Sunday, May 3, 2015

Stefan Ramik and the identification of Bela Cerkow, Russia

Stefan (Steve) George Ramik was my great-grandfather (my mother's mother's father). My family history on that branch of the tree is currently at a dead end, with no information beyond my great-grandparent's names. I hope that is going to change sometime soon.

On his registration card he wrote that he was born Oct 1, 1888 in "Bela Cerkow", Russia.




I have long struggled to identify this location. Tonight I may have had a breakthrough. While doing another Google search for "Bela Cerkow" (not really expecting to find anything new) the second result in my search was something that has never appeared before in previous searches. It was the city of "Bila Tserkva", in modern day Ukraine.



But, of course, this isn't Russia. My mother has told me that even though he was technically born in Russia he never considered himself a true Russian, but instead considered himself ethnically Polish. There is in fact an interesting historical reason for this.

The "Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth" was an independent nation that existed from 1569-1795. The extent of this nation covered parts of many modern nations, including modern Ukraine. While it was a union of two different nations (Poland & Lithuania, obviously) apparently Poland was the dominant influence. In the image below the colored sections (pink/pinkish colors) all represent the extent of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Lithuanian_Commonwealth

At the end of this nation's existence it was split into three partitions. One of those partitions fell to the Russian Empire, including the area that includes the town of "Bila Tserkva" mentioned earlier. The name of this town translates literally to "White Church". The Polish spelling is something much closer to "Bela Cerkow", which is how my great-grandfather spelled it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitions_of_Poland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bila_Tserkva



This annexation of Bila Tserkva into Russia was accomplished in 1793, almost 100 years before his birth in 1888. I hope to continue researching the history of this area, beyond what is available on Wikipedia, to hopefully find information that suggests that people born in the late 1800's in Bela Tserkva would have identified themselves more as Polish than Russian.

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