Tamara Adams: 0:02

I mean it's like you say this all the time and it's so true. It helps you know your ancestor so much better. It makes them more real, almost Like it's a real person. Even though I didn't know my grandmother at this point in her life, I mean, I feel like I'm closer to her now than I was when she was alive closer to her now than I was when she was alive.

Crista Cowan: 0:29

Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family past, present and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything. History and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything. Imagine being an 11-year-old little girl and living on a ship for two and a half years. I can't, but my guest today can, because her grandmother, Lydia, lived that experience and she's going to share that with you today. Now, the way she shared it with me was she is a listener of the podcast, just like you, and contacted me on Instagram when I was asking people about their stories, and she just shared a snippet of this story with me and I was all in. I was invested. What I didn't know was that she's also written a book about the whole story and she has her grandmother's childhood diaries that helped her discover the story.

Crista Cowan: 1:29

My guest today is Tamara Buzyna Adams, and she is going to share the story of her grandmother, Lydia, with us. I hope you enjoy our conversation. I'm so glad you're here. This is going to be a fun conversation, I think, because the way your story came to me. I love when listeners of the podcast share their story. So before we dive into the story you came to share, I'd love to hear a little bit about your kind of journey into family history in general.

Tamara Adams: 1:56

Well, I grew up in Florida, in Tallahassee, florida, to Russian parents. My father was an immigrant. He came to the United States in 1950 and spoke Russian first and then learned how to speak Polish and then German. And they left when he was like six, from Poland and now it's Western Ukraine. So he came with his family in the displaced persons camp. They lived for five years in Germany. They had a very old aunt with them and they were supposed to go to Argentina or somewhere like that, but they couldn't go because she was too old or, you know, it was too complicated. Eventually she died and then they came to America in 1950 and he grew up in Chicago. How old was he at the time? He was 12 when he came over.

Tamara Adams: 2:41

Okay, yes, and then my mother was born in New York City, but her mother is the one that came from Odessa, in Southern what is today Ukraine. And then her father came from St Petersburg and her first language was Russian. She went, she attended kindergarten without knowing any English. Wow. So I grew up with a very strong Russian cultural background, with the religion, with the culture, with the cooking. My father's grandmother in Chicago was the typical babushka that you would imagine. You know, the kitchen smelled so good. She'd make vareniki, which is like a pierogi, and oh so good. I just I miss her cooking. I was very close to her and she was, she was great. So, anyways, I grew up, you know, with a strong sense of who I was as far as my cultural background, and I just, you know, my father and my uncle made a point of writing down family trees. Of course, it would only fit on one piece of paper and there was only like one generation, you know, or maybe two if you add us, you know, the children, and there was a lot of question marks. So I just never really, you know, I was kind of OK with, well, I'm never going to know, because we were the only people that came to the United States.

Tamara Adams: 3:58

The rest of the family is all in Europe, somewhere Eastern Europe. So how, how did your parents meet Europe, somewhere Eastern Europe? So how, how did your parents meet, so, um, my father? Well, they met at, actually, at Yale graduate school. My father was getting his PhD for mechanical engineering and my mother was going to, um, graphic arts design school, school there and, um, they met at a. There was a priest, father Shmaimon, I believe, is his name and they were sitting next to each other. It was a Russian Orthodox priest. He was giving a lecture on Russian Orthodoxy and my father was smoking and my mother was sitting next to him and she kind of went like this like you know, just kind of that, get that smoke out of my face. And so then, you know, just kind of that, get that smoke out of my face. And so then, you know, it all went from there. He never smoked again because it was bothering her contacts. And it's like nine months later I think they were married.

Crista Cowan: 4:56

Okay, and so were you raised knowing all four grandparents, or had some already passed by the time you came.

Tamara Adams: 5:02

So I knew three of them. So my father's parents were, um, I knew them all growing up. My mother's father died in 1960. So I never met him. He died suddenly and when she was 18, she was a freshman in college and her brother was 14. So that was. That was pretty traumatic. Um, she was in college, her, her mom called her, said her dad had a stroke, and my mom's like should I come home? She's like no, no, no, it's okay, it's okay. And then he passed away, sadly, but so sadly.

