1. This term seems to reaffirm the Imperial Russian perspective that the Russian Germans were marked as a foreign group.
The earliest Mariampole records were written by Pastor Lange.
Literate Germans were taught to write their names in Sunday School or Confirmation class. Neither Pauline nor Adolph wrote their names on their 1920 mortgage in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The concept of one correct spelling of one’s name had not yet been adopted.
Sometimes names were written in Russian, sometimes in German, because the scribe did not know how to write the name in the opposite language! I have seen this in the records.
Gabersat/Gaberzat is also used as an example.
2. A reference to Internal Passports suggests that they may have been instituted by this time.
Surnames of German males are left undeclined, i. e. grammatically incorrect.
Mariianna Kuchinskaia appears on page 206, 208, and 209.
I also recognize the name Pastor Radke.
Kassalat is also used as an example from a marriage record from Seirjai.
Kirche indicates a Protestant church.
Duplicate church records are also mentioned on page 210.
A German immigrant girl wrote her name in Russian in her German language Luther’s Small Catechism which she brought with her in 1904 from Kalvaria.
The German language that the Suwalki Russian Germans spoke is usually referred to in the US as Plattdeutsch (Low German).
Seymour, Connecticut, is a small industrial town with an enclave of pre WWI Suwalkian German immigrants. They lived in Seirjai near the Belarus border between 1789 and 1850 before they moved to Kalvaria, near the Polish border circa 1850.
