Hessen, Germany

Sebastian Stang was born in 1730 in Kurmainz, Gernsheim, Hesse (state), Germany. Gernsheim was a town on the Rhine river located less than 50 kilometres south of the city of Frankfurt. It was on about the same latitude as Lethbridge, Alberta. The countryside here consisted of gently rolling hills.

The ancient Stang Coat of Arms consists of a shield with three blue tree trunks on a green mound, a helmet, and on top of the helmet an arm, with red sleeve, holding a tree trunk. The tree trunk symbols were probably meant to represent location of the original Stangs. Stang might have been spelled with an “e” on the end (Stange) at one time.

Sebastian Stang was a farmer.

In 1762, when Sebastian was 32 years, the new Russian Czarina Catherine II (Catherine the Great) signed her famous Manifesto “On Permitting Foreigners, except Jews, to come and settle in Russia.” The Manifesto was printed in several languages including German, and then in 1763 Russian diplomats abroad were ordered to publish the Manifesto in local newspapers. Thus, the emigration of Germans to Russia began with Catherine, herself a German, and her desire to bring foreign artisans and farmers to Russia.

Eventually, Catherine wanted to populate the largely uninhabited grassy plains (steppes) of Russia with European farmers. In addition to making it more difficult for invaders and warring tribes to conquer Russian lands, Catherine also hoped the foreign colonists would promote agriculture on the steppe and serve as a model for the Russians in the adoption of better methods of farming. Catherine’s original intention was also to recruit artisans (trades people) and use them as teachers for the Russians in the Russian cities and towns.

Sebastian Stang married in about 1763, to a girl named Anna Maria who was eleven years younger than him (this may have been his second wife).

Soon after Catherine’s Manifesto was issued, contracts were signed with emigration companies, who were paid premiums for each family recruited. Many of these companies were headed by Frenchmen of dubious character. Catherine’s desire was to populate Russia with all Europeans, but because of various obstacles in other places, it was chiefly those from the free cities and southwest states of Germany that responded. Resettlement offices were opened in most of the larger German cities, including Frankfurt.

One of the earliest recruiting agents was Jean de Boffe, who spoke German very poorly. He began recruiting in the Alsace region of France in the summer of 1764. However, after a short period of time he was forced out of that area by French authorities. Jean simply moved up to Germany, into the areas (states) of Palatinate, Hunsruck and Rhenish Hesse (where Sebastian Stang resided - Gernsheim was on the east bank of the Rhine river which marked the Hesse - Rhineland Palatinate border). De Boffe recruited heavily in these regions, to the point where the local German authorities would eventually become vigorously opposed the emigration of their subjects.

Jean de Boffe described to people the conditions and substantial privileges promised to those who migrated to Russia. This included travelling expenses to Russia, a large amount of land for every male person in the family (which was described as lush farm land, and also woodland), a loan to help build a house and purchase necessary farm implements, exemption from taxes for a period of thirty years if settled in a colony, no lack of well-organized public schools for each religion, exemption from military service, and independence of colonists from Russian officials (as will be seen, that last promise was not kept). Also promised was that “there shall never and nowhere be a lack of doctors, surgeons and other persons necessary for the care of physical health in a well-planned government”. The German colonies would also be permitted to build their own churches, with free and unrestricted practice of their religion. Religious freedom was emphasized.

Despite all of these enticing promises, some might wonder why anyone would decide to uproot from their home, and their family and friends, to move far away to live in a strange country, particularly if that country was Russia. Russia was generally viewed by Europeans at that time as a barbarous country with wild frontiers plagued with brigand Turks and Tartars more feared than the wild Indians of America. Even the native Russians were considered a poorly civilized people. The political news most often heard out of Russia was that of conspiracy, dethronement, assassination and revolution. It appeared to be a country of very unsettled conditions.

However, what must be realized is that life in this part of Germany at this time in history was not very good for the average citizen.

The biggest difficulty was the poor economic situation. Many people were living in poverty, with poor clothing, not enough food, and run down homes which they could not afford to fix up. An average farmer probably had only two or three scrawny cows to provide some milk (scrawny because of the lack of grazing ground).