Tamara Adams: 5:33

I didn't get to know him, but I've always seen, you know, there's always pictures of him, they would talk about him and just a lot of you know. Just, there was a lot of Russian around us, friends, and because they grew up my mother grew up in Schenectady, new York, and her father had worked for General Electric and there was a big community of Russian immigrants that came over in the 20s, the first white emigre diaspora, and so they all knew each other diaspora, and so they all knew each other. And so New Year's Eve I have such such fond memories because there was all these mixed, interesting mixture of family friends that they had known and it would just be a wonderful time and you know it was great.

Crista Cowan: 6:18

It's so interesting to be raised with such strong cultural and religious and language and food, like all of that identity as this. You know this Russian culture, but to be disconnected from, like even your grandmother's, your grandparents', parents or their parents like to like it feels like those things should go together. Yes, but the fact that they were living in a community and working in communities of other Russian immigrants makes sense.

Tamara Adams: 6:46

Yes, yes, and you know it's funny, you talk about the fan club. Well, I've got now I think I've had to branch out to two notebooks that are like three or four inches wide, of friends, these friends that would show up on New Year's Eve or would go. You know my mother would be like, oh yeah, I remember this person did that and I would look it up on ancestry. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna say, oh, they died in this year. Here's the obituary, or you know, this person wrote a book or this. You know it's, it's just fascinating and we're just all so, so excited about just learning about, about them, and my mom's like I never knew that about this person.

Crista Cowan: 7:25

Yeah, those friends become such an important part of the network the community of it does. Wow, I love that. So what was it that like triggered your interest in family history specifically?

Tamara Adams: 7:35

So what really? I mean, I've always kind of been interested in it. You know, when we would go to my grandmother's house every Christmas. We'd go to Chicago, we would drive in our 1973 Volkswagen camper van, but I'd be excited we were not camping in the winter because it was too cold and we got to stay in a hotel. And then we would go to New York, to upstate New York, for New Year's Eve.

Tamara Adams: 7:57

So my father would get out the old tape recorder and he'd press the button and we'd listen to my grandmother speak about her time in Russia. And she would do it in Russian. I'm not fluent in Russian. I can read. I've taught myself how to read records and I can. I feel like I should understand it more than I do because I've been surrounded by it. But I don't. Unfortunately I don't speak it. So my father would kind of translate as we would go. And thankfully we have these tapes and later on, when once I really delved into family history, I had them translated.

Tamara Adams: 8:33

But what really got me interested in is I was at the funeral of my husband's grandfather and I think it was 2004. And I was talking to my father in law'slaw's brothers and they said well, you know Adams wasn't our original name and you know my parents, meaning my husband's grandparents, came from South Poland, which is the Karpatho-Rusyn Mountains, so they were Lemko and Karpatho-Rusyn, and you know they're telling us that. You know their, their last name was Adamcho or it was Adamchick. They, you know, they didn't really know exactly how or it wasn't spelled exactly, so they just changed it to Adams. So you know, I came home all excited I'm, so I'm researching that family.

Tamara Adams: 9:17

I was joined a bunch of Facebook genealogy groups. I met a bunch of my husband's fifth cousins. You know I'm like this is really exciting because I've always loved puzzles and it was just so satisfying and I would report to my mother oh, I found this, this relative today or that one. And so one day she's like well, tomorrow, when are you going to start researching our family? And you know I just didn't expect to be able to find my great grandparents or heaven forbid my second great grandparents or even, you know. And now, more, the more information I find, the more I want to know. It's just not enough.

Crista Cowan: 9:57

It's interesting that you were drawn to your husband's family first, but I love that your mother kind of pushed you towards your family. By the time that happened, was your grandmother still living or had she passed.

Tamara Adams: 10:08

She had literally just passed, like the year before, in 2003. So, unfortunately, the questions that I would have asked I didn't ask, you know. And I guess another thing I should mention about my husband's grandparents is they were also Russian Orthodox, or they were really Greek Catholic, which is slightly different, but they attended the same Orthodox church as us and when I first met her she says, oh, you're one of us, so, and she did a lot of the ethnic cooking. So I felt a connection with her and I felt a connection with researching his family because it was a similar, very similar background.

