52 Ancestors 2015: #31 – Wasyl Cazakoff, From Russia to Canada

I’m participating in “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2015 Edition” by Amy Johnson Crow of No Story too Small.

For the 31st week of this challenge, I used the optional weekly theme (Easy) to write about my husband’s maternal great-grandfather, Wasyl W. Cazakoff.

Wasyl W. Cazakoff

As my husband’s ancestors go, Wasyl has been pretty easy to research, even though I don’t have all the documentary evidence I’d like for him. Wasyl, like others who belonged to the Doukhobor pacifist sect, avoided “bureaucratic intervention in their lives by refusing to register births, deaths, marriages, and in particular, by steadfastly opposing military service”. [1] For this reason, a certain amount of potential records don’t exist.

Despite a lack of records, I know the following information about Wasyl:

• Name: Wasyl (aka Wasilii) W. Cazakoff.

• Parents: Wasyl A. Cazakoff and Anastasia Horkoff. [2]

• Birth: 25 April 1848 in the village of Orlovka in the Akhalkalaki district of Tiflis province in southern Russian Empire. [3] Orlovka is now in the republic of Georgia.

• Spouse: Married Fedosia N. Savinkoff in 1875. [4] (I wrote about her in 52 Ancestors 2015: #5 Fedosia Savinkoff, possibly a plough woman.)

• Children: Mikhail (Michael), Gregorii (George), Nicholai (Nicholas), and Pologea (Polly), born in Orlovka between 1877 and 1891.

• Immigration: Wasyl and his family, along with other Doukhobors, sailed on the chartered Canadian freighter S.S. Lake Huron from Batum, a port on the Black Sea, on 22 December 1898. [5] They arrived at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada at noon on 20 January 1899. [6] Most of the passenger list for the Lake Huron is missing or lost. An incomplete list exists, but unfortunately, there is no one on it by the name of Cazakoff. [7] Family tradition, however, maintains that the Cazakoff family sailed on this ship.

Lake Huron

• Residence: Upon arrival, in temporary accommodations in Brandon, Manitoba until the spring thaw. Later, in various Doukhobor-established villages like Petrovka, Simeonovka, and Vera in the future province of Saskatchewan. Eventually, Wasyl left his farm to live with younger son George when he acquired a homestead near Nadezhda, northwest of Kamsack. [8]

• Occupation: Communal farmer for the first few years after his arrival, then an independent farmer. [9]

• Death: 15 November 1926 at the home of his son George. Although no marker exists, Wasyl is buried in Nadezhda Cemetery, near Veregin, Saskatchewan. [10]

Sources:

1. “Folk Furniture of Canada’s Doukhobors”, database, Doukhobor Genealogy Website (http://www.doukhobor.org/Antiques.html : accessed 2 August 2015). Once established in Canada, Wasyl, like many of his fellow Doukhobors, relaxed his objection to some governmental authority. For example, he was enumerated on federal and territorial censuses beginning in 1901.

2. St. Philips/Pelly History Book Committee, History Coming Alive: R.M. of St. Philips, Pelly and District, 2 vols. (Regina, Saskatchewan: FOCUS Publishing, 1988), I, 382.

3. Family tradition and History Coming Alive, I, 382. Alternate dates of birth for Wasyl are about 1846 or about 1849, based on his age on Canadian censuses.

4. History Coming Alive, I, 382.

5. Steve Lapshinoff & Jonathan Kalmakoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928 (Crescent Valley: self-published, 2001), 2. Photo of S/S Lake Huron (built 1881), digital image, Norway – Heritage (http://www.norwayheritage.com : accessed 18 January 2014).

6. “Doukhobors at Halifax”, The Globe, 21 January 1899, p. 13, cols. 6-7; digital images, The Globe and Mail (http://heritage.theglobeandmail.com : accessed 10 April 2009).

7. Lapshinoff, Doukhobor Ship Passenger Lists 1898-1928, 2.

8. History Coming Alive, I, 383.

9. History Coming Alive, I, 383. Also, Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, 1918 Census of Independent Doukhobors: Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia (Regina: Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, 2002), 66.

10. History Coming Alive, Vol. 1, p. 383. Also, “Nadezhda Cemetery – Veregin District, Saskatchewan”, database, Doukhobor Genealogy Website (http://www.doukhobor.org/Cemetery-Nadezhda.htm : accessed 5 April 2009), entry for Wasilii Cazakoff.

Copyright © 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.

