MEMBERSHIP REMINDER

Just a reminder that ZVA annual dues of $10 are based on the calendar year. Please check your dues status on the web site. Go to Your Profile in the user menu and look at the  last item in the column on the right side of the page where it says "Dues paid to the end of: ____" If you have not paid for 2012, please remit your dues using one of the options described on the Membership page. From September on, I will credit new members for the following year. I will  downgrade unrenewed members on the web site in April of each year to give you plenty of grace. We are continually adding new content to the Members Only parts of the site. If you are not connected to the Internet, just drop me a line at the address below and I will update you. Thanks for contributing to our common cause.

OBITUARIES

Francis Ortman, brother of member Leo (wife Carol) passed away March 14, 2011. Two or three weeks earlier, Josie Black, daughter of Jacob and Katherine (Ortmann) Shenher of Viceroy, SK passed away. John Hugel's Aunt Rose passed away in December, 2011.

SETSCHAN CHURCH RECORDS

A purchaser of some of our church records looking for Setschan ancestors has found many of them in the Sartscha church books. If you have previously bought the Setschan records and not found the people you are looking for, you might want to try Satscha.

ÜRMENYHAZA, GROSS GAJ & ZICHYDORF

Helmut Kaiser has compiled a Familienbuch of the German families in Ümenyhaza (374 families/1048 people). During this exercise, he also found many events of Zichydorf and Gross Gaj familes that may have temprarily resided there or been recorded there for some other reason. He has added the new information to the respective villages on his web site. People continue to send him new information and publish new Familienbuchs that contribute to the database. At some point, he expects to produce a "final" CD, but, in the meantime, he will just keep updating his web site. Some people have asked him to remove information, so don't delay or you may miss something. You can find the new Ürmenyhaza FB and the updated Zichydorf and Gross Gaj FB at  www.zichydorf.h-kaiser.de

BORROWING CDs FROM SGS LIBRARY

We had initially set a "Reference only" policy for our CDs in the Saskacthean Genealogy Society library because they seemed too easy to lose or damage and too hard to replace. Over time, they have become easy to replace. In fact, they are now much cheaper and easier to replace than books, some of which are irreplaceable because they are out of print. In fact, many of the CDs we have purchased are of out of print books.

For some time I have been listing our library holdings of CDs as "Borrow" on our web site. However, I did not communicate this to SGS until recently. SGS's own CDs are still "Reference only" because they are so easily damaged. CDs do not benefit from the special "book rate" for libraries, so there are some postage costs invloved. Contact Megan at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for borrowing and mailing details.

CADASTRE RECORDS

 ZVA has acquired copies of many cadastre records for the villages of Zichydorf, Györgyháza, Setschanfeld, Gross Gaj, Ürményháza, and Heideschütz for various years. These are records of property ownership. They really do not have any genealogical value, but they can be very interesting if you are trying to learn more about your family's circumstances in the Heimat. The following definitions from Wikipedia will help to understand these records.

A cadastre (also spelled cadaster), using a cadastral survey or cadastral map, is a comprehensive register of the metes-and-bounds real property of a country. Metes and bounds is a system or method of describing land. Typically the system uses physical features of the local geography, along with directions and distances, to define and describe the boundaries of a parcel of land. The boundaries are described in a running prose style, working around the parcel in sequence, from a point of beginning, returning back to the same point. It may include references to other adjoining parcels (and their owners), and it, in turn, could also be referred to in later surveys. At the time the description is compiled, it may have been marked on the ground with permanent monuments placed where there were no suitable natural monuments.

Our records contain lists of landowners with the numbered parcels they owned along with (in most cases) maps showing the locations of the individual plots. For a complete list of what we have, go to our web site at Zichydorfonline.org. In the Main Menu, click on Banat, then Geography, then Cadastre Land Records. To order the cadastre records, send $20 to Zichydorf Village Association, 2274 Baldwin Bay, Regina SK, S4V 1H2, Canada  OR  use the Donation box on the left side of the ZVA home page at zichydorfonline.org. Be sure to specify what you are ordering. When I have received your payment, I will send you instructions on how to download the package. We only ordered the maps we thought were most likely to be wanted, but we may be able to obtain maps of other municipalities if you are interested. Please inquire.

You should be able to print off maps that you desire on your printer. Some are very large and you may have to shrink them. If you are near Regina, one of our members there has a plotter and would be willing to print off large maps for the cost of materials. Please contact me for a referral if you are interested.

NEW IN THE LIBRARY

The long awaited Volume VII of Stefan Stader's series Sammelwerk donauschwäbischer Kolonisten [Collection of Danube Swabian Colonists] (Sche-Sz) has finally been published and received in the library! This series combines the immigration records from Vienna with church records and other records. In many cases, there is nothing new in these records, but in some cases, Stader is able to make links in the records that an individual would have a hard time duplicating. Stader died two or three years ago and genealogists have been waiting anxiously while a team of volunteers worked through his papers to complete this volume. We can only hope that they are able to complete the final volume or two in reasonable time.

In addition, they are planning to do a complement to the Stader volumes with all the new information that has been gathered since the first volumes were published. If, in your own research, you have found any new places of origin of Danube Swabian settlers that had not been known before, the AKdFF requests you to share your research results with them so that they can include them in the planned complement volume. Please send your information to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

My Journey from the Banat to Canada by Nick Tullius. Nick grew up in the village of Alexanderhausen near Temesvar in the 1940s and 1950s. His book describes his childhood and youth during and after World War II. While Germans in Romania did not experience the same brutality as in Yugoslavia, they nevertheless dealt with great hardship. Nick's US-born mother was taken to forced labour in Russia and never returned. His father ended up in Canada. Nick completed high school in Temesvar, supported by his grandmother, and eventually immigrated to Canada.

Our German Ancestry, A Proud Heritage by Joanne Hayhurst is primarily about the Schneider family descendants in Canada, but there are also connections to Kaufmann, Wagner, Borno, Wingert, Gajo, Prunkl, Rampold, Nieszner, Roszlein, Rist, Amon, Bartole, and several others. In addition to the family trees, there are numerous insights into history and culture.

NEW ON THE WEB SITE

Over the years, ZVA has acquired a fairly extensive collection of digital images of church records. We have not advertised these widely, but have now added a comprehensive list to our web site. From the Main Menu, click on Banat - Genealogy - Church Records Digital Images.
We recently obtained a translation of some sections of the Werschetz local history book in our library. Those translated pages have now been posted on our site. From the Main Menu, click on Banat - History - Werschetz. This is a members only page.

OSTERN BLOG

Find information about Ostern, pictures from Hatzfeld and Timisoara, and information of general interest at http://comlosumic.blogspot.com/

2012 BANAT TOUR

This tour is officially cancelled. Several of the people who were pretty keen had things come up that forced them to cancel. There just weren't enough people left to make it work. I looked into a slightly smaller bus, but there was not that much of a saving. I will try to do another one in 2013 or 2014.

Zichydorf Village Association News

edited by: Glenn Schwartz

2274 Baldwin Bay, Regina, SK, S4V 1H2

Internet: http://zichydorfonline.org

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http://www.feefhs.org/members/zichydorf/frg-zva.html

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