What were their lives like? Admiral McCully's adopted Russian orphans, Eugenia Z. Selifanova and Olga Krundvcher.
Recently here I posted this:
January 11, 1921. Fractured and Rescued Russian Lives, 1921 Wyoming Legislature, Work.
Sometimes I'm haunted by the stories I post here, and they're usually things like this. Not the big battles and the mass carnage, but rather the small stories of individuals caught up in the big events.
White Russian troops disembarking in Constantinople as refugees.
And its hard not to feel that way regarding the story of Newton McCully and his seven adopted children who had been taken out of Sevastopol as the Reds closed in on it, and then to Constantinople, and then on to the United States.
Let's start with Admiral McCully, whom in some ways is both the central, and an ancillary, figure in our story.
Newton McCully was a South Carolinian born in 1867 whose father had served in the Civil War for, not surprisingly, the Confederacy. McCully sought and obtained an appointment to Annapolis and, as noted above, he was embedded in the Imperial Russian Army during the Russo Japanese War. In 1914 he returned to Russia as a naval attaché and he was elevated to commend of the U.S. Navy in northern Russia in 1918. Following this he was sent to appreciate the military situation of the Whites in 1919.
He was a bachelor all of this time, which was not surprising for a naval officer given the life they lead. He'd been in the Navy since 1887.
Something about Russia and Russians, or perhaps just a deep sympathy with a distressed people, heavily struck him in 1919. During that time he had occasion to be with distressed Russians and to go into Russian orphanages and the like. At some point he determined to attempt to bring back nine children into the United States with him. He ended up bringing seven, as two couldn't go for various reasons (one was ill, and one was not actually an orphan, although his father consented to him going with McCully).
McCully adopted the seven children in Russia and sought diplomatic permission to bring them into the United States and to reside at his boyhood home in Anderson, South Carolina, for a time until his home in Washington D. C. could be refurbished to be suitable for children. He had to post $5,000 a piece for each immigrant, a gigantic sum in 1921. His mother was living and the initial plan was for the seven to live with her, there, during that time period. Their stories, and some of their names, are noted in this period news article here:
There was, we'd note, an element of confusion on the number of children in early reports and indeed in some later ones, created in part by Euginia Selfinova's young age. Some reports seemed to assume that she was one of the orphans, which in a way she was, and to include her in the count. That wasn't her states however. There were in fact seven, and she was the eighth young Russian, if looked at that way, to come into the United States with McCully.
Their names (subject to some confusion and difficulties in translation) and ages in 1921 were as follows: Nikolai Smnov (12), Ludmila Manetzkaya (11), Anastasia Sherbotoc (Sherback) (Sherbackova) (10), Nina Furinan (8), Feodore Pozdo (4), Ninotahkl Limendo (3) and Antonina Klimenko (2).. Added to that was Euginia Selifanova, who was 19. She apparently was already attached to some of the children prior to Admiral McCully asking her to come along and, according to his early interviews, asked her to come along as governess, something that tends to show up in quote marks as if there was confusion or doubt over her status.
McCully's concerns left him with quite a brood on his hands, to say the least, which no doubt explains in part why he chose to ask Selfanova to come along. Selfanova would have been an adult at this time both in fact, experience and culture and McCully was a bachelor with a busy Naval career.
McCully, children, and Selifanova at a baseball game on November 22, 1922. The woman in the center is "Miss Gleaves"
We'll pick up here, because of her role in the story, with Selifanova, who turns out to be one of the most difficult to trace. We'll do that in part, as its necessary to explore Selfianova in order to discuss the story overall and later developments.
Selifanova obviously lived with the family for several years, but then another mystery develops. Almost nothing is known about her, not surprisingly, before she accompained McCully and the children to the United States. Her last name simply means the daughter of Selifan, which isn't very helpful and Selifanova is a fairly common Slavid last name. It might not be Russian, for that matter, but some other Slavic language.* In the few photographs that exist of her, she uniformly has a stern appearance.
She seems to have left the McCully household prior to 1929 when an new woman enters the picture as the wife of Admiral McCully.
We'll take up McCully's wife in a moment, but the marriage in 1927 seems to have come to everyone as a surprise, in no small part as it took place in Tallinn, Estonia. The Admiral didn't even inform his mother of the marriage until after it occurred. Early press reports indicated that the marriage was undertaken as McCully had determined he needed a mother for the children, but much of that really doesn't wash in context. By that time Nikolai, Ludmila, Anastasia, and Nina Furinan were all teenagers and approaching adulthood. That still left the children at home, of course, but their minding would not have have been the burden that it early would have been, except perhaps if Selifanova had left the household. The evidence seems to be that she had.
Indeed, her full name is associated with Andrew Trago at about this time. "Trago" is generally a Latinate name, but Andrew was listed as Russian born on the one census form we've found noting him. That might not be too surprising, however, as immigration agents weren't good at recording actual last names all that accurately at the time and European peasants proved to be quite willing to accept new last names. His actual original last name may have been anything sounding close to that. Anyhow, Adrew Trago was also Russian born but about twenty years Selfinova's senior, leading to some doubt if this is the right person. Nonetheless, a Euginia Selifanova was was of the same age as the governess married Trago and the couple lived out their lives in Dearborn Michigan, having a son and a daughter.