With small farms and poor soil, they barely grew enough grain for their own needs, and any surplus grains could only be sold at very low prices, if it was not taken by the authorities to pay off taxes in arrears. Many of the local rulers (princes) imposed onerous feudal taxes on the people. Much of the tax revenue was needed to finance the debt incurred during the Seven Years War of 1756-63, and also to support the luxurious living and expensive indulgences of the princes. The value of money also fluctuated greatly during this period, adding to economic uncertainties and difficulties.

A survey of several families leaving Germany and settling in the Volga region showed that almost all were forced to sell all of their property in order to settle debts and pay taxes. Only a few were able to leave their personal property in the custody of relatives, to be sold if the emigrants successfully settled in Russia.

Another problem for the citizen was the political situation and seemingly constant wars. Unlike the more unified Northern and Eastern Germany, there was much more political instability in the southwestern German states, with many independent principalities and city states. Many of the local rulers (princes) were not very good leaders.

Each prince retained the sovereign right to declare war on his neighbors, and often did so for such seemingly trivial causes as the possession of a small town or a forest, or even the location of a bridge. When a war was fought, each village was required to provide services (such as digging fortifications) and supply a quota of soldiers. Also, some of the Hessian princes received large sums of money from foreign powers for providing Hessian soldiers to fight outside of Germany. Germany had been a land of many wars over the years, and most young German men could count on spending some time in the army. Such worries would not have to be faced in Russia, or at least this was the promise.

Even the religious situation was one of disunion - some areas were strongly Catholic, and others strongly Protestant (including the Reformed and Lutheran faiths).

In light of the poor conditions in Germany at this time, the Russian offer was very tempting. One of the main attractions was the sizable amount of free land for each family. They were offered considerably more land than most of the German farmers possessed in those days - a typical German farmer maybe owned 15 acres of land, and often they were forced to sell part of their land to pay for the taxes and rents extracted by the princes. The chance to be a large landowner in Russia was potentially the only opportunity for someone to achieve a degree of prosperity, and build for themselves and their children a better future than ever seemed possible in Germany.

The initial exemption from Russian taxes added to this hope of greater prosperity. Heavy taxes had been a regular part of life for the German families, taking away any gains which might have been achieved.

Finally, because the Russian recruiters were paid a fee for each immigrant, they used whatever forms of persuasion were needed. They even lied in some cases about the conditions awaiting immigrants in Russia. This included phony letters from Germans already living in Russian colonies, which extolled the wonderful life in Russia.

Among the recruits in Hessen immediately signing up to go to Russia were Sebastian Stang (and also some Stangs from Wallernhausen who do not appear to be related). Also emigrating to the same colony in Russia from the town of Gernsheim was the couple Benedict and Catharina Zorn.

Although the authorities opposed the large emigration which started to occur, privately they also realized that people were wanting to migrate primarily because of their poverty, and there was little they could to do improve the economic situation.

Thus, Sebastian Stang and family prepared for their migration, which included the obtaining of an emigration permit and passport.

The Russian agents, after recruiting a sufficient number of prospective immigrants, returned to Russia to report their recruits and receive from the government sufficient money to get their enlistees to Russia and established. After taking care of affairs in Russia, Jean de Boffe returned to Germany so he could lead his group of immigrants to Russia and see them settled there.

Migration To Russia

The day for the Stangs departure arrived, probably sometime in mid-1765. Family and friends bade a sad farewell. It would very likely be the last time they would ever see each other again. However, some of this sorrow was offset by the high hopes and expectations of the emigrants for their new life.

Despite the good intentions and promises of the Russian government, it would prove to be a very long and difficult journey to their new home, in a time when the average person was not accustomed to travelling long distances.

The first emigrants going to Russia had simply applied to the Russian agent to make individual transportation arrangements for that person or family for travel over land. But that way of doing things had proved to be expensive and fraught with difficulties for the Russian government. Now the Russians were requiring all German emigrants to rendezvous at Luebeck, a port city in northern Germany on the Baltic Sea, where ship passage to Russia would be provided.