52 Ancestors: #14 George Cazakoff – Landowner

Amy Johnson Crow at No Story Too Small has issued herself and her readers a challenge for 2014. It’s called “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks”, and as Amy explains, the challenge is to “have one blog post each week devoted to a specific ancestor. It could be a story, a biography, a photograph, an outline of a research problem — anything that focuses on one ancestor”.

For the 14th week of this challenge, I chose George Cazakoff (1884-1958).

I recently wrote about my husband’s maternal grandfather here. In that post, I briefly touched on George being a landowner.

When George first immigrated to Canada in 1899, he didn’t own land, because as a Doukhobor, he lived a communal lifestyle. Within a few years of the Doukhobors' arrival, the Canadian government changed its policy of allowing communal landowning. This decision prompted a crisis in which many Doukhobors left Saskatchewan to follow their leader to British Columbia, while others chose to remain in the province as independent Doukhobors. George stayed and eventually applied for land as an individual farmer.

In October 1918, he took out a homestead entry, specifically NW 17-31-32-1, situated in the Lily Vale School District, about 10 miles northwest of Kamsack, Saskatchewan. [1] This northwest quarter section is 65 hectares (approximately 160 acres).

By 1930, he was still there, but now had two more quarter sections – the NE and the SW quarters. [2] Later still, George acquired a portion of the SE quarter (not shown on the image below). [3]

I created a land map showing where George’s property was located in 1930 and those of his closest neighbors. See the results in the above image. Blank areas on the map indicate other, non-Doukhobor owners.

In 1954, George retired from farming and moved to Kamsack. He died there in 1958.

Sources:

1. “Grant Search”, database, ISC (Information Services Corporation) (https://www.isc.ca : accessed 11 June 2013), entry for George W. Cazakoff.

2. “Doukhobors in the 1930 Cummins Rural Directory Map of Saskatchewan”, database, Doukhobor Genealogy Website (http://www.doukhobor.org : accessed 23 April 2009), citing the 1930 Cummins Rural Directory Map of Saskatchewan; Saskatchewan Archives Board, Regina, Saskatchewan; Map Nos. 147-149, 168-172, 189, 193, 195, 202, 203, 218-220, 234, 235.

3. History Coming Alive: R.M. of St. Philips, Pelly and District, 2 vols. (Pelly, Saskatchewan: St. Philips/Pelly History Book Committee, 1988), 1: 118.

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

In Memoriam: George Cazakoff

George and Polly Cazakoff, 1950s

Today (March 12) marks the fifty-sixth anniversary of the death of my husband’s maternal grandfather George Wasilievitch Cazakoff. (For a brief explanation of this surname, see Surname Saturday: Cazakoff.)

George was born on 21 January 1884 in Orlovka, a village in Tiflis province in the Caucasus region of the Russian empire, now in present-day Georgia. [1] His Russian name was Gregorii.

George was one of at least four children of Wasyl Wasilievitch Cazakoff and Fedosia N. Savinkoff, Doukhobor pacifists. (I’ve previously written about this Russian religious group in Family History Through the Alphabet – S is for …) He had an older brother Mikhail (Michael), and a younger brother Nikolai (Nicholas) and sister Pologea (Polly).

In the late 1890s, George, his parents and siblings were part of a group of over 2,000 Doukhobors who left Russia for Canada. According to family tradition, they sailed on the chartered Canadian freighter S.S. Lake Huron from the Black Sea port of Batum on 22 December 1898, and arrived nearly one month later in January 1899 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. [2]

S.S. Lake Huron [3]

The Cazakoffs settled in what was known as the South Colony in the District of Assiniboia (now the province of Saskatchewan). [4] This land, or reserve, had been specially set aside for the new Doukhobor immigrants. (Other Doukhobor immigrants settled in the Saskatchewan Colony, the Good Spirit Lake Annex and the North Colony.)

About 1905, the family moved to Simeonovka (aka Semenova), a village in the North Colony, where George married Polya Iwanovitch Poznekoff. [5] Polya, known as Polly in English, was also a Doukhobor immigrant.

The couple had nine children between 1907 and 1926: Wasyl, John, Philip, Peter, Alex, Nicholas, Lawrence, Fred and Ann. Sons Wasyl and Alex died as infants. [6]

George, Polly and their sons (left to right) Philip, Pete, John and baby Nick, 1919
in front of George's first car, a 1918 Chevrolet

In 1910, George, his father and younger brother withdrew from communal living and became independent Doukhobors. [7] About six years later, George acquired a homestead in St. Phillips Rural Municipality, about ten miles northwest of Kamsack, in eastern Saskatchewan. [8]

After 39 years of agricultural work, George retired from farming in the mid-1950s. [9] He and Polly built themselves a house in the town of Kamsack, where they lived until George was taken ill.

