15 April 2011

Krusinski Trusinski nugget of information


In my ongoing research, I was looking for information about Kurschinski (and its spelling variations) and Latvia. I came upon and google book source (I highly recommend searching google books for information) and have cut and pasted the information here. Click on the image to enlarge it.

The information is in German on the left and Polish on the right. It sure seems to be an AMAZING coincidence that there is someone with the last name "Krusinski" with the specific alias of "Trusinski". The specific person mentioned in the image is not anywhere on my family tree. This is amazing as there is an ongoing issue with people in the mid-1800s changing their name from Kruschinsky/Kursinsky to Truschinsky/Trusinski. Read earlier entries if you were not aware of this background.

08 April 2011

Long overdue update




Well, after a series of failed deadlines, the Estonian research has been completed and sent to me. My only real complaint is the inability to complete the service in a timely manner. I had to inquire about the progress in a series of emails to get them to move on the project. It certainly seems as if I not continued to inquire with them it may never have been completed. I had first contacted them in early 2010 and ordered the translation some months later. I agreed to pay them a very reasonable fee (from my perspective) to acquire the documents from the Estonian archives and then the scanned them and sent them to me without asking for payment. I did tell them that I would be asking them to translate them, so I am sure they relied on that and I know they added on the fee after the whole process was completed early this year. After reviewing them, I considered their fee structure, and said that I'd like 10 hours of translation services. I specified which pages to translate first and what would follow. As you can see, I've attached a few of the pages that were scanned and sent to me prior to their translation.

I have no real ability to comment on the quality of the translation services, specifically, though I can say that there were very few gaps in the pages that they did translate, so I presume they were skilled in reviewing and translating German handwriting. The fee for everything worked out to a little over $200. They wanted me to send my credit card information by fax and specified that I not send it by email. I also could have wired it to their bank, but I learned that the bank fee for doing that was quite high. Because of that, I chose to pay it via Western Union. I received the completed translation the following day.

What did this whole process further in my research? The following events occurred in the early 1880s.

I had figured my relative, Eduard TRUSCHINSKY, was being sued by his landlord, but I was wrong because he sued the owner of a mill with whom he had an agreement for a few years. He sued the landlord for failing to comply with the terms of the lease. This landlord was Baron KRUDENER and it occurred merely a few miles north of the present Latvian-Estonian border and along the Baltic coast. Those terms required the landlord to maintain the property, provide materials for the tenant to make any repairs, etc. From the statements gathered in the court process, it seems that the landlord was wholly negligent in this matter so Eduard sued for damages. Eduard passed away before the legal process had concluded. After Eduard's death, his attorney indicated that Eduard's widow wanted the case to continue. The last communication from the attorney is a second request for a document and in that request the attorney notes that the case cannot proceed without the specified document. There are no further communications present in the series of documents, implying that the other party didn't supply the needed document. Perhaps that is a coincidence or perhaps it is not. What would you do if you had received that last document from the party who was suing you??

A second and in some ways a more exciting benefit is the identification of the attorney acting on behalf of Eduard TRUSCHINSKY, August KRUMING. In a correspondence, he identifies himself as the attorney and brother-in-law of the plaintiff, Eduard TRUSCHINSKY. What that bit of information does is confirm a whole group of TRUSCHINSKYs which I had documented and strongly suspected -but been unable to definitively confirm- as being related to Eduard. Because of this information I can add at least 27 other TRUSCHINSKYs, their spouses and descendants. Further, it provides the possibility I can link this line of Truschinsky's in the past to "Trusinskis" in the present who are still in Latvia. That is useful, because the other, more established line of research doesn't link to any TRUSCHINSKIS in Latvia today, though it does to some other relatives, albeit not with the surname TRUSINSKIS. Unfortunately, it still doesn't solve the problem of getting a few different people in Latvia with the name TRUSINSKIS to reply to my inquiries.

If any of you TRUSINSKIS in Latvija are reading this, do you have any heritage from the Leipaja region of Latvija? If so, we may be related. If you are unsure, perhaps you could ask an older relative who might know...

Overall, though a bit tedious, I am glad to have used the Estonian research service. It provided a more interesting story on one of my relatives on my paternal side AND, perhaps more importantly, provided a link to a whole new set of relatives which -in the future- I may be able to link to TRUSINSKIS in present-day Latvia.