To get to Luebeck, those from the southern and central German provinces were required to first make their way in groups to the city of Roslau on the Elbe River, two hundred miles northeast of the Stang home. Roslau quickly became an important rendezvous point for thousands of colonists.

In Roslau, the emigrants were put up in living quarters (free of charge). The recruiting agents also provided a daily travel allowance for each member of the family. From there the emigrants, including the Stangs, were packed unto small boats which sailed over two hundred miles up the Elbe River to the city of Hamburg. The Elbe was one of Germany’s most important waterways.

From Hamburg, the emigrants were then sent about forty miles overland to Luebeck. Thus, just to get to this point, the Stangs had to travel some 450 miles in total, and they were still in Germany!

In Luebeck, the emigrants were housed in quarters until a sufficient number had gathered to fill a vessel. The living quarters were old drafty warehouses, with straw on the floor, rented by the Russian authorities. These warehouses had only one kitchen, and so city authorities allocated additional quarters for the organization of meals. In expectation of a good life in Russia, the colonists tolerated all the adversities en route to Russia.

The number of sea-going vessels at the disposal of the Russian commissioners to transport the emigrants to Russia was limited compared to the large numbers of colonists arriving. The number of Russian colonists exceeded all expectations - in 1765, nearly 4,200 emigrants were dispatched from Luebeck. Even when a boat became available, storms and contrary winds often delayed sailing. Thus, the crowd of emigrants gathering at Luebeck became very large at times. And the waiting was not pleasant. The temporary housing barracks were generally not very clean, and they were crowded with all sorts of people. There was plenty of commotion.

To maintain some semblance of order among such a varied group of people thrown together, the emigration agents appointed leaders from the better and more educated class, calling them Vorstecher or whatever title a mayor might have had back in their home area. Each appointed leader was given authority over an assigned number of emigrants. Among other things, he doled out the daily support allowance to each, and also the daily food rations during the upcoming sea voyage.

Before embarking from Luebeck, each emigrant received a little bit of money (16 shillings) to buy food supplies based on fourteen days on route - the emigrants jokingly referred to this as “butter money”. Food for the sea voyage consisted of bread, biscuits, pickled meat, beer, wine and French brandy. Some of the needy also received money for clothes before leaving.

The waiting emigrants eventually boarded a ship hired by the Russian government to begin the trip of some 850 miles across the Baltic Sea to St. Petersburg. Nearly four hundred people were crammed on board a ship.

The passage by sea was difficult. When the weather was good it only took about a week to sail all the way to St. Petersburg. But when the weather was bad, which it often was on the Baltic, it could be a much longer voyage, and most of the immigrants, including the Stangs, were unaccustomed to travelling on the seas. They even found it difficult to stand up at first.

The ship ride was crowded and uncomfortable, not to mention dangerous at times. The passengers were required to stay below the deck so as not to interfere with the work of the sailors. Below the portholes had to be closed for protection against the waves, thus blocking the only source of ventilation. In the crowded conditions, it was not a nice environment. Many became seasick, and some caught diseases as a result of the generally unsanitary conditions. Without proper care and medicine, some of the sick even died. As the time of the voyage stretched out, the food also diminished in quantity and quality. Russian vodka, something they were unfamiliar with, was offered to them.

When they finally arrived and disembarked at Kronshtadt – an island off the port city of St. Petersburg - it felt good to stand on solid ground again, and not to be so crowded. The immigrants stayed a short time on Kronshtadt island, living in barracks or in open camps. Here their documents were verified and customs inspections made. Those families with sick members were taken to a hospital specially established for the immigrants in St. Petersburg which could accommodate over two hundred patients at one time.

From Kronshtadt, the immigrants were taken in boats to the mainland, to the town of Oranienbaum (Lomonsov) located just to the west of St. Petersburg. For the first time, the clean-shaven Germans saw Russian peasants, whose unkempt beards immediately attracted their attention. In Oranienbaum, the colonists lived from one to two months in crude wood barracks previously constructed for soldiers.