Having said that, records for the couple are incredibly spotty. The showed up in a census just once, in 1940, and that document reported their son Boris as being 22 at the time. If that's the case, he would have been born when Euginia was 16, which is clearly incorrect for these photographs. Having said that, almost everything about the Trago family was vague. This might simply be explained by slightly moving the dates of his birth and making him slightly younger. Indeed, in 1940 the family may have had a reason for listing him as older than he was for one reason or another. At any rate, at that point, Euginia disappears from history.
Euginia wasn't the only one who disappeared at that. The new bride shortly did also, but not quite as definitively.
The bride was Olga Krundycher. In 1927 Admiral McCully married her in Tallinn, Estonia. She was then 29 years old and, moreover, ethnically Estonian. Indeed, she had a family last name of Sermann, and this was her second marriage, as she was a widow. The marriage seems to have come to everyone as a surprise. The Admiral didn't even inform his mother of the marriage until after it occurred. Early press reports indicated that the marriage was undertaken as McCully had determined he needed a mother for the children, but much of that really doesn't wash in context. By that time Nikolai, Ludmila, Anastasia, and Nina Furinan were all teenagers and approaching adulthood. That still left the children at home, of course, but their minding would not have have been the burden that it early would have been, except perhaps if Selifanova had left the household.
Olga, while an Estonian, appears to have been married to a Russian and perhaps a Russian army officer. Her father's occupation is what records exist is listed as "soldier" and it may be the case that he was an Imperial Russian Army officer. The clues exist in that at the time of her wedding it was noted in Estonian papers, which covered it, that she "still" spoke some of her "native language". If she'd grown up in Estonia we'd expect her to speak it perfectly. So its clear that she had at least some prolonged absence.
And while its certainly possible that McCully may have been willing to marry a Russian peasant, we can doubt that. In the 1920s class distinctions were higher than they are now and McCully was of Southern aristocratic birth. Indeed, while it might have been quasi scandalous if he'd done so, we'd note that Selifanova wasn't enormously younger than Krundycher at the time that she seems to have left the family. Of course, we don't know anything else about Selifanova or her character, or even her opinion of McCully and vice versa. She's truly a figure in the background, not smiling in photographs. Krundycher is somewhat different.
Anyhow Olga was then 29 years old, ethnically Estonian and a widow. The marriage made the newspapers in Tallinn.
The Admiral may have thought Krundycher a good mother for his family, as American press reports at the time had it, and perhaps she was. But here too we are presented with a mystery. Other than the marriage being announced, she disappears from the record to a degree. She's not buried with Admiral Newton, and indeed, she died in Estonia in 1968, not in the US.
In fact, we can find her first back in Estonia by 1931, where he arrival was announced in the society page. The marriage was presumably going well at the time and she seemed to be hailed as a bit of a celebrity. Nonetheless, she died in Estonia nearly forty years later. What happened?
Well, that's pretty hard to tell. What we do know is that as late as 1943 the McCully's, Newton and Olga, were living in Florida, Admiral McCully now well retired. She is listed as his wife on materials pertaining to his death. They seem to have still been married at the time of his death, and frankly returning to Estonia in the 40s would have been nuts.
Still, the records support she want back to Estonia at some point. Perhaps after her husband's death, and all of her adopted children having assumed their own adult lives, she felt the call of her native country again. Or perhaps she was just visiting it at the time of her death.
So, as to the two adult women who were part of this story, we know something at this point. Selifanova appears to have married a few years later, and to have then lived out her life in Dearborn Michigan, dying at a fairly young age overall.
Krundychter entered the picture as a somewhat celebrated, but much younger, bride of the Admiral but ended up back in Estonia where she lived until the end of her life many years later. She was born in Imperial Russia, seems to have lived in Russia for some time, suffered some sort of tragedy with her first husband, and then returned to Estonia before marrying the Admiral. At some point, she went back to Estonia, by then an middle aged, or even elderly in context, woman and live there, apparently, until her death in the 1960s.
And what of the children? Well, we can tell something about their lives from a few period articles and some coming quite later, which gives us a few clues about what their lives were perhaps like. We'll sum up what we know about each first. Let's list them out by age as of their time of their adoption and entry into the United States.
1. Nikolai Snourov (12).
Snourov was a boy soldier in the White Army when he came into the eye of Admiral McCully, and therefore hew as rescued from a really grim fate. Had he remained in Russia, and survived the war, he was young enough he could have expected service with the Reds and probably in the Second World War in the Red Army. He may very well not have lived that long, however, as he could have been killed in combat, or by the Reds at any point leading up to World War Two, one way or another.
He not surprisingly ended up in World War Two as it was, but in the United States Navy.
Snourov was from Kharkov, Ukraine and had been born on April 1, 1909. In 1933 he married Clair Wilhelmina Von Moser in Baltimore. The couple had at least one son. Nikolai did not outlive his adopted father by long, and died in 1954 at age 45.
