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All of my ancestors originated from the Kutschurgan Catholic enclave near Odessa. Therefore, my experience – knowledge of these records and the retrieval thereof mostly applied to this area.
The majority of the original settlers arrived in Kutschurgan villages in 1808 and 1809. Unfortunately, birth, baptismal, death, and marriage records for the early years are very sparse. The Catholic Church recors for the Kutschurgan villages for the years of 1830 to 1915 are relatively complete and are currently archived in the Saratov Archive in Saratov, Russia and are retrievable.
Prior to the Russian Revolution, the Church records were the primary documents for births, deaths, and marriages. After the Russian Revolution, the Russians no longer allowed Churches to issues such records. Therefor, beginning in this period, all birth, death and marriage records had to be registered with the State Civil Registry Office. However, due to the Russian complexity and unpredictability of their methodology of filing such records, it is most difficult to determine as to where one may find these records.
While researching archived files for records pertaining to the list of names of people who were processed through the “Filtration Camp System”, it was discovered that these same files also contained the Civil Birth, Death, and Marriage records for the years of the 1920s and 1930s for the Odessa region. These records are now retrievable.
I am listing the names of my relatives for whom I have found civil records.