In 1765, Adam Assen-Delft had responsibility (from the Guardianship Chancery for Foreigners - the highest administrative authority over the colonists) for the reception and housing of the colonists in Oranienbaum. The new settlers were questioned as to their desired place of settlement and choice of occupation. Although Catherine’s first manifestoes inviting colonization had promised free choice of place of habitation, the recruited colonists were now persuaded, without force, to settle in unpopulated regions of Russia, particularly in the province of Saratov (the area along the lower Volga River near the city of Saratov).

The steppes that stretched along both sides of the Lower Volga in a north-south direction were lands which Russia had basically claimed or conquered from wild nomadic tribes. This area was referred to as the “New Russia”. These steppes were now largely lying idle, seeming to await the plow and conversion to productive farm land. The Government had purchased from large landowners many hundred thousands of acres of land on both the west and the east side of the Volga to award to the new colonies. Their main desire was to maintain a civilized presence there, hoping this would create a living barrier to the freely roaming nomadic peoples and robber bands terrorizing Russians in this area. These reasons for settlement were omitted in the communications with the new immigrants.

The immigrants were thus persuaded to take up farming here. Having no knowledge of the geography of Russia, and in anticipation of the promised “paradise garden” on the Volga, the immigrant farmers (including Sebastian Stang) generally agreed to settle there without much concern. For the nearly forty percent of immigrants who were non-farmers (i.e. artisans), however, they more reluctantly agreed to become farmers in the Volga. Although Catherine’s original plans included the recruitment of both foreign farmers and artisans to be examples to the Russians, by this time the more pressing priority for Russia was to create a settled population along the lower Volga.

Also in Oranienbaum, each immigrant family received either money (12-18 rubles per family) or a ticket from their group leader which they could used to acquire clothing and other articles from a local merchant for their upcoming journey.

Also, the immigrants were taken to St. Petersburg, the Russian capital city, to be made citizens of Russia. For this, they were called into a church, Protestant or Catholic according to their individual faith. A German pastor read to them in their mother tongue the “solemn oath” which they were required to take as Russian subjects, which the colonists had to repeat back. This oath included:

“I … declare that I desire and by duty to Her Imperial Highness, my Most Merciful Great Lady, Empress Catherine Alexeevna, Autocrat of All Russia … to serve and assume all duty, pledging my life to the last drop of blood … that I may do service of Her Imperial Highness and for the use of the state in all cases. I will defend the interests of Her Majesty against all harm and loss … and will conduct myself as the good and faithful slave and subject of Her Imperial Highness … In conclusion of this solemn oath, I kiss the Word [Bible] and the Cross of my Savior. Amen.”

The colonists did what they were required to do, but their hearts did not yet necessarily fully embrace this new country of theirs.

Except for a few who remained in St. Petersburg to live, or to live in the newly created German colonies near St. Petersburg, the German immigrants were placed into several parties for their travel to Saratov. For their trip they were put under the protection and leadership of Russian military officers (mostly Germans serving in the Russian army), who provided them with daily food allowances along the way.

The colonists first proceeded on boats travelling east along the Neva river. They travelled for over one hundred miles along this winding river, before passing through the Schlusselburg canal to get to the larger Volkhov river. For the new immigrants, being outside of their homeland for the first time, everything seemed so strange, but it was also fascinating to travel through and observe a foreign country.

Once on the Volkhov River, the immigrants proceeded southwards for about 130 miles before reaching the city of Novgorod. Many people got sick and had to disembark here, where they had to remain for the winter and take up travelling again in the spring with another group of immigrants.

The others continued on. Some traveled by water all the way to Saratov, while some left the boats shortly after Novgorod to continue the journey overland. The overlanders traveled in small groups of about twenty-five, in caravans consisting of about fifteen Russian wagons. They were instructed to strictly comply with all orders of the soldier escorts, and to avoid any conflict with the local population.

Although the immigrants generally preferred travelling on land over journeying on the water, the travel on land did not prove to be any easier. The transport wagons were so overloaded with baggage and women and children, that many of the men had to go on foot most of the way. The caravans travelled to the city of Torzhok, which was nearly two hundred miles southeast of Novgorod. It was then another 140 miles to the city of Moscow.

The immigrants were provided a daily allowance to buy provisions from the captains. They were even permitted, although not without some protest, to stop at times along the way at Russian villages to obtain a little more variety in the food they ate.

