Finding the Place Once Called Home

 

Finding the specific place of origin for our immigrant ancestors can be challenging. 

While as a general guide, we may know that an ancestor came from, say, Russia, when we consider just how large that country of origin might have been, we realize the size of the challenge facing us in our hope of narrowing the search to a specific city.

Furthermore, over time, locations sometimes underwent a change of identity—or even disappeared entirely—especially in war-torn regions and areas with border changes. And there is the burden of translating a place name from its spoken sound in one language to the way others heard the pronunciation, as rendered by the immigrant arriving in the new country.

So the question is: now that we've seen seaman Michael Melnitchenko arrive safely back at his home port in New York after the second World War, can we depend on the only two records we've found which reported his place of birth? Though the answer on each of the two documents we've found is different, at least they both approximate the same pronunciation. Let's see if that hint leads us to Michael's place of origin.

The first record we had found which provided a birth place for Michael Melnitchenko was a World War II draft registration card. Admittedly, I had my doubts that the card really was for our Michael. Though the middle name given had been poorly transcribed—as "Juan" instead of the more likely "Ivan"—the option of Ivan could have been an Americanized form of the patronym that Michael, as a typical Russian, might have used. But since the date of birth seemed to agree with other records, I'm willing to sweep all questions aside, at least while we explore the possibilities of a place of birth.

That first record stated Michael's place of birth was a city named "Nikolaiev, Russia."

The second mention we found was the passenger record listing his arrival back in New York City as a repatriated seaman, following the attack on the ship for which he had served as chief officer in 1943. That passenger record identified Michael's place of birth as "Necolaeff, Russia."

The problem was, once I tried finding either city in current records, I came up with zero results. There is no city called Nikolaiev, nor is there one called Necolaeff.

However, there is one city which could possibly substitute for those spelling variations, if we make a few allowances. The first is that we consider the phonetic similarities between the two spellings, and play loose with those details. The second is that we realize what the ears of English-speaking people might hear as the final syllable "-eff" might more likely be transliterated from a Russian spelling equivalent to "-ev."

One last detail: the only city name I could squeeze into a shape approximating either of our two options happened to be in a different country. That country, however, had long been occupied by Russia, thus rendering some cities in that country not one name, but two.

Thus, the seaport the Ukrainians call Mykolaiv was known for the entire time of Russian occupation as Nikolaev. 

If that was indeed the place of origin for our Michael Melnitchenko, there are some details which seem to corroborate this discovery. First of all, Nikolaev's long-standing history as a seaport and major ship-building center could possibly be the influence that led Michael to choose his occupation. Perhaps he followed in the footsteps of his own father. Given the position of Nikolaev in relation to the Russian Empire's ample grain exports from the nearby steppes, international commercial activity flourished by the late nineteenth century.

Another encouraging corroboration was that, despite the city being within what we now call Ukraine, at the time when Michael was born, almost two thirds of the city considered their ethnicity to be Russian, not Ukrainian. In all the documents identifying Michael Melnitchenko as a crew member of ocean-going vessels, he consistently reported himself to be Russian, and to speak the Russian language. Growing up in a city with such a history would seem plausible.

Of course, finding any records of Michael's family in such a city would present a challenge, as the government in charge of collecting those records is not the governmental body now responsible for that area. Furthermore, we can already surmise from the date of his daughter Genia's birth in France—January 6, 1924—that Michael and his wife had to have left Nikolaev some time before that point. Given the impetus of the Russian Revolution, the Melnitchenkos may have vacated their homeland long before Genia's birth.

There is one other detail which needs to be addressed, however: just how a seaman from the Russian Empire's Ukrainian coast came to marry a woman whose place of birth was on the very opposite side of the Black Sea.

 

Above: Excerpt from the November 23, 1943, passenger record of the S.S. John Rutledge, showing the entry for repatriated seaman Michael Melnitchenko, giving his place of birth as "Necolaeff." Image courtesy Ancestry.com.

 

In the Suicide Corner

 

Out of the haze of my memories of high school history class I can still recall one documentary film which captured my attention. It was one clever researcher's attempt to piece together the literary descriptions embedded within Homer's Odyssey to discern the actual locations along that fantastical journey.

While some people may be able to do so, I've always found it difficult to trace descriptions of others' navigation reports. Unfortunately, after all these years, I am still no better equipped at guessing just where people have traveled, despite detailed descriptions.

So it is with the mariner's report embedded in the biography of Captain Erich Richter, master of the ill-fated S.S. Richard Olney, once the ship arrived from New York at the north African port of Oran. Granted, the stated mission was to arrive at Salerno, Italy, only days after the historic Salerno landings of the Allied invasion of Italy. But what had been decided at the start of the mission was not what was to unfold, once the Richard Olney left port.