2. Ludmila Manetzkaya (11)
Ludmila was born in Sevastapol in Crimea. She married Raymond Francis Colee in 1934 in Florida, where she lived the rest of her life. She died in 1985 at the age of 75. She and her husband also had at least one child, whom was named Newton, no doubt after her adoptive father. Newton passed away in Florida in 2004.
A charming photograph of Ludmila wearing an elaborate kokoshnik, a traditional headdress for Russian, but not Ukranian, women. Taken in 1924, she would have been fourteen or fifteen at the time it was taken.
Ludmila McCully, 1924.
3 Anastasia Sherback (Sherbackova) (10),
Anastasia's real last name was Sherbackova, making her the daughter of Sherback. On April 23, 1929, her name hit the New York Times society columns when she married William Mortiz of New York. She was eighteen years old at the time.
4, Nina Furinan (8)
This Nina is the child who is the hardest to find anything out about. Her age upon entry would indicate that she'd been born in 1912 or 1913. None of the later information available supports any of the children, however, being born that year.
There are listings for an Antonina Vasilivna Forman for this family, but she was born, according to the records in 1909, which would have made her eleven when she came into the country. This doesn't match, however, an 8 year old age at the time of entry either, but then at least one other age is also off.
We know that in this group of children one was latter marred under the last name "Lash" and lived in Detroit. A 1943 article on another one of the children noted that she was an artist. This is almost certainly here.
5 Feodor Pazdo Mikkaelovich(4)
Feador was born in Sevastopol in 1916. He married Mary Ann Caruso in November, 1942, in Miami, by which time he was going by the name of Feodor McCully.
Feodore also served in the United States Navy during World War Two.
Like a lot of the McCully children, he spent the rest of his life in Florida and South Carolina. He did in 1970 in Florida at the age of 53.
6 Ninotahkl Limendo (3)
Obituaries support that a Nina Mikhailovna Razahavalina McCully was part of the group and that she was born on June 30, 1915, in Yalta. She was the daughter of Michael S. Rashavalin and Elena V. Melele. She was clearly one of the McCully Russian orphans, so this is likely her. She married John B. McDonald on August 22, 1941 in Santa Monica, California. She and her husband lived in South Carolina, Florida and California, before she died on June 25, 1999 at the age of 83.
7. Antonina Klimenko (2)
Klimenko was also born in Sevastopol and her original last name is Ukrainian, not Russian. She's the McCully child about which we know the most, perhaps because she was the youngest and likely, in some ways, the most American. . . maybe.
Antonina served in the U.S. Navy during World War Two, the family being still sufficiently noteworthy that her joining the Navy made the newspaper. In 1945, following the war, she married George Von Bretzel and they also made their home in Florida. George, interestingly, in spite of his last name, was also a Russian refugee, having been born in Japan to Russian parents before immigrating to the United States and serving in World War Two. Indeed, because of his last name he likely came from a quasi aristocratic family that had German roots as well as Russian, something not uncommon for Russian nobility.
He worked for the CIA. She lived until 1979, dying at the age of 61 in Florida. The couple had two children. At the time of her death in 1979 Ludmila was living in St. Augustine Florida, her sister Nina Lash in Detroit, and her sister Nina McDonald in Palos Verdes Estates, California.
Okay, so that's what became of them, but what of their lives?
Based on what we can find, they had adventurous childhoods. Their adoptive father seems to have taken them all over the world when he could, and they accordingly lived in such places as Brazil. Upon his retirement, he apparently bought a yacht and they lived for a time on it, before it was sunk when struck by a ship. They all survived the sinking. In later years, they remained close to their father.
And while we can't tell for sure, there seem to have been a strong element of Russianness that was incorporated into the rest of their lives. To the extent that we can tell, they all became American citizens only in adulthood, there father preserving the option for them, as he'd promised, for them to return to Russia, which none of them did. They had a Russian governess early on, and then a Russian speaking Estonian step mother. The youngest of them married another Russian refugee. Even the youngest of them surely spoke Russian and had some knowledge of the culture of their homeland.
They also lived remarkably American lives. They spread out across the country while young, although they seemed to gravitate back towards Florida in their later years. The boys all lived remarkably short lives for Americans, but lives that are interestingly about in context of life spans for Russians, which is usually attributed to environmental conditions in Russian culture in Russia. As there were only two boys, this could be merely coincidental with them.
Were they raised Russian Orthodox? Did their governess and adoptive mother instill in them a sense of a Russian identity? Did the older ones retain it due to having been born in Russia? Or were they just glad to have been rescued from an undoubtedly hard fate.
Of that last item, it seems we can be sure. They called him "Dyadya" (Дядя), the Russian word for "uncle", right from the onset, but it's pretty clear he became more than that. And its an extraordinary tale of generosity. He entered into the role well into his middle age when some of them were very young, and with nobody really at home to help him.
*Technically "ova" merely identifies the bearer of the name as a woman. It actually shares the same root as ovum, i.e., "egg".