In Moscow, the caravans rested for many days and changed horses.

It was a very difficult journey to Saratov. From St. Petersburg, they had to travel nearly six hundred miles to get to Moscow, and then it was another five hundred miles down to Saratov. For those traveling on land, even though there was a good, wide road for most of the route to Saratov, the caravan proceeded at a very slow pace, sometimes stopping at certain places for extended periods of time.

As winter approached, many of the new colonists, who were unaccustomed to the cold and snowy climate, came down sick. A significant number died. It was estimated that of the approximate 27,000 colonists who traveled to the Saratov region by 1767, more than three thousand died on route.

Those dispatched from Oranienbaum to Saratov in 1765 eventually had to winter on route in some town or village along the Volga before reaching their area of settlement. The Russian peasants who housed them received good pay for hosting the colonists.

In the winter quarters with Russians, the German colonists had the opportunity to observe firsthand the manners and customs of their new countrymen. They were somewhat appalled to see that the Russians made room in their homes for animals such as chickens, pigs and sheep. All in all, they were not impressed with the generally filthy living conditions of the Russian peasants.

The food they received was mostly cabbage soup and millet gruel, with milk to drink. One good thing about the experience was that the German colonists had the opportunity to learn a little of the Russian language, which would serve them well since they were going to be living in this country.

In the spring the migration was resumed. When the travelling colonists finally reached Saratov, around June of 1766, they were not too impressed with the city. Saratov was a relatively large city of about ten thousand people, but it was an unkempt community dominated by ramshackle huts and other rude structures.

In Saratov, the colonists were looked after by the Kontor. When Catherine’s Manifesto was first issued in 1763 inviting colonists to Russia, the Russian government organized an immigration bureau named the Guardianship Chancery for Foreigners, whose duty it was to “guide the settlement of invited foreign colonists.” The Chancery had looked after the colonist transportation to Russia and their reception, but being located far away in St. Petersburg made it infeasible for the Chancery to effectively manage the new settlements.

Consequently, the Guardianship Chancery established a subordinate office in Saratov in 1766, officially named the Kontor (Office) of the Guardianship Chancery for Foreigners. The Kontor was initially just intended to provide temporary localized government supervision of the colonists until the colonists had “become familiar with all Russian customs” and had decided upon their own system of local government. The Kontor employed several people, including two physicians to help the colonists with their medical needs.

In Saratov, the Stangs spent some time living in barracks which had been newly constructed for the colonists. There were sixteen barracks altogether. Each barrack was about twenty metres long, with two large living rooms and a porch between them. A single barrack was expected to house only two families, but in actuality more than two families at a time were often housed in one barrack, particularly at busy times such as the summer of 1766.

Sebastian Stang was provided with a cash advance of 150 rubles by a representative of the Kontor, who explained to him that this money was only a loan, and that the money had to be used exclusively for the development of farms (livestock, farm equipment, etc.) as well as some personal items (table, benches, bed, barrels, water buckets, boxes, iron skillet, wood plates, wood spoons, bread trough). Their houses would be built by the government and charged to their loan. (Note: because many of the first colonists spent their loan money carelessly, the authorities would gradually provide smaller loans – eventually down to fifteen rubles – with more provision of farming and personal items)

The colonists had to keep a close eye on their money while in Saratov, as the local Russians were keen to lay their hands on it, whether by legal or illegal means.

The colonists were also assigned to their new village while in Saratov. The planning and construction of the colonies had begun in 1764 under the responsibility of a man named Ivan Reiss and his assistants. Reiss determined the places where the colonies were to be established, using maps of the region compiled previously by government offices in Saratov.

The colonists were to be settled in districts or “circles” of a specified diameter, with an available water source (river or spring), and each settled by up to one thousand families. Although the land set aside for the colonists covered an extremely large area, the village districts were founded right next to each other, with no free space between them, in recognition that the colonies would have “mutual need for each other.”

Eighty-one acres of land per family were allocated to each colony. It was intended that approximately half of this land (40 acres per family) would be for farming, and the rest for haying, forest, housing, vegetable gardens and orchards. This was a lot of land to most of the colonists, compared to what they had back home. Land was also set aside for any Russian peasants living in the area.

