Chat
|
Daily Search
|
My GenForum
|
Community Standards
|
Terms of Service
|
|
|
Hi Laura,
Konrad may have been one of the "German-Russians."
Catherine the Great invited Germans to settle in the steppes, thinking her subjects could learn from the forward-thinking immigrants. She promised the germans free land, freedom from the draft and freedom from taxes. They tended to stay isolated from the Russians who surrounded them - they kept their language, culture, farming practices and religion, and married each other.
Around the last half of the 1800's the Russians reneged on the draft and taxes promose. Some of the Germans stayed, many took off for Canada and the Dakotas, where the weather would be just like "home". Some, tired of harsh weather, went to Mexico.
There are hundreds of web sites, forums, mailing lists and books devoted to what are called "German-Russians". here are two:
http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/ethnic/german-russian/jubilee/history.shtml
(Written in 1926 and racist)
http://pixel.cs.vt.edu/library/odessa.html
You can start by searching for
german-russian odessa genealogy
in Google. Odessa was a big city on the Steppes.
Notify Administrator about this message?
Followups:
|
| http://genforum.genealogy.com/ochs/messages/294.html | ||
 |
Link to GenForum Add Forum |
|