Posts about both sides of my family
The Covid-19 pandemic and the recent lockdown here in Melbourne had me searching through my grandmother’s papers. I knew that she had kept notes on the diseases which devastated southern Russia in 1919. It was the time of the Civil War in Russia and my grandfather was fighting with the
It is not too often that I burst out laughing when I turn the page of one of the many family photo albums I have inherited. But when I saw the photo above that is exactly what I did. On a gatepost, which holds one half of a gate, in
Major General Alexei Aleksandrovich Voronov was my maternal great-grandfather. I have written about him once before here. Since then I have discovered a bit more about him. Alexei attended the Pavlovsk military school, graduating in around 1870 as a “Harness Junker”, which appears to have been a rank of senior
If you have read my previous posts you will know that my grandmother, Olga Woronoff, wrote a book, Upheaval, about her life in Russia before and during the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. I have found at least two unpublished manuscripts also written by my grandmother. You might have
Although I have written about his two marriages before, I have not yet looked for more information about my paternal great grandfather, Otto von Fircks – pictured above. Despite having plenty of genealogical information about him, I have not been able to find out much about him as a person,
This weekend, the execution on 17 July 1918, of the last Tsar of Russia, his family and their faithful staff, will be commemorated by many. There will be posts on social media and, no doubt, articles in newspapers and services in the Russian Orthodox churches remembering this dark day in