Most of the new settlers were farmers. It appears there was some attempt by the Russian authorities to distribute the trade or craftsmen somewhat evenly among the new villages. Of the 47 families in the Stang’s new village, there were: 29 farmers, 7 millers, a salt worker (Nikolaus Volmar, who would be the first village mayor), a weaver (Hans Dreher), a carpenter (Bonaventura Eter), a blacksmith (Joseph Kraus), a feldscher(?), a shoemaker (Joseph Braun), a stonemason (Johannes Wiessner), a hunter (Franz Iskhom), a musician (Matthias Graf), and two unknown.

The new village site Sebastian Stang and his family were assigned to was a Catholic settlement located about 95 kilometres south, and a little west, of the city of Saratov, on the west side of the Volga river. Eventually the settlements were given Russian names by the immigration bureau. The official Russian name for the Stang’s village was Kopenka (sometimes spelled Kapenka). This site was about fifteen kilometres west of the Volga.

Each side of the Volga had its good points and its bad points, not that the new settlers had any idea which was better. The east side of the Volga river was known as the meadowside, for it consisted of a low and largely treeless plain which was relatively flat as far as the eye could see, similar to the Canadian prairies.

The geography on the west side of the Volga, where the Stangs were to be settled, was different. The Volga “Uplands” began as a steep bank along the west side of the Volga River, and was more hilly than the east side of the Volga, although not as hilly as the name might have suggested (it was known as the hillyside or mountainside). The land was actually relatively flat in many places. However, the rolling rock-strewn terrain was dissected by several rivers which produced many valleys and ravines. These rivers provided a good water supply for the people living in the area.

From Saratov, the settlers set out by wagon in July to the place of their new settlement. The Stangs appear to have traveled in a large convoy comprised of three different village groups. They were still led by someone from the Russian army.

It would take a few days to get to their new village from Saratov. There was a road leaving Saratov, but when that disappeared the military wagon master guided the Stangs and their travelling party over the roadless steppes to their new home.

The settlers soon realized they were in largely “uncivilized” territory. As they travelled they keenly surveyed the countryside, straining their eyes for more signs of civilization - villages, houses or farm buildings - which they expected to see more of. But there was little of that in this new land of theirs.

They did pass the odd German village. Although they desired to stop and converse with some of their transplanted countrymen, in order to ascertain general conditions in the colonies, the Russian military guide seemed anxious not to stop for very long - perhaps he feared that the new colonists might become too discouraged if they learned more of existing conditions. The colonists in these villages assured the new colonists that they would be content here once they had made a little progress, but their conviction was not strong, and the travelling colonists were discouraged by the poverty clearly evident amongst their fellow countrymen. Their clothing alone spoke to the difficulties, being a shabby mixture of mostly Russian clothes.

When they finally reached the site of their village-to-be, out in the middle of the wilderness, the convoy leader suddenly stopped the wagons (the places where the colonist villages were to be established had already been staked out). At first, the settlers wondered why they were stopping there. As far as the eye could see, nothing was visible except grass about two feet high and a small bit of woods here and there. There were certainly no buildings. But then their guide pronounced that this was their final destination, “compliments of the Russian Empress”. The settlers felt very astonished and disillusioned.

The absence of pre-built houses was really the fault of their recruiter Jean de Boffe. All the recruiters, including Jean de Boffe, were given money for the construction of colonist living quarters. De Boffe, however, used his money with a complete lack of control, constructing only two houses in two years for all of his recruited colonists. He declared to the Russian government that he made mistakes in his accounting and therefore could not construct the homes on time. The Kontor would be forced to take upon itself house construction in the de Boffe colonies.

After having arrived at their barren settlement site, at first no one climbed down from their horse or wagon. They had expected more. They were already learning that Russia would not be the paradise they had hoped for and which they had been led to believe existed. One could see the desire in every face to turn back. However, this was not possible (although they might have tried to go back had they known of all the trials they would have to endure over the next ten years!).

