Great-Grandfather's signature

 

I've been continuing my work on a project, documenting all the birth, marriage and deaths for our family village. A new item became available in one of the Russian archives, well, "new" meaning 100 years old. It was the "Book of Deaths" for our village of Josefstal, 1919 to 1922. This book is extremely important for my quest to document the starvation deaths in our village from 1921. 

Anyways, there next to the title "Vorsitzender des Standesamtes", or "Chairman of the Registry Office" is the signature, in Russian, of J. Dieser.

J. Dieser is Johannes Dieser. 

This means that this is the signature of my great-grandfather.

My grandmother's Dad.

Sadly, he himself will pass away from complications after surgery in 1933....during the next great famine in Russia.

Vorsitzender des Standesamtes or "Chairman of the registry office" "J. Дизер" - J. Dieser

Starting my search...

 

As I started my hunt for family history, I examined a variety of possible sources and ways to glean information.  There was no access to computers when I started, so it meant looking through old and current phone books, as well as looking for places to make appeals for more info.

One such appeal was printed in Everton's genealogical helper - v. 33, no. 3 May/Jun 1979. A copy of that ad is here. When it appeared I was still 18 years old, having just started my quest.