George died on 12 March 1958 in Kamsack Union Hospital. [10] His six surviving sons were pallbearers at his funeral service two days later in the Kamsack Doukhobor Prayer Home. [11] George is interred in Riverview Cemetery, Kamsack. [12]

George Cazakoff's funeral, with his sons as pallbearers, 1958

My husband Michael, who was only 5 years old when his grandfather died, has few memories of him. He remembers that he paid one or two visits to his grandparents’ large house with its wide veranda, and that George smoked cigars.

Sources:

1. History Coming Alive, R.M. of St. Philips, Pelly and District, 2 vols. (Pelly, Saskatchewan: St. Philips/Pelly History Book Committee, 1988), I: 382.

2. “Doukhobors at Halifax”, The Globe, 21 January 1899, p. 13, cols. 6-7; digital images, The Globe and Mail (http://heritage.theglobeandmail.com : accessed 10 April 2009).

3. Photo of S.S. Lake Huron (built 1881), digital image, Norway – Heritage (http://www.norwayheritage.com : accessed 18 January 2014).

4. History Coming Alive, I: 383.

5. History Coming Alive, I: 384.

6. History Coming Alive, I: 384.

7. History Coming Alive, I: 383.

8. History Coming Alive, I: 384.

9. History Coming Alive, I: 384.

10. Province of Saskatchewan, death registration, no. 07-002372 (1958), George Wasyl Cazakoff; Department of Public Health – Division of Vital Statistics, Regina.

11. George W. Cazakoff’s In Memoriam: A Memorial Book, Kamsack, Saskatchewan, citing funeral service on 14 March 1958; privately held by Edna (Arishenkoff) Cazakoff, White Rock, British Columbia, 2011. Edna, George’s daughter-in-law, allowed her nephew Michael Demoskoff to scan the memorial booklet during a visit to her home in January 2011. The “Pall Bearers” section lists the names of George’s sons as the pallbearers.

12. “Doukhobors in Riverview Cemetery – Kamsack, Saskatchewan”, database, Doukhobor Genealogy Website (http://www.doukhobor.org/Cemetery-Kamsack.htm : accessed ), entry for George W. Cazakoff (1884-1958).

Copyright © 2014, Yvonne Demoskoff.

Treasure Chest Thursday: The Pocket Watch

My husband owns a gold pocket watch that used to belong to his maternal grandfather George Cazakoff (1884-1958), who emigrated to Canada from Russia in 1899. After George passed away, his watch eventually came into his only daughter Anne's possession. After her death in 1980, the watch stayed with her husband William. A few years after the birth of our son, Nicholas, Bill presented the watch to Michael, with the idea that it would eventually go to Nicholas.


George Cazakoff (about 1949)

Michael knew very little about this open-face pocket watch, except that it was in working condition, had belonged to his grandfather, was probably old, and had probably been in the family for a long time. He rarely looked at the watch, but kept it safely stored in his dresser until the day he would pass it on to our son Nicholas.

About a year ago, in April 2012, our local library hosted “Antiques in the Attic”. Three appraisers looked at family heirlooms and antiques. They gave their professional opinions as to the worth or value of the items, tips on how to care for them, and where to get more information. Michael and I decided to attend this free event and chose two items for appraisal: a serving platter that my Mom bought when she was first married and Michael’s grandfather’s pocket watch.

It was our first time at an “antiques roadshow” and we looked forward to having our family treasures valued. We also wondered what interesting details the pros would share with us.


George Cazakoff's pocket watch (2012)

After a brief look, the appraiser checked his antique collectors’ handbook, but couldn’t find a listing for this “Solar - Birkdale” watch. He then carefully opened the back cover for a closer inspection. The case was 10K gold filled, made in Canada, with the mechanism housing made in Switzerland. The chain wasn’t gold, but maybe brass. He estimated that the watch was made in the 1940s. The appraiser explained that about five years ago, it might have been worth about $300.00, but since there were so many similar watches on auction sites like eBay, it now had a market value of about $100.00.

In the end, the fact that the pocket watch is of relatively recent manufacture and of modest value doesn’t matter to Michael. What’s really important is that the pretty timepiece has great sentimental value and has been in his family for three generations.

Copyright © 2013, Yvonne Demoskoff.