Village Ostrowka: connecting families

Some who live in the area call Ostrowka the "one house village." I would like to share some pictures, with credit to Harry Stahl, Guenter Stahl and Dave Obee.
To the left is a picture of the Stahl house taken in the fifties. Below is a picture of that same house taken a few years ago, and a photo from many years ago of the Ostrowkaer Posaunenchor when many people lived in the village.

To the left two people examine what is left of the Lutheran cemetary - just a few stones. Most were used for construction material.










Here's an article I wrote in 2004 about the village of Ostrowka, and the former house of the Stahl family. The article was published in the SGGEE journal. http://www.sggee.org/

Ostrowka Research
In 2002, after a discussion with Virginia Less, I volunteered to start collecting information on the village of Ostrowka. It is located in Volhynia East of Nowograd Wolhynsk about 10 km ESE of Neumanowka, and is the ancestral village of my NEUMANNS. At the SGGEE Conference in Regina in the summer of 2002, Dave Obee told me that he had been to Ostrowka (or what is left of it) that spring, and sent me two pictures - one of a meadow and one of two people looking at a couple of tombstones from the former Lutheran cemetery. Dave had told me that the entire village of Ostrowka had been demolished in the 1930's as a consequence of collectivization of agriculture.

I have not had a lot of time to work on this but I did start collecting surnames of people who were associated with Ostrowka from various sources. Around 1925 Lydia NEUMANN (my father's first cousin) married Edward STAHL in Ostrowka. In 1927 they emigrated to Saskatchewan. In the summer of 2002, after the SGGEE Convention, my wife and I made a side trip to Oxbow to look up their descendants. We had a very nice visit and I was able to add some valuable information to the family tree. I also made phone contact with one of Lydia’s sons in BC.
A few months ago I received an email from Irene Kopoetzke in Germany asking about the STAHL connections I had in Canada. Harry Stahl, who had recently immigrated from Kazahkstan to Germany had posted a message on her list asking about possible Stahl relatives in Saskatchewan. Irene asked me to check out the possibility of a connection my STAHL information. Irene and I had been in contact about three years ago, and she had helped me identify documentation of land confiscated from Julius NEUMANN (father of Lydia) in 1915 in Volhynia. She recalled that STAHL was one of the surnames on my list.

Irene put me in direct contact with Harry Stahl in Germany, and our contact by e-mail produced some amazing consequences. Harry Stahl turned out to be a nephew of Edward Stahl (husband of Lydia Neumann). Harry told me of his recent trip to Ostrowka to do research on the STAHL family connections there and then he sent me some great pictures - some of the Ostrowka area today, and some old family pictures. Amazingly, he found that the Stahl house was still standing. One old Ostrowka picture he sent me from his collection included a 1925 outdoor wedding shot including a large number of people. What a treasure to have that picture! Now if I could only identify the people in it.

I then called one of my STAHL contacts in Canada to tell them I had been in touch with a STAHL in Germany that I believed was related to them. I was referred to another STAHL in BC (someone I had not been in touch with before), a first cousin of the STAHL contact in Germany - also a nephew of the above Edward STAHL. Amazingly, this man had also recently been to Ostrowka. He too sent me a number of Ostrowka pictures and an account of his experience there. He had visited the Stahl house (it is still known by that name today) and met with the current owner, the former (and last) manager of the collective farm. It turns out that the Stahl house was kept for that purpose, but today is in private ownership. Once email addresses were exchanged, immediately pictures and emails started flying back and forth between Germany, BC and Ontario.

This has been a most moving and amazing experience. Parts of a family that had lost contact many decades ago are now re-connecting, and the circle is widening across oceans and continents. I now feel motivated to take on this Ostrowka research more earnestly. I have new information to examine, and I would invite anyone who has a connection to this village or information about it to contact me.