Crista Cowan: 10:46

Yeah, and yet still it didn't occur to you that you could find your family.

Tamara Adams: 10:50

No, I really. I. You know. My parents said my, my father had a little piece of paper with names written down because they did ask his. His father and actually his grandparents came over also, but they died before I was born. I think they died in the fifties, but they they came into ants. So that's, that's all we have here.

Crista Cowan: 11:11

Right, yeah, and it's interesting to feel like, oh, we have such a small family, yes, until you start digging into it and realize there are more of us.

Tamara Adams: 11:19

Yeah, and my mother, she, she, you know, once I started this project, she's like I always she never had any first cousins, she never knew any cousins, she always wanted to have a bigger family. And now we have, we found I mean not close, but we found fifth cousins, six cousins living in Sweden and Finland and Europe and they're like come visit us, you know, so it's, it's amazing, it's that instant connection when you find someone. It's hard to explain, but it's, it's a really neat feeling.

Crista Cowan: 11:50

It really is so, um so 2004 ish. You're researching your husband's family for a few years and then you decide at some point, based on your mother's prodding, to start researching your own family. What were some of the early successes or barriers that you came up against?

Tamara Adams: 12:09

Well, the barriers would be that there were no records online and I didn't really know where to look. But we did connect with a distant relative that was able to go to archives and do some research for us and so and my mother had, my parents had gone to Russia several times met some of our distant cousins that we had known about. There was a couple of cousins that didn't even know we existed, which was kind of interesting. So we had someone that would go to the archives for us. And you know my dream one day this is getting off a little subject, but my dream one day is to go to the Russian, the St Petersburg archives and like open up a book and like look at a metric book with my relatives, my ancestors, on it. So, hopefully, about those original records. Yes, I don't know what it is, it's amazing.

Crista Cowan: 13:09

So your early days of research were really like the early days of research that a lot of us went through yes, you know, even here in the United States, before records came online.

Tamara Adams: 13:18

Right. And the other thing was I, which I tell people when people ask me how to get started in researching your family, and I'm like, well, I just review what I have first, because oftentimes, no matter how many times I've looked at a certain record, when I go back something else jumps out at me and I'm like, how did I not see that before? So I was constantly and I was organizing. I love to. You know, my house is a mess, but my photographs and my genealogy is very organized, that they're all in notebooks by surname. They have a little page protector.

Tamara Adams: 13:54

So you know, I write notes. I have little documents, I don't have spreadsheets yet, but I pretty much organized all the information. I entered it onto the family tree, onto Ancestry, and I think way back when I had Family Tree Maker at some point one of the girls there I found my father's father's birth record. What that was just scanned in January of this year. That's amazing. I mean we were all like crying, we were so excited, I literally yelled out, I was like library. But and then we found my grandfather's parents marriage record. So that was. That was pretty incredible.

Crista Cowan: 14:51

So was this new information that you'd been looking for, or just the first time you'd seen the record?

Tamara Adams: 14:56

There was some new information in the marriage record. We had a transcribed. They must have traveled with. They traveled with my father's birth record because I've seen that, and they must have traveled with my grandfather's, my paternal grandfather's record, Because when they were in Germany they had a transcribed version of it typed out. It was in Latin letters, but it was in Ukrainian.

Crista Cowan: 15:24

So they had to travel with paper.

Tamara Adams: 15:26

They literally left on the last train from Colville, which is where they're from, to go to Germany, and they just grabbed whatever they had. It had the name of the church on it, so she was able to find which church it was. I mean, she was working her magic and then all of a sudden it was there and I was just amazed. I never thought I'd see that.

Crista Cowan: 15:47

Yeah, that that, oh, just that thrill of like seeing it in print and knowing that you've been chasing the right group of people, the right family, that's so important. I'd love to dive into your grandmother's story. I know a little bit of it, but let's start with. What was the impetus Like? Is this a story you heard growing up? Is this a story you uncovered as you went? And then when did you make some decisions about, like wanting to know more?

