THE BERRY MEADOW ARCHIVE - Mountain Light School

three to four massive books. The tight binding makes manual duplication as impractical as the
Russian codes prescribing foreign inspection. Copies must, therefore, be done by hand or microfilmed.
All entries are legibly handwritten in Russian and the entire set consists of over one hundred cubic feet....
The earliest volumes are dated 1764 and entries continue until 1898. The collection is divided into
seven sections consisting of 1,372 volumes."
Throughout the winter of 1990-91 AHSGR Executive Director Kathy Schmidt and Archivist Rick
Rye worked closely with Lee Kraft, Tim Kloberdanz, Art Flegel, and myself to coordinate a response to
the long-awaited opportunity our Saratov contacts represented. President Kraft appointed me to
chair the AHSGR-CIS Archival Research Committee to carefully pursue work in this area. I met
again with Dr. Plehve in Moscow in March, 1991 and delivered to him the following items: an
Apple "Mac Plus" Computer, word processing software with Latin and Cyrillic fonts, inkjet printer,
scanning duplicator, 220 volt power supply, carry cases, and paper. Total expenses for this initial
phase of the project were $4175. In lieu of any payments to Dr. Plehve for his work, the
committee agreed that he could keep this equipment following delivery of a series of 18 th and
19 th century Russian censuses (revisions). All expenses by committee members including domestic and
international travel and related project costs were to be borne by the members themselves as
contributions to this important work.
“Return to Berry Meadow” (1993)
Bill Scheirman is far left; I am standing between our Yagodnaya
Polyana hosts, Maria and Victor Scheuerman.
The committee's first priority acquisition list presented to Dr. Plehve was determined principally
for purposes of society genealogical interests. This list included records of the Third (Census) Revision
(1764-78, also known as the "First Settler Lists"), “Lists of Vessels and Passengers arriving at
Oranienbaum” (1766-67, the work of Ivan Kuhlberg), and the Fifth (1794-1808) and Eighth
revisions (1833-35). I presented this information and the equipment to Dr. Plehve in Moscow in March
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