On-line forum for Germans from Russia Researchers

How can I search the database BY VILLAGE and NOT by surname? For example, I want to see a list of everyone born in Neudorf. Anyone? Thanks!
Justin

Hi Justin,

Because there are almost 2 million names in our database, we had to put some restrictions on search. This means that you have to put in at least 3 characters of a first name OR at least 3 characters of a last name before you can conduct a search. For example, you are looking for someone who's first name is Johann but you don't know his last name but you know he came from the village of Neuburg. You would put Johann in the first name field and then Neuburg in the birthplace field and then select search. This will bring up all named Johann and born in Neuburg, not necessarily all Neuburg in South Russia. It may also bring up some who were born in Neuburg, Germany, neuburg, Kherson, Ukraine, Russia, etc. Everyone enters their data into their databases a little differently. Some will just put Neuburg as the place of birth, some will put Neuburg, Odessa, South Russia, some will put Neuburg, Russia, etc. By typing in just Neuburg, you can at least capture everyone who lived in a village named Neuburg.

I hope this helps.

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Gayla Aspenleiter
Black Sea German Research Webmaster and Database Administrator

Grr... that's what I was afraid of!

I'm writing a book about Neudorf, Glückstal and it would have been super helpful just to be able to pull up all hits on Neudorf. Is there no way at all to change the search paramenters?

Sorry Justin, it would crash our server if we removed the parameters of three characters.
Another option for you: go to www.odessa3.org and select "Collections" then "Full text search" then under query type "neudorf" and select "St Petersburg Archives" in the data category and search. This should give you the results you are looking for. You can do the same thing by changing the data category to "war records" to also get more families from Neudorf. Just remember that Neudorf was a village in other areas of South Russia besides the Odessa area. You might also want to check out this list published on Odessa3.org http://odessa3.org/collections/sources/link/grbooks.txt. Hope this helps.

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Gayla Aspenleiter
Black Sea German Research Webmaster and Database Administrator