According to the captain's notes written on September 19, 1943, the Richard Olney was carrying explosives, ammunition, cordite, aviation fuel, and other supplies. According to reports from other sources, apparently the Olney was also transporting a field artillery battalion of the 34th U.S. Infantry division. As a troopship—in other words, a commercial shipping vessel used during wartime to convey soldiers—the Richard Olney would not have been able to actually land at a seaport at their destination, but would have had to unload their cargo and troops onto other smaller vessels such as barges, once they arrived at Salerno.

The Richard Olney left Oran as part of a convoy, a formation employed to provide protection from enemy fire. Each ship in the convoy was assigned a specific position in one of two columns. The Olney was directed to take position number thirteen—last ship in the first column, dubbed the "suicide corner."

By September 21, the captain noted receipt of a message from the convoy commander that submarines had been spotted in their vicinity. Orders to each ship in the convoy required keeping a tight formation, but in the midst of the journey, the ship directly in front of the Olney's final position was losing contact with the convoy, and the Olney attempted to reconnect with the ships and escort vessels ahead.

Consulting with navigation tools, the captain determined that the ship needed to readjust its course, for fear they would not "clear Fratelli Rocks." This is where the report lost me in the navigation description. The only "Fratelli Rocks" reference I could find would have put the ship's route passing south of Sicily on their way to Salerno—if, of course, Richter's "Fratelli Rocks" referred to "Scoglio Due Fratelli" or "Two Brothers Rocks." 

That, however, was not the problem soon to face them, as subsequent convoy orders changed the course for about one hour, and then again, through the night, navigation directions adjusted according to signs of threats lurking in the water.

It was at 7:55 a.m. on September 22 when a sudden blast ripped through the Olney from starboard, continuing into the engine room, the force of which buckled the plates on the port side of the ship. The captain, assessing the damage, determined the ship would not sink, and signaled for assistance from nearby ships. A British escort ship provided a tow, and the Olney was brought to port at Bizerte.

While the troops aboard eventually were transported to their destination on the S.S. John Fiske along with the Olney's cargo, a skeleton crew remained with the Richard Olney in port at Bizerte until they could be "repatriated" for service on other vessels. That—and the fuller description I gleaned from the biography written by the captain's daughter, Ursula McCafferty—provided the rest of the story explaining why my godmother's father, Michael Melnitchenko, left New York a crew member on the S.S. Richard Olney, but returned to New York as a passenger on another vessel.

Before the Mission

 

It is always exciting to stumble upon personal details of an ancestor's life which reveal closeness to action confirmed by reports of world history. Discovering that my godmother's father Michael Melnitchenko, chief officer of the S.S. Richard Olney in 1943, endured a harrowing brush with wartime destruction aboard ship, makes me want to discover more about that experience. I want to know what brought him to that fateful moment, and what the plan had been, had the mission gone as planned.

Before we can discuss details of the mission of the Liberty Ship S.S. Richard Olney, though, we need to realize many other plans needed to fall into place—and to do so in a systematic sequence. Here are those many preparatory steps.

The Liberty Ship S.S. Richard Olney was launched January 22, 1943. Sometime before the end of March, 1943, when Captain Erich Richter took charge of the ship, the Richard Olney was berthed in New York harbor, having recently arrived there from Santiago, Cuba. At that point, Michael Melnitchenko was not among those listed as crew members, and I am not able to locate any record of his having been added at that early date.

However, by the time of the ship's crisis on September 22, 1943, Michael was serving as chief officer, according to his written report of the morning's incident. The S.S. Richard Olney was part of a convoy in the Mediterranean, headed to Salerno in the wake of the Allies' invasion of Italy.

Every step along the way to that destination required several other steps to have been successfully cleared out of the way, before the Richard Olney could even begin to enter the Mediterranean Sea. 

Awaiting the right moment to begin their own mission, in September 1943, the Richard Olney had been berthed at the port of Oran in present-day Algeria—but shortly before that, at the start of the second World War, that wouldn't have been possible. 

For one thing, the Mediterranean had effectively been closed to merchant marine traffic since 1941, due to Axis control of the area. In addition, Algeria had been part of French North Africa. But early in the war, France had fallen to the Germans, which impacted the French territories of northern Africa as well, effectively closing off Allied access to the Mediterranean. Operation Torch began clearing those formerly French holdings from the Axis powers, enabling the Allies access to key African ports, including the Algerian port of Oran and ports in nearby Tunisia, including Bizerte, in May of 1943.

