ERIC KRAUSE

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ERIC KRAUSE GENEALOGY

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LYNDA'S CORNER 
Lynda Jean Richards, b. Rimmer, m. Krause

GENEALOGY

MATERNAL SIDE

CHWEDCHUK LINEAGE

QUICK VIEW CHWEDCHUK LINEAGE CHART

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 PETER (PETROV) CHWEDCHUK

• Lydia (Lidia, Lida or Lidochka) Chwedchuk (July 10, 1926-August 3, 2012), b. STARA STRELNA, POLAND, m. June 23, 1945, CROWLAND, ONTARIO, Mike Richards [Richard Rimmer, Dick Rimmer] (February 27, 1915 - January 17, 1970)

  • Lynda Jean Richards b. Rimmer (June 18, 1946-), Welland, Ontario, and Eric Krause (January 26, 1943-), Leamington, Ontario

  • Richard "Rick" [Ricky] Joseph Richards b. Rimmer (August 9, 1947-June 24, 1970, Welland, Ontario)

  • Shirley Richards and Dennis Ribble

CHWEDCHUK

DESCENDANTS

ANCESTRAL GENEALOGICAL NOTES

POLAND, BALARUS

• Great-grandfather Peter Chwedchuk was a serf, working as a gardener and orchard care-taker for one of the local landlords, or Pans as they were called (pronounced "pun") in the Belorussian part of Russia. His village, Strelno, was just across the border from the Ukrainian part of Russia and 100 kilometers east of Brest, which is near the present Polish border. He belonged to the Greek Orthodox church (Ukrainian), but must have had an equal interest in the local tavern. The story passed on in the family about him is that on more than one occasion, after warming up on a few shots of vodka at the tavern on a cold winter evening, he would be unable to make it back home on his own. Great grandmother Catherine would get worried about him being out so late, and would go there with a small sleigh and pull him home through the snow drifts.

  There were periods of famine in those days, especially since the serfs were required to work most of the time in the fields of the Pan and very little in their own plots. In early summer, before any new vegetable or grain crop was ready and the winter stock of grain and root vegetables had already been consumed, great-grandfather would go to the woods to find mushrooms, and fry them up with some pork fat embellished with a protein dish of june-bugs. It was either starve or improvise to survive. During periods of severe famine, the peasants even ate clay.

  When serfdom was abolished by Alexander 11 by law dated 19 Feb. 1861, each peasant was also awarded a plot of land on a rental basis, with option to buy. Great grandfather Peter might have got some land that way on the outskirts of the village of Stara Strelna, and passed it on to his son Daniel. Grandfather Daniel bought other property before emigrating to the USA in 1913, as indicated in the Appendix. ....

• On July 13, 1909, a civil court hearing of the Kobrin District congress, having considered a complaint by Peter and Daniil Chwedchuk concerning infringement upon their land by Matvey (Mathew) and Michael Grishchuk, confirmed the decision made on 7 June 1908 by the land supervisor of the Kobrin district to the effect that the land infringed upon, consisting of 13 deciatin (about 35 acres) near the village of Strelna be restored to the ownership and control of Daniil and Peter Chwedchuk. The Grishchuks were fined five rubles and court costs. The cease and desist action against the lessors had commenced in 1904.
     
  
• On August 9, 1913, Simon Grigoriev Kozick provisionally agreed to sell to Daniil Petrov Chwedchuk, in addition to the previously sold 6 deciatin of land, an additional 4 deciatin.

• Mother's ....  Ukrainian husband [Anton] fled his home as a 14 year old refugee with his mother [Catherine (Ekaterina) Woytowich] and sisters as war broke out on the eastern front, settling in the interior of Russia for seven years.
     

• When the war between Germany and Russia broke out on the eastern front in 1914, thousands of Belorussians, Russians and Ukrainians in the border areas packed up a few belongings and scrambled onto trains or horse-drawn wagons as quickly as possible and headed east to escape the blood bath. Grandmother Ekaterina Chwedchuk did likewise, and ended up in the Ural Mountains near Ufa with her two daughters and 14 year old son Anton, who was later to become my father. Her husband Daniel was in the United States at that time, having emigrated there in 1913 to Springfield, Mass, in the hope of bringing the rest of the family later to join him.

The family stayed near Ufa and Sterlitamak until after the war and the revolution, everyone pitching in to survive those war-time years. With so many able-bodied men conscripted into the army, young Anton was able to find work in the local post office, where he became a telegraph operator. That was where he met mother [Alexandra (Sonia) Maximovna Shalagin (November 6, 1902-April 16, 1984)], who also was employed there ... They got married in the village of Alexandrovka near Sterlitamak on July 30, 1921, and made plans to move to the family farm which had by this time became part of Poland in accordance with post-revolution treaties ...

• After the war and revolution, there was the frightful trip back, as a young bride, to her husband's village in what by that time had become Poland ....
      

