Join Guins World

Several of us fifth generation descendants of Morits-Emil and Maria Guins have a treasure chest full of documents, stories, pictures and information that we believe other descendants will find fascinating. We have developed this website to give an idea of what is possible. It is only a start; there is much more to come. We are sure others have more to add to the story. Please consider joining our website and entering into the conversation by clicking below:

BREAKING NEWS

Have We Found Guinsville?

In working on the Guinsworld website we are constantly confronted with the question of how to spell Gins/Guins and that leads to the deeper question of where the name came from. Is it shortened from Ginsberg in accordance our Jewish roots? More far-fetched speculation has the name as shortened version of Guiness. After all, the […]

New Guinses Discovered

With indefatigable research our Moscow-based Guins relative, Eduard Gins, has delved into the origins of the Guins/Gins name and discovered a few distant relations in the process. He also found the above Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of Poland presented to Ivan Gints, Court Councilor as a newly certified member of the nobility. (Description […]

Miracle in Moscow

It’s not often that we find items belonging to our distant ancestors; in fact, it’s very rare. But Eduard Gins, who lives in asuburb of Moscow, managed to do just that recently, by an amazing coincidence! Actually, Eduard made his own luck bysearching through an antiques market in June. Eduard shared his extraordinary discovery with […]

The Patriarch Marries

Guins siblings all became Christians in 19th century Poland. The above is a 22 January 1856 marriage certificate for (Morits) Emil Gins, 27 years old, and Maria Konstantinovna Golubeva, 19 years old, at the St. Vladimir Cathedral, St. Petersburg, Russia. Morits Emil Gins’ older brother, Julius, appeared as a witness at the wedding. These Gins […]

Breaking News-- Morits Guins Baptism

We have always known that Morits Gins, our earliest common ancestor, converted to Christianity in 1842, but now we have a copy of the original baptismal record. Morits Gins, born 1827 in Kalisz, Poland, made a momentous decision that changed the course of his life when he was just 15 years old. Following in his older brother, Alexander’s, footsteps, Morits moved to Warsaw by, or before, 1842. Alexander, born in 1821, worked as a publisher and his younger brother Morits entered the printing profession as a typographer-in-training. While living in Warsaw, Alexander Gins chose to be christened in the Evangelical-Reformed (Protestant) faith on 10 Nov. 1839.

GUINS WORLD IS LIVE

Not entirely Russian, after all As many of you are aware, we’ve been tracing our Guins/Gins ancestors since 2008, combing through personal files and family photos, translating original Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish documents, and locating other historical records. But it was always done with the thought that we were going to find the location in […]

Гинс/Gins/Guins
Welcome to
Guins World

From Rynek Street on the central square of Kalisz in western Poland, to the corridors of Anichkov Palace on Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, Russia, to meeting halls in the Siberian city of Omsk, and offices of the Chinese Eastern Railway in Harbin, China, the story of the Guins family unfolded during the momentous events of the 19th and 20th centuries that included World War I, the Revolution and Civil War, and the diaspora of Russians who fled the Communist regime.

The descendants of Morits-Emil Ludvigovich Guins and his wife, Maria Konstantinovna (née Golubeva) lived during a transformational time in the Russian Empire, and yet the four sons and four daughters born in Russia and Ukraine, 1857-1875, found ways to thrive during those tumultuous years. Some Gins family members trained at military academies and engaged in military service, while others completed university degrees in law and engineering and entered the ranks of Academia and the Russian Civil Service.

Through this website and its newsletters, oral histories, maps, and family trees, we trace the unexpected paths of the Guins family as they migrated from Europe to the Far East and on to North and South America. Our research efforts focused on locating documents and other evidence in Russian, European, and American archives, as well as in personal family collections. As a result, we identified original Guins family records written in Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian. The research included the assistance of professional genealogists and translators, and many of those documents and translations are displayed in the newsletters that are accessible on the website.

We hope that you enjoy reading the fascinating narratives of our ancestors and contribute your family stories and photos to the growing archival collection of our shared Guins family history.