The Search for Justina - National Archives

After our visit to the National Archives last week, Mom and I felt empowered enough to search a branch of our family tree about which we know so little. My great-grandmother Justina Keil was one of many Germans who lived in Russia before immigrating to the United States.

My great-grandparents George Frederick and Justina (Keil) Dick

When Catherine the Great (a German princess) rose to power, she encouraged Germans to settle in Russia. The Germans did by setting up townships and schools that were more advanced than what the Russians had at that time.

After her death, the political environment deteriorated for the Germans so they began to move westward to the United States in search of a better life, i.e. an unoppressed one. Nearly all of my ancestors were among those Germans that settled in Russia before immigrating here.


My great-grandmother Justina came to the U.S. when she was a mere whisp of a girl of sixteen. She traveled with her brother Conrad, his wife Sophie and their infant son Phillip. When they left, Justina's mother told her that she was dead to her.


They never saw her again.


Now the question is: When and where did they arrive? I went to the National Archives to find the answers. The entrance for researchers is on Pennsylvania Avenue across the street from the U.S. Navy Memorial. If you want to see the Declaration of Independance, the Bill of Rights, etc. you enter through the south entrance on Independence Avenue. I was issued a temporary badge signifying that I was ther doing research.


The amount of information stored here is overwhelming. I started with the documents of immigrants arriving at the port of New York from the records of the U.S. Customs Service, 1820-1897. There is a CD-Rom of Russians to America from 1850-1896. There are also several volumes of a printed series: Migration from the Russian Empire: Lists of Passengers Arriving at the Port of New York.


Justina apparently did not come to America via New York.


I turned to Ancestry.com which offers their services for free within the National Archives and Records Administration building. There I found her on the 1920 Census in Washita County, Oklahoma. I was surprised to find the year of her immigration to be 1889. We thought it was 1891.




Maybe she told the family it was '91 to knock a couple of years off of her age? The librarian in the Geneaology section of the Archives asked if she would have done that. I wouldn't know because she died exactly 26 years before to the day I was born, but looking at the women in my family, it is NOT a stretch of the imagination, by any means.


I spent 5 hours searching records and came up with nothing, so I will have to refocus my efforts and look elsewhere. Maybe at the Archives, maybe some place entirely different.



But I will find her.