• Toward the end of 1921 .... Anton Chwedchuk and his family, however, had become homesick by this time; after all, it was over seven years since they had left home in the village of Stara Strelna near Kobrin in Belorussia. Certainly they must have made some friends in the area near Ufa, but they had no house of their own there, while back in Anton's home there was some land on which they could make a living, and perhaps a house and barn, if they had not been destroyed during the war. It must have been a difficult thing for Alexandra, however, to leave her family, friends and home behind and take off with a new husband and his family on a trek of about 2000 kilometers, through villages and countryside scorched by the war. Food supplies and services were disorganized, transportation was chaotic and there was starvation in parts of the country. Besides, they would effectively be going to a foreign country, Poland, which had been recreated by the war treaties, and which now encompassed that part of Belorussia to which they were returning. Alexandra would have to learn to speak Ukrainian, which was the dominant language in that area near the Ukrainian border, and perhaps Polish as well.
     
  Besides, they would effectively be going to a foreign country, Poland, which had been recreated by the war treaties, and which now encompassed that part of Belorussia to which they were returning. Alexandra would have to learn to speak Ukrainian, which was the dominant language in that area near the Ukrainian border, and perhaps Polish as well. They had mixed feelings about the move, -both hope and trepidation. There had been no correspondence with anyone in their village since they left in 1914, and they had no idea as to whether the Chwedchuk family house was still there, or what happened in the village during the war. But Russia was also in chaos, with shortages of medicines, food and other essentials, while the intentions of the new Soviet government concerning the economy and their former enemies were the subject of speculation and debate. So they gathered up their few belongings and set off to the west, packed into unheated railway cars along with thousands of other refugees who had been displaced by the war.

The voyage turned into a fiasco. Typhus had begun to spread across the country in the aftermath of the war and soon became an epidemic. Typhus is related to poverty, hunger, cold, and unsanitary conditions such as typically occur in the aftermath of war, and is spread by body lice. Initial symptoms are chills, fever, headache and general body pain, followed by blood poisoning, kidney or heart failure or pneumonia. Medical facilities were unable to cope due to lack of both hospital space and medication. Millions died in Russia, Poland and Romania during the period 1919 to 1923. Some villages were decimated by typhus, with so many people having died that there were not enough able bodied men available to bury the dead. It was just that type of village that the Chwedchuk family were passing through, when local authorities stopped the train and forced all the physically-fit men off to help. They had to go from house to house to collect the bodies, load them onto wagons, dig a mass grave and bury them. Naturally, when Anton was recruited for this horrendous task, the rest of the family got off the train with him, hoping that they would not be delayed for long. However, Anton's exposure to the typhus germs soon laid him low, along with the rest of the family. He and Alexandra managed to recover after a long and difficult illness, but his mother and two sisters did not, and were buried in that unknown village in an unmarked grave, probably a mass grave, along with dozens of other victims. ....

The 1920's--- ....

Since our family did not leave Poland until I was almost seven, I recall much of what went on in a general way, but some of the details about flax noted above were provided by a neighbor who arrived in Canada more recently .... [Editor - For These Details, Please Consult:  Leonard Chwedchuk's  Memoires]

[SOME HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE MEMOIRES]

 I recall mother telling me of having received a letter from a friend (Dimitro Demidiuk) who was already in Canada, noting that every day there was like Easter, with white bread available on the table at every meal. That same friend later came back to Poland to his wife and family, as he could not get sufficient work during the depression to bring them to Canada or support them. He wrote a few years later, asking my parents if they could send him a few dollars, as he could not afford to buy stamps to send letters.

When Anton came back from Russia with his new bride to the newly resurrected country of Poland, he apparently had no problem in reclaiming the house and farm land of about 62 acres or 23 hectares (a hectare is equivalent to a square area of 100 metres to each side, and one deciatin is one tenth of that area). Neighbors who had stayed behind during the war knew the family and were able to certify to Polish authorities that father was a legitimate owner. .....

So father commenced farming, although mother felt that he was not a dedicated farmer. His father Daniel sent money occasionally from the USA, [to Springside, Saskatchewan] which made it possible for dad to hire help during busy times of the year. He had reamed to play a violin and button accordion in Russia, and teamed up with a few other musicians to form a small band to play at local dances and weddings. Mother, naturally, stayed home with the kids, and never did learn to dance, although she often expressed a desire to do so. She supplemented the family income by sewing clothes for various people in the village. .....

The peasants were very religious, and regularly went to church on Sundays. During his early years, father served as an altar boy, helping the priest in the local Greek Orthodox church with the candles and other duties. He learned some of the religious liturgy and the intonations of the Gregorian chant, and in later years would amuse his drinking friends by breaking out into some mimicking sing song phrases. One of the things that bothered him about the priesthood was that the priest would accept loaves of bread from the peasants at Easter time, for example, and sometimes it would be the last loaf in the household, according to father. Then after church, the priest would instruct father to feed the chickens with the loaves of bread. But offering bread was a religious tradition among Ukrainians, who continued the practice even if it was a considerable sacrifice. ...

