As a family historian and writer, I am always keen to discover stories about my ancestors. So when I stumbled upon the story of one of my ancestors fighting a duel, I just had to find out more! It was not the easiest task, as the original story was in
Every now and again I dive into the large plastic tub which holds the many letters my father kept. Most of them were written by his two sisters but there is also a rather large stack of letters from my cousin Wolf Lackschewitz, who I have written about previously. Wolf,
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
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,
There is something about reading the personal letters of my ancestors which is very addictive. Recently my friend Sveta, who lives in Russia, sent me transcripts of letters which my great grandfather, Konstantin Petrovich Kleinmichel, wrote to his sister Olga Petrovna Volkonskaya in the late 1800s. You can follow Sveta
Searching for information on my maternal grandfather, Pavel Voronov (Paul Woronoff) uncovered more material than I ever thought possible and I have written quite a few posts about him. However, moving one generation up the tree and the information is more difficult to come by. Naturally, if I could read