That, in turn, cleared the way for Allied forces to mount an attack of nearby Sicily in July from those north African ports, further securing Allied access to Mediterranean waters, and especially paving the way for invasion of Italy. That final operation was what brought the crew of the S.S. Richard Olney to land there in Oran, preparing for and awaiting further orders in September, 1943.

Above map: the plan for the September 1943 Allied invasion of Italy at Salerno, following which the S.S. Richard Olney was to join a second convoy from Oran; colorized version of map courtesy Wikipedia from original government document; in the public domain.

  

Hasn't Christmas Hit Yet?

 

It's time for my biweekly assessment of how I've fared in the past two weeks of plugging away at family history research. Though I keep an eye on progress for each tree I'm building—now down to two trees, as I've consolidated into one the trees for my parents' families, and likewise another one out of my in-laws' separate trees—I also like to watch the ongoing results on DNA matches for family members who have tested. 

Usually, about this time every year, there has been a discernible bulge in the count of total DNA matches, no matter which testing company I'm watching. There is a simple reason for this: thanks to the many people who thought a DNA test kit would be a nifty holiday gift for family members, plus the processing time once the completed kits were received back at the lab, those results were usually posted to everyone's account by mid-February. In other words, Christmas finally hit. And, of course, added to everyone else's list for those who matched within the appropriate distant-cousin range.

Not so, ever since the news broke about the Golden State Killer case. I track match counts at four different companies on a biweekly basis for myself and my husband, as proxies for our extended families, and the numbers have been lackluster.

I have heard from friends and associates who submitted DNA test kits after last December's holiday season that they have yet to even receive their results, so perhaps the seasonal bulge is yet to happen. But I doubt it.

Still, with the proliferation of tools making manipulation of those DNA results easier, I've been able to identify more of those matches and, specifically, just how those strangers connect to our family's lines. I even spent some time in the past two weeks navigating my way around the "spaghetti bowl" that is 23andMe's automatically generated family tree—and spotted some ways to plug in DNA matches.

Of course, each successfully-aligned DNA cousin encourages me to find another challenge to resolve. That, in turn, demands references back to my genealogy database, often involving updates. Before long, there have been dozens of new names entered into the family tree as connections get made with previously unresearched lines.

Within the past two weeks, that process led me to add sixty names to my parents' tree, all of them on my maternal side. That, however, was a modest gain in comparison to what I was able to achieve on my husband's family tree. Thanks mostly to some connections with my mother-in-law's ample family lines, this past two weeks brought 243 new individuals to her line, especially her paternal side, where I discovered an entire branch which had previously been left empty, for lack of data.

That means, at this point, a total count on my tree of 25,212 documented individuals, and 20,088 on my in-laws' tree. Not to mention, I can't wait to find another spare moment to manipulate those spaghetti-string lines on the tree at 23andMe, where my mother-in-law's connections are becoming so much clearer. It never hurts to find encouragement through progress, but it seems we can't achieve that progress without first encountering some head-butting moments of research frustration. 

Off the Shelf: Home is the Sailor, Home from the Sea

 

How exasperating it is to find mention of a book dealing specifically with the topic we're researching, but lacking any reference to either title or author. That was the case earlier this month, when I ran across a forum discussion about the demise of the S.S. Richard Olney, Liberty Ship during World War II. The S.S. Richard Olney, of course, was the ship on which my godmother's father, Michael Melnitchenko, had served as Chief Officer during the time of that incident in 1943.

Thankfully, just this past week, I found another mention of that unnamed—and coveted—book and ordered a copy for myself, so it really hasn't been sitting on my bookshelf for more than, maybe, a hot second.

The book, written by Captain Erich Richter's daughter, Ursula McCafferty, was thankfully mentioned on the same website in which I had found mention of his receipt of the Merchant Marines' Meritorious Service Medal in 1946. Within a bibliography listing all publications regarding the Merchant Marines, the book was listed under the section for "Memoirs of World War II," under the title, Home is the Sailor, Home from the Sea.

As it turns out, the captain of the Richard Olney, who through his calm deportment in the face of serious threat in war time undoubtedly saved the lives of not only fellow crew members but also a division of U.S. infantrymen en route to support a vital operation at Salerno, was at one time a prisoner of war, himself. Born a German, during World War I, his ship had been captured by the British and he was kept as a prisoner in Australia. When Germany's merchant fleet was given as war reparations to the Allies at the close of the Great War, Erich Richter ended up moving his family to America. A career seaman, from that point he served on American vessels.

