Obituary Committee Report

By the time you read this, we hope to have placed the obituary index for the letter W onto the GRHS web site. This means that we have only one letter left to input, the letter S. We believe that we may complete inputting the S obits by the end of 2008. GRHS now has over 235,000 obituaries in total!

If you have "old" obituaries, and would be willing to make them a part of the GRHS Obituary Collection, we ask you to send them, or copies of them, to Rachel at GRHS. Unless we can include your "old" obituaries in the Collection, as time passes, they may get lost, misplaced, or even worse, thrown away.

We can use your help with the Obituary Inputting Project. If you would like to help us, please contact Rachel at GRHS headquarters or Ted.

As of 1 January 2007, the hardworking Obituary Committee volunteers have input about 190,000 obituaries. I cannot thank enough each and every volunteer, present and past, for all of the hard work and continued dedication to the Obituary Inputting Project.

Our towns, where we go to trade, are the neighboring: Killig [Kilia], Kanischan [Kauschani], Kirschenow [Kischineff], Bender and Ismaitof [Ismail] and others within 3.4 to 5 miles. In Bessarabia, there are already 13 established colonies, each one at a strength of 130-144 household heads. Dearest friends. Whoever of you has the desire to follow us, sell everything except a wooden wagon, a steel plow and a good team of horses. The one who brings these with him can soon have bread in Bessarabia.

Dearest Friends, when you receive this letter, inform us through those carrying our letters how you are and how things are going with you. We ask that all of you be content with this letter because the time and circumstances did not allow for anything else.

In closing, we commend all of you to the protection of the Almighty. Remaining your true friends.

Arzis Colony 29 August, 1818

Christoff Griep Jacob Griep Daniel Mantey Adam Voltz Jacob Tim Andreas Schultz Friedrich Wakenhat has died. Both the Klukens have died.

The old Mellentins have died, trot the children are alive. Andreas Schbltz married the daughter of Jacob Drews in Warsaw and he has two living children.

We are also reporting that we have plowed the land once and harvested twice. However, 8-12 oxen have to be harnessed to the plow. The sheep are such that one gets 8-10 Ocken [6 Kr. = 1.28 liters] of tallow out of one tail. One Ocken weighs 3 pounds. There is such an abundance of fruit here that one can buy an Ocken worth for 7 Polish Groschen. As for garden produce in this place, we have the nicest potatoes, melons and watermelons [Arabusen].