I spent the rest of November 2023 beginning a locality study on Henry’s birth place. I couldn’t quite understand why the documents I had that spanned over a period of time had different locations: Klevin, Russia; Rovno, Poland and Volhynia. Sometimes, I wondered if he really knew where he was!
What I did know was that he was born on October 15, 1877, in Rovno, Poland per his military card. He also mentioned Klevin, Russia, as a birth place, which according to him was under the sovereignty of the Russian Empire, on his naturalization document.
I couldn’t locate Klevin, Russia, but did find Kieven, Russia, aka Kievan Rus. There’s even a YouTube video titled “Why Kyivan Rus is more likely Ukraine and not Russia.” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjgj4wnXHQI] Per a Wikipedia entry for Kievan Rus’ [https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27], it’s also known as Kyivan Rus.
I reviewed other websites of interest about this location:
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kyivan-Rus
- https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/History#ref404367 expands on Kyivan (Kievan) Rus but pretty much covers what was mentioned above.
- https://ukrainetrek.com/rivne-oblast gives better information.
The closest thing to that city is in the Rivne Oblast in western Ukraine. Rivne Oblast is a province. Rovno was the former spelling in Ukrainian until 1991. It was following the Second Partition of Poland in 1793 that Rivne became a part of the Russian Empire (the empire Henry referred to in his naturalization documents). In 1797 it was declared to be a county level (uyezd) town of the Volhynian Governorate. During World War I, it was briefly under German, Ukrainian, Bolshevik and Polish rule. So, it’s no wonder that in the documents I do have on Henry his birthplace could be Poland, Russia, Volhynia. It all depended on what rule the place was under at certain time periods.
Henry ended up in Canada for a short time in 1900. Where he was between the time of his birth in 1877 and then was not known.