There was, indeed, a chapter devoted to the incident involving the Richard Olney in the book. How surprised I was, in opening to that chapter, to see a transcription of a letter regarding the event which had been written by my godmother's father as chief officer at the time. There is something about seeing the words of a document originated by a member of one's family which, at least to me, is transfixing. Seeing the name, Michael Melnitchenko, in print on that page seemed to magically transport me back to the memories of my childhood, walking alongside him on one of our visits to his apartment in New York City.

How I wish I would have known, at that time, to ask questions—many questions. But, as my cousin often ruefully admits, we wish now that we had known then that we should have been asking those questions. Though Michael Melnitchenko is now long gone—even his daughter has been gone for almost two decades—I wish I could have at least asked my mother if she knew of the experiences he had been through in his career. Although when they reconnected over visits, they always looked like they were engaged in so many deep and fascinating conversations, I doubt even she had any idea.

 

The Complicated Route Leading to That Rabbit Hole

 

Ah, the "rabbit hole." Almost any researcher knows of it: that tempting—and often misleading—path which engulfs our good intentions and buries us with fascinating, but ultimately useless, details.

I'd posit that one requirement to qualify a research find as a "rabbit hole" is that it must have a complicated path leading to its official door. Let's see if we can reconstruct that path to today's rabbit hole.

We are, in case you need a reminder, hunting for any genealogical information on a woman named Alexandra Manouiloff, formerly of Marseilles, who immigrated to New York City and completed her petition for naturalization just before dying in 1966. This Alexandra was noted to be sister of my godmother's mother, Lydia Leonoff Melnitchenko (at least, as the Americans would list her married name). 

Searching for the surname Manouiloff produced little of consequence, when employing the usual genealogical websites, so I struck out in a different direction. I took my search to the archived newspaper collections, and ultimately out in the wide world to Google.

The first sign I could find of any mention of that surname—at least spelled in that precise manner—was in a commentary called "Bits for Breakfast," written by George Douglas and published in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 20, 1917. It was just a blip of a mention, but given the context—the recent changes in government in Russia—it was enough to give me a research toe hold.

Douglas began his observations by mentioning, "One of the first promises of the Russian Duma is a free press." The writer then went on to refer to the many European governments which had recently been rather heavy-handed in their policies of censorship.

He wrapped up his point by producing an excerpt from a mere report of a speech said to have been given by "Professor Paul Milyukov" in the Duma. The author, apparently, considered it to be a prime example of the difficulty of censorship.

"I hold in my hands," the professor was alleged to have said, "a copy of the Berliner Tageblatt for September 16, which contains an article entitled, 'Manouiloff --- (censored) Sturmer --- (censored).''

That was only a minor portion of a speech by Milyukov which Douglas attributed as a key cause of the change in the Russian government of that time. While on the one hand, as it is all I had been able to find on any mentions of that surname Manouiloff, I want to stay put, riveted on that one detail, on the other hand, we can't just sweep all those associated names under the rug. Those are details which will help us set the stage—whatever that stage might turn out to be.

Let's go back and review those names. First, the professor: who, it turns out, was actually politician Pavel Milyukov, whose many impassioned speeches seemed designed to elicit emotional responses. Indeed, his speech on November 1, 1916, addressing the Russian Duma attacked then-prime minister Boris Stürmer.

Stürmer, as it turned out, had an assistant who, in Russian fashion, went by the name Manasevitch Manouiloff. We know now, by our understanding of the workings of Russian patronyms, that Manasevitch would be the patronymic form referring to Manouiloff's father—what we would consider a given middle name actually being a formal and acceptable way of referring to a man, sometimes in place of including his given name.

The speech attributed to Milyukov had been printed up in various British and American journals. We learn, in gleaning clues from these journals, that Manouiloff had been arrested the previous September for "blackmailing the Union Bank of Moscow." In addition, he was fingered as "a former functionary of the secret Russian police in Paris." His purpose, it seems, was to furnish reports to his superiors on the activities of Russian "revolutionists."

Some time following such accusations, this Manouiloff did eventually end up in prison, perhaps not so much for being implicit in a scheme to bribe editors of key newspapers, but more as a function of the demise of the entire Russian parliamentarian provisional government.

Enter first sighting of said rabbit hole.

In the turmoil of the waning years of the tsarist government, there was one woman who, somehow, figured significantly in the story of what became of the tsar, his wife and family, and the infamous spiritual leader known as Rasputin. That woman, a lady in waiting in the court of the last Emperor of All Russia, became a close confidante of the tsarina, Alexandra Feodorovna.