Tamara Adams: 16:15

So during COVID the beginnings of COVID my parents had just moved up to Atlanta, where I live. We you know something about my mom and I we always have a project. Whether we finish it or not is another story. But she said I'm going to translate these diaries because we had all this time. She's fluent, of course, in Russian. So she's determined and I'm like I, you know, I'm like I'm all for it. You know I have the time.

Tamara Adams: 16:40

So literally I was photographing the five volumes of those little composition books. These yellow old pages smells like her house. So I photographed them. Didn't like how it came out. So then I scan them. You know, probably spending way too much time on them. A little bit of a perfectionist. But she would translate it. I would send her the copy, the photograph or the scan of the pages. She would blow it up on her computer screen and she would type it out, the English version she figured.

Tamara Adams: 17:10

Well, her mother was 11 years old at the time of writing these diaries. Her first entry was January 29th 1921. And you know her penmanship was absolutely beautiful. I mean, the handwriting is better than probably anyone's today and you don't need to know Russian to be able to tell that her handwriting was just meticulous and just beautiful, so she was able to translate them. And then I would take it and I would kind of rearrange it. I mean, it was still, you know, word for word, but I would, you know, add periods or whatever, and research different places.

Tamara Adams: 17:48

And so my grandmother would talk about her friend Zhenya, which is like Yevgenia is the the original name, and then Zhenya is what they call the pet name or her nickname, and we're like, who is this Zhenya? And she would talk about Katya. So this is 11-year-old girl. You know they had just escaped Russia. She had lived on this at this point when she started her diary. She had already lived on the ship for a whole year and she talked about these kids. You know there was no sign of anything horrible going on in the world. You know it was basically through the eyes of a child, like she was excited if the weather was good and she got to play outside on the deck of the ship or whatever.

Crista Cowan: 18:31

But so so the diaries start when she's 11, in 1921.

Tamara Adams: 18:36

And they go through when 1924, september 1st. Okay, so, so we've got four years four years.

Crista Cowan: 18:43

Yes, okay, and give us the backstory right. So so you mentioned the ship she's living on and escaping Russia and I assume it came out. Did it come out in the diaries or is that information you had to research?

Tamara Adams: 18:57

So the diary started january 1921, but she moved on to the ship. I was. I had to do a bunch of research to figure out that whole year beforehand. You know, when I first started this project I was like how in the world am I going to get the information from when she boarded the ship, where she boarded the ship, where she boarded the ship, all this information? But we discovered she boarded the ship in January of 1920, like end of December, beginning of January. We've got a few evidence pieces that that helped us come up with those dates. And then we have we know that they just went all over the Black Sea so that she was on the steamship Kershon, which there's also a name. So that she was on the steamship Kershon, which there's also a name, a city in Ukraine called Kershon, and they would.

Tamara Adams: 19:46

During war times it was a military ship. During peaceful times it would. It would take people here and there and her father worked on one of the ships. We don't know if it was that particular one or he worked on a bunch of other ships. So he was basically a purser. So think of gopher, like from the love boat. That's who I think of.

Crista Cowan: 20:04

And so was the whole family living on the ship at this point.

Tamara Adams: 20:07

So in January, yes, but he would be gone, for, like I have a postcard from him to her in 1912, when he was, he would go on the on the Odessa line, from Odessa all the way to Vladivostok. He would go on the Odessa line, from Odessa all the way to Vladivostok, which I don't know it's way on the east side of Russia, and it would take about 40 days to go there. And they would go to Egypt. They'd stop in, you know, all these different ports, japan, and would send back postcards to the family. So the family would stay at home, family would stay at home.

Tamara Adams: 20:42

But in January of 1920, her father had said well, you know things, politically, things are, the Russian revolution had already, you know, taken place. The Bolsheviks had taken over most of Russia, except for the Crimea and that area. He's like, you know, let's, let's go on the, let's go on the ship, let's live on the ship for a little bit and then, when things calm down, we'll, we'll come back home. And how many were in the family? So it was just my grandmother lydia, her mother daria and her father dimitri, no siblings so they get on the ship in january of 20?

