Ship Lists for Yagodnaya Polyana Immigrants

This list contains 2,780 individuals listed in passenger ship lists. The majority of 
the people listed came from the German Volga village of Yagodnaya Polyana, Russia or 
one of its daughter colonies, Schontal (Schoenthal) or Neu-Yagodnaya. A few of the 
individuals listed came from the nearby colony of Poboschnoye or one of its daughter 
colonies. The ship lists come from every possible source including: the Ellis Island 
Index, AHSGR Clues, Ship Indexes by Janet Flicklinger, Canadian ship lists at the 
Odessa Digital Library by George Dorscher and other copies of lists I have collected
over the years. Since much of the information comes from indexes, and ship lists are 
notoriously inaccurate, or written very sloppily, there are many errors in these 
lists. So use them as a guideline, not as absolutely accurate. Children's ages are 
often listed younger than their actual age, since they rate paid was based on age 
and those under a year came free of charge.

Many of the surnames and some first names were standardized but a note was made of 
the original spelling in the column following the name (name errors). Many of the 
surnames were grossly misspelled in the indexes. The surnames that have some 
variation in spelling that I did not change were Felker-Volker and 
Gerlitz-Goerlitz. Most of the others have been standardized to one spelling for 
ease of searching. Remember it makes no difference precisely how your surnames were
spelled on ship lists, as long as they are recognizable. How they spelled their 
name in later years often had no bearing on how they were spelled on the ship list.
Remember the letters C & K were used interchangeably (so Conrad = Konrad and 
Katharine = Catherine) and the letter V & F and the letters Y & J (Jungmann is 
the same as Yungmann or Youngman). Spelling of first names were also standardized
for ease of searching. Also Johann was a baptismal name for John the Baptist so 
sometimes men may be listed on a ship list as Johann or Joh. when their name was 
actually another name such as Adam. It was because the man's full baptismal name 
was Johann Adam but for the most part the Johann was dropped and the man would go 
by Adam (or Heinrich or Peter or whatever).  Just to confuse things, occasionally 
a Johann something would go by John. Johannes, with the "es" at the end was not 
a baptismal name so if a man was named Johannes he always went by Johannes or John.

There were some interesting trends in these records. Early immigrants, from about
1876 to 1903 or 1904 tended to travel in large groups on one ship. It was typical
to find 50 people from Yagodnaya Polyana on one ship. Starting in about 1905 there
were more single families on a ship or just a couple of families on one ship. 
Also in later years the age of the immigrants dropped. More young married couples
immigrated in the later years. Immigration through Canada seemed to increase in 
the later years also. You can also observe how some surnames tended to cluster 
in particular areas, such as Gorr in Oshkosh or Schneidmiller in Calgary. But 
most surnames seemed to spread throughout Calgary, Endicott, Colfax, Oshkosh, 
Pine Island or Kansas. The most unusual family was a Kaiser family that came 
from Argentina.

Unfortunately, there are probably many individuals from Yagodnaya Polyana who 
were not listed in these records. It could be because their name was very 
misspelled and they could not be found them in the index. The immigration into 
Canada before 1900 is under-represented as are the ports of Boston, Baltimore and
Philadelphia. Most ships with large groups of people from YP were located. I am 
confident that well over half of the immigrants from Yagodnaya Polyana were 
captured in these records due to the wonderful resources from AHSGR and the 
internet.

Patrice Miller patrice@attbi.com 
Updated: October 7, 2002