Perhaps only because Anna Vyrubova managed to escape her Bolshevik captors do we have her memoir of those last years of the Russian court. I certainly wouldn't have known of that history—having never researched ancestors with Russian heritage until embarking on this exploration of my godmother's family—except that, thanks to that all-encompassing Google search for the surname Manouiloff, I discovered its thrice-mentioned appearance in Vyrobova's manuscript.

Thankfully, Anna's memoirs are freely available to all who want to explore her story through the foresight of Project Gutenberg. But I warn you—should you want to do more than search for Manouiloff's mere mentions in her manuscript—the tightly-packed text can wear on your eyes. Better to find a copy of the book, Memories of the Russian Court, or its newly remade reprint, now entitled My Dear Friend, the Tsarina.

Or, for those who would prefer, at the start of this weather-stricken weekend, to freely jump with abandon into a beguiling four-hundred-page rabbit hole of pre-revolution Russian court history, you can start with the typewritten transcription here.

And don't say I didn't warn you. 

So, Just How DO You Spell That Name?

 

Some surnames have got it made. There isn't much wiggle room when it comes to spelling a name like Baker, bestowing a certain sense of research confidence. But Manouiloff? Oh, let me count the ways a name like that can be messed up.

When I first stumbled upon the possibility that my godmother Genia, only child of war refugees Michael and Lydia Melnitchenko, might have had an aunt who also immigrated from their interim residence in France, I thought I was on to the beginning of a productive search for at least one branch of her roots.

Not so. Just as unexpectedly as Alexandra Manouiloff appeared in records linked to the wandering Melnitchenkos, she vanished from the scene. First I found her in Marseilles. Then I spotted her in a passenger list, arriving in New York City. And not long after she filed her petition for naturalization, she died.

Oh, I checked all the usual places for further signs of her name in records, but without any success. That's when I took my search straight to the search engines and out from the confines of genealogical websites. There are, as you've realized from past searches here, many ways to find further information on surnames in general.

What could I find about the surname Manouiloff? Sadly, not much—but of what I did discover, it will take more than one post and, I promise you, a long slide down a rabbit hole as well.

Where would a surname like Manouiloff show up, you ask? I tried directing that question to the surname distribution site, Forebears.io, but was rewarded for my effort by a null set—plus a list of alternate spellings to try, many (but not all) of which led back to Russia.

Reconsidering my query, I thought maybe a suffix like "-off" didn't look very Russian. Perhaps it was more likely that Russians might end such a sound with "-ov." Furthermore, since the name, as we saw it, came from a refugee who had settled in France, for whom the middle syllable, spelled "oui," might actually sound like the French word for yes, "oui," we might need to reconsider that section of the surname as well. Once again trying to think like a Russian, perhaps the spelling might originally have been more like "uy"—thus, I settled on the Forebears alternate choice, "Manuylov."

That didn't tell me much.

Face it: Alexandra Manouiloff's surname could have been spelled in any of a kazillion ways, especially considering it had passed through an intermediary stop before arriving on American shores to be mangled by English-speaking bureaucrats.

In fact, as far as the French went, during the time period spanning the war-torn twentieth century, when Alexandra would have settled in Marseilles, one French genealogy site indicated that only one person was born with that surname at all. And whoever that was, it was someone who was born in Paris.

Now, keep in mind, all we have for Lydia's and Alexandra's addresses in France were for Marseilles, but if you recall Lydia's daughter's profession—a ballet dancer—we need to remember that Genia spent quite a bit of time in Paris receiving her training and then beginning her career. It is not beyond possibility that having an aunt in Paris to chaperone her activities when Lydia was not available would have made that arrangement more realistic.

Who might that one Manouiloff born in Paris have been? To Google I went for more information, and found references to one "J. Manouiloff" referenced as a contributor to a few research articles published in French science journals in the 1970s. Whether that J. Manouiloff was one and the same as a Joseph Manouiloff listed in a French genealogy site who has since died in Paris, I can't tell.

There were, of course, other Manouiloffs listed at both Ancestry and MyHeritage, but I can't at this point tell whether there was any connection. As Alexandra was listed as Lydia's sister, and I already have discovered Lydia's maiden name, we need to remember that Manouiloff was Alexandra's married name—a name useful for tracing her details in later life, but not helpful for the years before her arrival in France.

Before chasing after any conjecture about alternate spellings, though, there is one fascinating detail I stumbled across that we may as well stop to examine. I warn you: it will be a rabbit hole, and likely not of a type to equip us to find answers to our questions about Lydia's family, but if you are interested in Russian history, you may find it a fascinating detour. You see, embedded deep within the Russian history which was likely at the root of what caused the young Melnitchenkos to flee their homeland was another player's vignette in the Russian saga, someone who also happened to claim that very same name, spelled exactly the same way: Manouiloff.