and I wonder if my family has had something to do with this church and also as the whole place happen to carry our surname???
In case you have some French or German roots in St. Petersburg before the Revolution in 1917 what direction of the Christian faith did your ancestors confess? And what language did they use as home language?
What has then been the real point in keeping this kind of information in details and especially if these people where not noble? My grandmother's brother ended in Germany and then Hitler asked our family who are you - are you some Jews? That time this homekept archive maybe saved them as they could go from the registers in Gross-Glogau in 1764 to France and they found a direct male line to some French Count. However, they didn't have any money to take these documents out of the registers. Now I have tried for years to find this line, but it seems impossible even if I liked to and wanted to know what 'Count' this was... In a piece of paper they have written that were are mentioned as noble, but I don't know where, probably even in some archive in Han(n)over... I even saw some program in TV where they showed a lot of empty archive shelves - everything had been taken out and robbed in some archives... Who had done this and to what purpose? The genealogical business might be huge today...
Now I have started to think what is a 'Count' in fact... the information today you can get eg in Wikipedia makes at least me to think that this title could be anything... and as no line has been able to find today I even started to think if our ancestor was really some 'Count' and not something else... Whose family had some person who was invited to the Court in Preussen before the French Revolution and who was the inviter... for sure??? All this kind of things makes ones imagination run in case no correct information is to be found anywhere.
It is often hinted that your name must stand in some register of noble people in case you were some noble. However, I see to this matter in some different way. In case you were of some higher nobelty your life might have been threatened often. Huguenots are said to be the first refugees. Had it been in that case wise and secure to put your name or see to it that it will be kept there in some registers? I think that no! My grandmother still during her whole life feared something to happen to her and her family as all her relatives were killed in St. Petersburg around 1918. And an other question is did you have some money for this purpose to keep your information in some registers? I find it enough family members know who they are and what is your background. It also comes to my mind that in question of higher nobelty it might have been less important than in case of some lower nobelty to be in some periodical registers of noble people.
What then comes to my generation almost nothing has been told. Think if my generation born after the wartimes had been told that you are of such and such nobelty even if it cannot be seen anywhere in some registers... What had the children, whose other parent even is no noble, done with this kind of information... and had it been even dangerous in some place that is no longer some Grand Duchy of any kind and were a lot of wars were still to be waged and even some civil war? What had they done with that information when everybody has become poor and there is no property and they live in a country where individualism is number one and everybody needs to manage by own as well as he or she is able to???
In case you feel you are of some kind of nobelty - what does it mean to you? Does it make your life just complicated and not at all easy in this world of today where everything has become so strange you almost wish this world has come to the point of the end of this world as the Bible says once will happen?
In case you feel you are of some kind of nobelty that cannot be testified in any 'normal' ways, please, let us hear your family background story in this chain of mine! Let's see how many we can be! Sometimes I think that what was the point to end in St. Petersburg and not in other places on this planet. What were the real 'meaningful connections' between the Russian and French Royal Houses and was there some reason to be found why some families ended in St.Petersburg?