Crista Cowan: 21:11

yes, it is not like. It's not an immigrant ship, it's a. No, it's a travel ship, it's a cruising ship basically yeah and they're living on the ship because her father's working on the ship and because they don't feel safe at home, correct, separated now from the rest of their family. Yes, and she starts. Actually never heard of this before I started doing the research.

Tamara Adams: 21:42

It was the big Crimean evacuation. General Peter Wrangel headed it up. He orchestrated it because that was the last hold of the White Army. The White Army was in the Crimea and, like I said, the Bolsheviks were coming in and it was inevitable that they had to evacuate. So he wanted to protect his people and he organized, in five different ports on the Crimea, 126 ships with 150,000 people on whatever floats got on their ships and left on November 14th 1920 got on their ships and left on November 14th 1920.

Crista Cowan: 22:22

So in November of 1920, you know, most of the population, or a lot of the population, ends up on various ships in the Black Sea. What happens to those ships?

Tamara Adams: 22:29

So those ships all left. I believe it was like a two day journey to go to Constantinople, which is today's Istanbul, and that's the only outlet of the Black Sea. So they all, you know, if you can imagine everyone, with all these refugees descending upon Constantinople and all the docks, and General Wrangel is trying to figure out, you know who's going to take all these people, because you know they're now safe from the Bolsheviks. But now what are they going to do? These people literally just grabbed what they could and lived on the ship, and my grandmother made a point of saying that she and her family had a cabin because her father worked on the ship and that was so. They were living, you know, comfortably in a very small, I'm sure a very small cabin, and I wish she had described it. She didn't, or took a picture, because we do have pictures on the ship, but you know, maybe they'll surface someday.

Crista Cowan: 23:32

But you think about that, you know. I mean, we're just not even two years out of the World War. Right, there was an influenza pandemic that was winding down around that time. Like now you have all these refugees, you know, who are probably another wave of refugees, because the war created refugees as well. And yeah, like, where in the world did those people go and who? You know? Who decides?

Tamara Adams: 23:54

that who took them in? Yes, so so they the. The next part of the story is serbia. Serbia accepted all these refugees.

Tamara Adams: 24:05

However, um, my grandmother's ship went into the bay of couture, which is in montenegro. I've been there, I have to. It's beautiful, oh my god, it's gorgeous, gorgeous. Yes, so she was. They went into the bay of couture. There was a ton of ships, you know, and a lot of people had typhus. So the ships that had a lot of typhus on it had to quarantine. They weren't allowed to, you know, dock and have the people come off the ship. So they were up there, and that's when the diaries start she talks about. Oh, I wonder if Ivan Iosifovich has is came to bid me farewell and that was her tutor that she talked about, and we have some postcards that he had written her. Obviously, you know he was, you know she thought the world of him and you know she caught up with him a couple you know, spoiler alert. And you know she caught up with him a couple, you know, spoiler alert on their way to the United.

Crista Cowan: 25:06

States, but you know his last name never came up. Well, so it's interesting because you know we're following along with this story of your grandmother, but you're it's unfolding as you're reading the diaries but then also doing the research into who all these people are. Yes, and what is it about? Like you see a name on a piece of paper that makes you want to know who this person is and more about them.

Tamara Adams: 25:26

Because I feel like if I know who this Ivan Iosifovich is, I'll know more about my grandmother, about the people in her life, like it gives more of a whole person and it's I mean, it's like you say this all the time and it's so true, it's, it helps. It helps you know your ancestor so much better, it makes them more real, almost like it's a real person, even though you know, you didn't know, I didn't know my grandmother at this point in her life. I mean, I feel like I'm closer to her now than I was when she was alive.

Crista Cowan: 26:00

Right.

Tamara Adams: 26:01

Yeah, I love that.

Crista Cowan: 26:02

So so from November, when they had to leave the Black Sea, yes, and then they go to the Dalmatian coast next. How long are they there?