When that first general dismay dissipated somewhat, with a sigh one by one the settlers climbed down. It seemed that it would be largely up to them to build their new “paradise”. At least all the travelling was over with.

Vollmer - The First Year (1766)

The Kopenka village site was on a meadow between the Ilovka river on one side and Lavla creek on the other.

At the settlement’s founding there were recorded 47 families (and 158 people). Besides the Stangs, other family names included Schroh, Gartner, Wiessner, Graf, Weinkauf, Brost, Sieben, Sauer, Beilmann and Volmar. There were listed two orphans - 15 year old Catharina Gorm who resided in the Eter household, and 17 year old Peter Sieben who resided in the household of Michael Brost (Peter Sieben was the brother of Michael Brost’s wife Maria Magdalena).

The new village consisted mostly of small young families. Of the forty seven families, nineteen had only one child, and thirteen had no children. The two largest families (five children) were the Schrohs and the Beilmanns. About half the village population was 20-39 years of age. There were only seven people age fifty or older.

Although each colony would receive an official Russian name, the new German settlers were unaccustomed to the Russian tongue and not disposed to learn it. Thus, they unofficially named their settlements after their respective leaders or mayors. The leaders were often those who had been appointed in Luebeck where the immigrants had travelled from. These men guided the settlement process, and became the first local government leader.

Kopenka thus became Vollmar to the new settlers, named after thirty-year old Nikolaus Volmar who was the first “overseer“ of their settlement. (note: the Volmars eventually moved to another village). Nikolaus Volmar’s two assistants were Lorenz Schroh and Peter Roth.

Vollmer was one of several villages belonging to the district of Frank, which was located entirely on the west or hilly side of the Volga. Initially there were eight Catholic villages in Frank, all located in the southeastern part of the district: Husaren (founded 1763), Kamenka (1765), Degott (1766), Schuck (1766), Pfeifer (1767), Rothammel (1767) and Seewald (1767). Pfeifer was the largest Catholic village in the district, with over three hundred people at its founding. Vollmer was surrounded by the villages of Husaren, Kamenka, Schuck and Pfeifer.

There were also eight Lutheran villages in the northwestern part of the district, including the village of Frank which was the central and most populated village in the district with over five hundred people. Altogether, the Frank district was comprised of about 57 percent Lutherans and 43 percent Catholics. Most of the settlers in the entire Volga region were Protestants. In time, there came to be 65 Evangelical colonies and 38 Catholic German colonies. There were also about one hundred Germans, in the early days, who took up residence in the German Suburb of the city of Saratov.

Along with the 27,000 colonists who had settled in the Volga region by 1767, there were also many Russian peasants living in the countryside. Much of the land surrounding the Volga that had not been awarded to the German colonists was owned by rich Russian landowners. However, few, if any, of these large landowners actually lived there - they preferred to remain closer to “civilization” in their comfortable residences near Moscow or St. Petersburg. The new German settlements were therefore interspersed among Russian peasant settlements which farmed the land for their absent feudal landlords.

Shelter for the newly arrived Vollmer villagers was obviously one of the first priorities to be taken care of. The Russian recruiting agents in Germany had promised that housing would be available upon the settlers arrival (the cost of which would be considered as part of their crown loan, to be eventually repaid without interest). But the houses were nowhere to be found. The settlers were now told that the lumber would arrive soon for them to build their own homes. They waited, living in their covered wagons or in improvised tents or shacks.

Some urgent necessities - seed, bread, flour and other provisions - had been provided by the Russian government to the new colonists to help them get by in that first year. They would also be provided with a small daily food allowance. However, their provisions ran low after a short while, and the new settlers were compelled to forage for food.

Being located on the bank of a small river proved to be a great blessing when they discovered an abundance of fish in the waters. Fish would form an important supplement to their meagre diet during those first couple of difficult years. Hunting also put some meat on the table, including rabbits and wild boars. At certain seasons of the year there would also prove to be many geese and ducks, which were quite enjoyed. Most of the colonists were used to impoverished conditions, to some extent, because of the poor economic conditions which existed back in their homeland. So these struggles were not entirely new to them, other than being in a different setting.

