It is Mother's Day 2020 when I write this post, and fitting that I have been able to put together another piece of my mother's family history puzzle.
My grandmother, Elizabeth Schmidt Reuber pictured above at age 14, was born in "Vranovac, Yugoslavia" in 1914. This location name appears on the ship passenger list and in obituaries of Elizabeth and her sisters, but is elusive on any map I had seen. This is a place that I now have discovered no longer exists as a settlement, but that I have found on a map at last.
Oral History
Along the way to this discovery I have been guided by clues in oral history. My grandmother always said it was "near Sarajevo"; a Google maps search near Sarajevo shows a mountain named Vranovac; our neighbour Joe Benolich used to say he and Grandma were born in the same country, as Italian borders shifted over time; I find a Vranova in Croatia and a Vranovac in Serbia that are strong contenders.
Germans from Russia
My mother's ancestors were Germans from Russia, so-called Volga Germans that emigrated from Germany to settle around the Volga river. These groups arrived in Russia prior to other groups, like my father's German ancestors that settled near closer to the Black Sea. There is a lot of information about these groups of people and I feel that I have already the basics in hand, learning by osmosis from my father and others over the years. And so I search the internet and find endless lists of German colonies in Russia, spelling variations, census documents, plat maps and photos - but no colonies in the former Yugoslavia and only the most basic clues that a German colony spelled "Vranovac" may have even existed.
The Search
I dive in to Ancestry.com and pore over FamilySearch online, continually distracted by clues for this topic and others, rabbit holes too numerous and deep to allow a determined focus. I am quickly realizing that there is so much more to learn.
I purchase memberships to two of the many Germans from Russia historical societies to gain access to their vast holdings. I attend local meetings run with German precision and witness a tense and passionate "bun fight" over the number of book shelves allotted to the society's library by a rival group. I read snippets of history and try to follow the complicated changes in borders as countries won or lost in conflict. I join Facebook groups and search for keywords, monitor posts and learn from others. I am too afraid to post my questions in the groups, as these people are serious genealogists and historians that don't appear to tolerate dabblers.
And then I see the Daum lists. "The Germany Minority in Former Galicia 1750-1940" includes mention of the colony of Vranovac, and I find my way to sending German researcher Manfred Daum an email to order a custom package of information for the Eberwein surname. Eberwein is my great grandmother Elizabeth Eberwein Schmidt's maiden name. His response and the PDF arrive almost immediately. So many Eberweins were born or lived in a place called Vranovac!
But, still, where is Vranovac?
A Breakthrough
My big breakthrough comes in the form of another stranger, a man in Germany. Uwe has a large Eberwein family tree online with names and dates going back to the 1600s. One branch of the tree shows promise and includes names that match my ancestors on other family trees I have seen. The tree ends abruptly with the name of my great grandmother, Elizabeth Eberwein... She is the matriarch pictured above looking particularly weary, with her youngest child on her lap. The German family tree shows Elizabeth's birth information but nothing else. The rest of the tree is rich with information, documenting Eberweins back into the 1600s. I am thinking that Uwe knows what she is doing in genealogy and send him an email.
It is months before I receive a reply, and I smile at Uwe's guarded yet direct German phrasing in English, grateful that he has taken the time to respond to a stranger's offer of further information about the Canadian family of Elizabeth Eberwein. He does not seem particularly interested in receiving my information in return but, over the course of several more weeks, Uwe provides me with tantalizing bits to help me, three or four sentences at a time. It is as if he is testing my level of commitment and worthiness to receive the information.
Uwe reveals that he has been to Vranovac in the 1980s in his own search for the Eberwein ancestral village! It is a real place, although no longer a settlement with people in it. He tells me that he saw only a forgotten cemetery with just a few neglected gravestones and he does not send me any photos. Eventually, he provides me with an old map and I see the dot on it that makes everything else fall into place for me. And then she gives me directions for finding the present-day area on Google Earth.
Vranovac
Vranovac was a government-sponsored German colony established in 1895 in a heavily forested area. There were 20 founding families, among them three Eberwein families that include my great grandmother's. My grandmother, Elizabeth Schmidt Reuber was born there.
Vranovac was situated between Johova and Tukljucani, by the Una river in present-day Bosnia. The location is nearly on the country's northern border with Croatia and is actually quite far from Sarajevo, although I can see why my grandmother would use that large city's reference as a close-enough landmark for us to visualize.
The administrative centre for Vranovac was, and still is, Banja Luka where the Eberwein-Schmidt family obtained their passport in 1928. The photo of the family above is, in fact, their passport photo and you can see the outlines of two official stamps on each of the bottom corners.
Below is part of the old map, provided to me by Uwe from Germany. The dot of Vranovac is highlighted in yellow:
Next Up on the Blog... Google Earth
My next post in this family history blog will feature my Google Earth project showing more detail about the landscape around Vranovac. The Google Earth project link will show other areas as well, tracing the Eberwein family emigration over generations: from Germany in the 1600s to Russia by the late 1700s, Yugoslavia/Bosnia by the early 1900s and Canada by 1928.