Tamara Adams: 26:13

So they arrived in Constantinople November 17 ish. They left there around the 20th I'm trying to remember my timeline off the top of my head of November and then December 6th about they were in the Bay of Couture, got rejected there, went up to Bacar and I think they had to be. They were in Bacar for three weeks. They had a typhus epidemic on the ship. They had to be. They were in Bacar for three weeks. They had a typhus epidemic on the ship. They had to anchor. They weren't allowed to anchor in the bay, they had to anchor at the roadstead, which is even further behind. There were ships that would bring food and water to them and for a couple of days the weather was so bad they weren't able to bring food to them. These random little stories that kind of makes this whole situation so real.

Crista Cowan: 27:00

And are these stories you uncovered because you've researched the ship, or are these people that your grandmother's writing about?

Tamara Adams: 27:06

So no, so this was not what she wrote about. There are a bunch of memoirs that people have written that have said oh, I was on the Kerson evacuating Russia and this is what it was like. So we kind of took little snippets of what these people said. So it's just piecing together. It's a big puzzle piecing together all the information that we find about the ship.

Crista Cowan: 27:31

How long? How long, until they finally find a home?

Tamara Adams: 27:34

So by January 31st they were back in the Bay of Couture.

Crista Cowan: 27:37

OK, and that's about the time the journal started.

Tamara Adams: 27:39

the diary yes, that's the that's the time and she writes about how the beautiful scenery you know. She's looking outside off the deck of the ship. I guess I have no idea if she had a window in that. I think she did actually have a porthole possibly, but um, and she would talk about that. And then they arrived into the bay of Couture and they anchored there from about January 31st until about October 6th of that year Wow, for about a week before they ended up going to Novi Sad in Serbia, which was the second largest Russian community of people that General Vrangel was trying to help and support.

Crista Cowan: 28:28

Wow.

Tamara Adams: 28:28

So yeah.

Crista Cowan: 28:30

So she lives on the ship for a year and a half. Essentially, the first 10, 11 months of that is just her dad doing his job, 10-11 months of that is just her dad doing his job, and then the rest of that is illness and refugee status, and yet she still just has this childlike wonder that comes through even just in the few things you've shared. That's amazing.

Tamara Adams: 28:53

Yes, like her highlight of those 7 months that she lived in the Bay of Couture was, you know oh, I hope the weather doesn't ruin, you know going to shore. I counted something like 50 excursions to the shore and it was just so exciting for her. And she would, you know, run around and have picnics with her friends. And you know, there's just a handful of children there and you know, I knew them all by name because, you know, and I felt like I was living there with them. And in Russian when children address adults, they address their first name and their patronymic. So, for instance, she would talk about Anna Ivanovna. So we know Anna and her father was Ivan, so it's Anna Ivanovna, but she didn't say her last name.

Tamara Adams: 29:39

Anna Ivanovna invited all the children to go on a picnic and we had. You know, it's kind of funny because she would say how she would have a shot of wine or have some coffee, or you know it was. Or they go into a restaurant and you know there's a funny story where she, they were sitting in a restaurant and these sausages that were hanging on the ceiling all of a sudden fell down on them and scared them and she said they had the biggest laugh of all. So you know, it's just funny how she describes these little. You know, it's the simple things in life.

Tamara Adams: 30:12

They celebrated Russian Orthodox Easter and we have pictures. So she would say in the diaries oh, today the children were so excited because we got our picture taken and then we got the picture back and so it corresponds with the date. She's so detail oriented I could figure out pretty much which picture she was talking about. So, and I mean, it's just such a treasure to have these photographs and you can see them and they're just, they look like just you know, on the ship and you would have no idea what they just went through. Wow, that's amazing.

Crista Cowan: 30:48

So, uh, when do they finally make plans to come to the United States, or how does that all play out?

Tamara Adams: 30:53

So, um, lydia's mother, daria, had siblings. One sibling, constantine, had already already come to the United States, okay so, and he was living in New York City. So they were communicating, so they were able to send letters to each other. So Constantine sends a letter to wherever they were in Novi Sad saying you guys should come here, you know, because this whole time my grandmother keeps saying oh, you know, we're definitely going back to Odessa, we can't wait to go, we're gonna. When we go back to Odessa, they always expected to go back, that was just not a question. But then Constantine said oh, let's, you know, come, come, meet me in New York City. Let's, you know, come, come meet me in New York city. So, you know, at first I think Lydia's parents said no, and Lydia had remarked how she was, you know, upset that they said no, and then she was excited that they finally said yes. So they had to do all the paperwork. So her, they were in Novi Sad and her father had to travel to Belgrade, I assume on train by himself for a couple. He would be gone for a couple of days to get the paperwork and we had we actually have the document of their immigrant, or their, their paperwork. It's this huge, like I don't know, 11 by 14 paper. It's got these beautiful stamps on it, it has pictures, these signatures. It's just an absolute treasure.

