Russian Military Conscription Records c. 1900?
Hello,
Can anyone tell me if there are records available of Russian military conscriptions around the turn of the 20th century? I have a Jewish ancestor who reportedly fled to Scotland and then America to avoid being conscripted into the army around 1899-1900. He also changed his name while in Scotland so I have very little reliable information about his true original surname, and only a few clues about his birth location. I'm hoping a military record would provide some clues.
If anyone has knowledge about these types of records, I'd appreciate your insight!
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Hello!
Military records like that are likely going to be kept at the locality level, so you would need to know a town or at least a district that he lived in, in order to see if a record like that might be available still today. If you have some ideas of where he lived before going to Scotland, let me know and I can try and help you look for records.
You might consider meeting with the Family History Library expert on UK Jewish genealogy and Jewish genealogy in general. He may be able to help you find some additional clues in UK (or US) records to help you jump back to Russia. You can schedule a free virtual genealogy consultation with him here on our Family History Library consultation booking page: https://go.oncehub.com/ResearchStrategySession.
Hope this helps!
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Thank you, Ellie! I believe it would be helpful to schedule a genealogy consultation and will do that.
Unfortunately, I only have a "hunch" about the location, due to the mystery surrounding this persons unknown surname. I do believe, based on DNA testing and his wife's birth location, that he came from the Suwałki region. His name (chosen as an adult, I do not know his actual birth name) was Anton Lutynski and he was born 1872-1874. He married Antonina Kruhelska in 1900 in Carfin, Scotland. She was born in Makowszczyzna, (Wiżajny, Suwałki, Podlaskie) Poland.
I would especially like to look into the town of Wyłkowyszki (Wyłkowyszki district, Suwałki Province, Russian Empire as it was called in 1900 -it is Vilkaviškis, Lithuania today). I have discovered multiple surnames from DNA matches from this town, as well as several that match a surname similar to one found on Anton's marriage record.
If you have any suggestions for finding records for this specific location I would love to hear them! I have tried looking through the card catalog, and also trying an image search but I am not very proficient with them and may be missing something.
Thank you very much!
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Hi!
It was nice to meet with you this morning! I felt like the research problem was a bit familiar - this explains it!
As far as records for Wyłkowyszki go, here's all that we have: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/results?count=20&placeId=70208&query=%2Bplace%3A%22Poland%2C%20Suwa%C5%82ki%2C%20Wy%C5%82kowyszki%22&subjectsOpen=390194-50
Looks like mostly Evangelical Lutheran church books.
There are indexes of Roman Catholic Church books for the town here: https://www.metrikai.lt/index.php?F6=Vilkavi%C5%A1kio+RKB
As far as Jewish records go, check out the JewishGen Litvak SIG and this page for the town: https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/vilkovishk/Home.html
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