Funerals were kept frugal, as none of the villagers could afford the cost of a fancy casket or tombstone. I recall wandering over to a neighbor's place where the grandfather had passed away. There were two carpenters in the yard, making a simple wooden casket. In the cemetery, the grave markers were also made of wood. When my wife and I made a trip to Strelno in 1989 and asked about finding the grave of my great‑grandfather, we were told that the old markers had all been made of wood and had deteriorated with time.....

My first recollection of any event was on July 10, 1926, the day my baby sister Lydia was born, yelling in protest at having been brought into a cold, unpredictable world. There was quite a bustle of neighbor ladies around the house. I was three and one half years old then, so I don't recall whether dad was around or celebrating at the local pub. I do remember sister's first toy, however. It was a home made rattle made of a windpipe from a goose, into which some dried peas or grains were inserted. Then the windpipe was formed into a circle and dried, resulting in a very practical rattle, easy to hold by the baby or to put around her wrist.

We had a black dog named Verny (Trusty), which was a delight to me and probably to my sister. He followed me around the house and yard very faithfully, but unfortunately wasn't around to keep me out of trouble when I came across a jug of kerosine and spilled it on the kitchen floor. Mother came in to find me sitting and __splashing in the middle of the puddle. She also told me that I had killed a young rooster, because I didn't like his crowing. On another occasion, I went swimming beyond my depth in a pond with some of the village boys. Luckily, one of them was either much, taller than I or could swim, and got me out when he saw that I was in trouble. ...

Medical facilities and services in Poland during the 1920's were rather primitive. One winter I suffered from an obstruction in my nose, so dad took me to Pinsk by train to see a doctor. We stayed overnight at some cheap place that didn't have indoor plumbing facilities, for I remember going out in the back yard with father, where we both pee'd in the snow. That seemed like a big deal to me at the time. The doctor diagnosed that I had a polyp, a growth of calcified mucous in the nasal passage, and proceeded to do the operation in his office. There was no anaesthetic available, so he simply laid me down on his operating table and started cutting. I don't recall whether it was pain or the sight of a lot of blood that frightened me, but apparently I put up a bit of a fuss. That in turn upset the doctor, who got excited in turn and slapped me hard on the face, causing me to scream all the louder. Well, dad rushed into the office to see what was going on, and when he saw the welt on my face he was very much upset. There was quite a verbal confrontation, while I sat there with blood streaming from my nose and mouth. Dad threatened to take the doctor to court, but since the polyp had been effectively removed, he never followed up on the threat. ....

One thing that father hated was the idea of compulsory service in the Polish army. After all, he had a three year old child and a pregnant wife at home, and was just getting started in setting up a home and trying his hand at farming. How was the family supposed to survive on the peanuts paid by the army? And what Ukrainian would willingly serve in the Polish army in a country whose president, General Pi1sudski, had annexed a large part of the Ukraine by force ? So father went to a lot of effort to make sure that his service would be as short as possible. I have come across his school certificate indicating that he had completed his primary schooling, but the date was burned out, probably with a cigarette. Somehow he was able to either change various documents or get certification from local people to convince the Polish authorities that he was born in 1896, whereas his actual birth year was 1900. But he did serve in the army for a year or two, in the cavalry. We had two pictures of him in uniform, one with him standing in a group of soldiers with their swords, the other one taken when he was on leave, with me standing in front in shorts , jacket and white shirt, while mother sat with my baby sister , about six months old, in her arms. I last saw these pictures some time before mother died in 1986, but they must be around somewhere, either at my place or Lydia's. ....

Preparations for Emigrating to Canada  ....

Leonard Chwedchuk, FROM REVOLUTION TO DEPRESSION
 (Memoires of an immigrant family from Eastern Europe arriving in
Canada in 1930), (Ottawa, January, 1999) [Microsoft Word Document © Leonard Chwedchuk]

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• Maxim Vasilievich Shalagin (?-c.1935-1937), born in the village of Krasnousolskii [KRASNO-USOLSKII], Russia just east of Sterlitamak and south of Ufa, southern Ural Mountains.
   

• Maxim Vasilievich Shalagin (?-c.1935-1937) and Serafima Felimonovna Klement [Kleon] were the parents of Alexandra (Sonia) Maximovna Shalagin.
   

• Nastasia Klement was the mother of Serafima Felimonovna Klement
   

• Catherine (Ekaterina) Chwedchuk (Fled in c. 1914 to the Ural Mountains near Ufa where she died in c. 1922 together with her two daughters when the family, that included Anton - but not Daniel who was in the USA since 1913 - left to return to Stara Strelna [Strelno, Poland].