Tamara Adams: 32:19

So then they, they went on kind of an adventure. They went on a train, basically from novi sad to zagreb, and they saw their friend ivan yusufovich, bought him some art supplies not sure what he was, must have been an artist as well and then they continued to the with the train to to Paris, and Lydia mentions how she really wanted to see the Eiffel Tower but she they didn't have time. And so then they went to Le Havre and they had to be in. I guess they stayed in like a warehouse for a week. They had to be in quarantine before coming to the United States. So at the end of May they get on, they board the ship La Savoy and they took an immigration ship took them five days or a week.

Tamara Adams: 33:08

She had a horrible experience. You know, everything else was great, but she's like, the food was terrible, she felt nauseous, the weather was terrible the first few days, the waves. It was very rocky, very difficult, but they made it. On June 5th, 1922 is when they landed in New York City and her uncle, constantine and wife met them at Ellis Island and of course I have that record. I think I initially had ordered it when you before it was available online. So that was exciting. So she was what.

Crista Cowan: 33:44

13 by the time she got so she was.

Tamara Adams: 33:47

I believe her birthday is in November, so she was 12. Almost third. She was probably turning 13 that year and spent almost two years of her life on a show, right, and she wasn't in like normal school. Yeah, like she loved school and she, you know, she, if she didn't do her studies during the day one day because it was Easter or something, she would have to like justify why she didn't do her work. She was very diligent, like I think. I think she needed that structure in such a such a chaotic time in her life. You know she was going to school in Odessa when she lived there. She took a little tram or a little trolley to school and she loved it. We have pictures from it, we have a little emblem from.

Crista Cowan: 34:29

You know, my grandmother saved everything and my mother saved everything, and so and I wonder if maybe that's why she took to writing the diary was because that was an outlet for that like need for structure and education.

Tamara Adams: 34:42

Yeah, because that's an. That's a big question I get asked a lot. Also is, you know, was it her desire to write a diary, or did her parents see her struggling and think that would be a good idea? You know? I mean, I think it's a. It was probably her therapy.

Crista Cowan: 34:59

Yeah.

Tamara Adams: 35:00

And you know she has. You know, up until old age she had a very positive outlook on how she had a great time on the ship.

Crista Cowan: 35:07

You know interesting, and so you have taken this and turned it into a book. Yes, that is going to be published very soon. Yes, do you want to tell us about it?

Tamara Adams: 35:18

So this is called Last Ship to Freedom and Uncovering my Grandmother's Tale of Fleeing Post-Imperial Russia. And this is a picture of my grandmother in her favorite sailor suit sitting on the deck of the Kerson in 1921 in the Bay of Kator and you can see she has very curly hair and there was a story she actually contracted typhus and they had to shave all the kids' heads and her hair grew back very curly. So she has. Every time I see this picture I think of I think of how she had to have a shaved head. But I I told the story of kind of a little bit about her background and then that first year living on the ship and her impressions and just interesting things that happened while she was on the ship. She told a story when she was older that she saw horses in the water swimming in the water when she was in the Black Sea and my uncle and cousin on my father's side were always fascinated by this story and anytime I heard any kind of history story when I was younger I bolted, I was like whatever, and now I wish I had listened to it.

Tamara Adams: 36:35

But what happened was in Novorossiysk, which is one of the ports on the Black Sea. The White Army was defeated once again in March of 1920. There was not enough room for the horses on the ships, so the horses would go into the water trying to follow their masters on the ship. Just heartbreaking. And I have I have found a poem of a COSAC, I believe, who wrote about this experience and it's it's heartbreaking to hear. You know you expect that you're going to die with your horse and to leave it behind is like the ultimate betrayal. And she saw this, she witnessed this.

Tamara Adams: 37:17

And also in the book in the back, you know, I tell the story, I go sequentially, chronologically, of what happened, the research, and then at the end I talk about how I found some of the research, or how I found some of the answers. And we actually found a crew list. So we have 101 crew members and of course I wanted to research all those and see which ones came to America. And another little interesting tidbit is so my grandmother, when she was married and raising her family in Schenectady, new York, her best friend, the husband, had also evacuated on November 14th from Sevastopol on a submarine.

Crista Cowan: 38:01

Wow.

Tamara Adams: 38:03

And he did not enjoy it at all. I mean, she didn't enjoy it either, obviously, but um, you know, it was a different experience for the adults she met. She met quite a few people through her life who also experienced the as adults, who experienced the departure, the evacuation, and I think it's a this is a unique glimpse into a child's eye, where you know everything is rosy and you know things aren't as rosy as she made it seem and I think as a result of this experience, she just showed so much resilience.

Crista Cowan: 38:38

Wow, what a treasure to have not just known her but to have those writings. From that perspective and the work you've done to discover more of the story, I think is amazing. I'm excited to read the book.

Tamara Adams: 38:50

So finally I get a text from my mother saying, oh my gosh, my mother finally wrote the last name of Zhenya and it's Anakeif, and I was like, literally, I got off the phone, I typed it into Ancestry and two seconds later I was, I got a hit and it was. It was a family tree and it had the same pictures that I had of the ship, of the children. It had the same pictures that I had of the ship of the children, and I saw the three children. So I knew that it was Jenya, her brother Koliya, which is Nicholas, and the brother Alexis, which is Alexi, or she called them Aloysia, koliya and Jenya. So, and I messaged them, of course, right away, because I'm like this is definitely them, and I'm thinking, oh my God, they must have more information, that they have to have more information.

Tamara Adams: 39:46

And like 10 days later I get a response from the daughter of the middle child and saying, well, the family historian is really Susan, which is Jenya's granddaughter. So 13 days later, susan finally responds and ever since that we've been connected like this, like I feel like Jenya and Lydia were like best friends on the ship and now I have such a connection with Susan and her family and it's just amazing. We feel like our grandmothers are up there, you know, planning this and they're so happy that we're together now. But you know, because of the family trees on there, we've, you know, and I've met her several times we actually traveled to New York City in November. My book cover was on the billboard in Times Square, and what date was it on? But November 14, 2024.

Tamara Adams: 40:45

The same day that they had escaped that, they left Russia, exactly 104 years later. I mean, there's got to be something to that. And 14 descendants of Zhenya, kolya and Alosha came to support me without even ever meeting me, and Susan had asked me to do a presentation to the relatives because they knew nothing. They knew nothing at all about their time on the ship. And then they had these pictures. And then here I come With this whole story.

Tamara Adams: 41:16

With this whole story and thanks to them I was able to fill in part of. You know, there's a there's an incredible photograph of the children and you can tell they all have shaved heads, except Virginia and the two boys, and I always wondered why were their, their heads, not shaved? Well, they, it turns out, or did not come on the ship until, I think, june of 1920. So they, their heads, were not shaved. But my point is that on the back of that picture I didn't have any names. But by the time I had contacted Susan, I already had a guess on to who they were, and so her grandmother had written the names on the back, confirming that I was correct. So that was very satisfied, confirming that I was correct.

Crista Cowan: 41:59

So that was very satisfying, as you kind of think about what's next or, you know, think about how this experience has taken into your own life. What is it that you hope for the future?

Tamara Adams: 42:08

I hope this book in particular will encourage people to look into their own family history, no matter the ethnicity. I think people can relate to my grandmother's story of leaving home with nothing and starting anew and just having to just have that resilience and push through. And you know, look at the happy things in life, look at the glass half full and I just, I hope it. I hope it gives people a reason to reflect on their own life and, you know, appreciate where they come from, no matter where they come from.

Crista Cowan: 42:46

Yeah, well said, thank you. And thank you so much for sharing Lydia's story with us. I appreciate it.