The colonies of Kamenka (founded 1765) and Husaren (founded 1763) were nearby, and may have also provided some help.

For their church services, the Vollmer settlers had to travel to nearby Kamenka for the first few years. Until 1769, Kamenka was the only Catholic parish on the west side of the Volga.

Getting Catholic priests was a problem for the settlers. Until the German colonists had arrived, there were only a few Catholics in all of Russia, nearly all of which were foreigners living in Moscow or St. Petersburg. These were served by priests, usually Jesuits, who had come with foreign ambassadors.

However, Catherine’s Manifesto of 1763 promised to the immigrants free exercise of their religion, including the freedom to have priests or pastors of their choice, and freedom to build their own churches in their villages (however the building of monasteries was forbidden). This was an essential stipulation for attracting immigrants to Russia.

Consequently, when plans for settlement of the Volga region were made in 1763, they included obtaining clergy for the new settlers. The original plan included one Catholic priest, one Lutheran pastor and one Reformed pastor, to serve all of the expected German immigrants (it seems the Russians had underestimated the number of immigrants who would come). To obtain a Catholic priest, the Russian government turned to the mission prefecture located in St. Petersburg, who in turn asked the Pope to send two priests to serve the Catholic settlers on the Volga. Even though this was one more priest than the Russian government had asked for, it still proved to be inadequate as there were about 7,500 Catholics among the new immigrants.

Thus, in 1765 the Franciscan priest J. Muller came to serve all the Germans on the west (hilly) side of the Volga, while a second priest was established on the east side. Father Muller was stationed at Kamenka, which fortunately was very close to Vollmer. Father Muller would serve there for nine years.

After waiting at their new village site for some time, the Vollmer colonists were eventually notified that the lumber for their homes was available. However, the logs were on the Volga river, where they had been floated down from the logging area. It was left up to the villagers to haul the heavy logs from there to their village site. This was the cause of some concern. The heavy logs would have to be hauled over ten miles over a hilly region with the untrained horses that the government had provided them with. With their small wagons, more than one trip would be necessary to get enough logs for each family to build a house. The overseer Nikolaus Vollmar reported to the colonial authorities that, “To drag the logs is impossible for us, because it would ruin our horses, so that we would not be able to do our farmwork next spring”.

But their complaining was to no available. The authorities ordered all colonies to haul the building materials from the Volga to their settlement site (nonetheless, some colonists chose instead to buy lumber from the nearby Russians, but at considerable expense).

Thus, the building of their houses, farm buildings and farmyard enclosures was left for themselves to do, aided by their cash advance for this purpose.

The actual village site chosen for Vollmer was on the flat area on the east bank of the Ilovka. Unknown at the time was that this location would be too close to the water. Almost year after year the river would flood its banks, creating havoc for the villagers.

Village sites had been staked out according to a standard village plan. House lots measured about 85 x 115 feet, and were distributed along a main street about one hundred feet wide. The main street was intersected by smaller streets twenty feet wide. At the centre of the village, at the intersection of the main street and the wide cross street (100 feet), a block of land was set aside, or designated, for a school, the town administration building(s), and the church (including parsonage). As back in Germany, farmers did not live isolated on their farm. They lived in the village, travelling out to their farmland for their farm work. Living in a village made them more community minded.

The buildings and houses were constructed within this grid by Russian carpenters and brick makers hired by the Russian government.

The village administration building was built first, and was of vital importance to the colonists. It provided a public meeting place where, under the supervision of their own leaders, planning for the colony was conducted. The Russians, as had been promised, would allow each colony to determine its own local government and internal constitution (although the colonists would be liable to the Russian civil laws and numerous regulations). The colonists assigned to each one of their families one of the village lots.

They also divided up, eventually, Vollmer’s farm land amongst themselves. A few thousand acres of land had been assigned to Volmer, reflecting about 98 acres per settled family (a little more than the initial promise of 81 acres per family). The village site was located in the center of all this land. The village overseer (Vollmar) was a key person in all village doings in those early times.

The houses built for the colonists by the colonial authorities were small, but sturdy, gabled log houses. The records show that these were duplexes, with two families assigned to one house.

To construct these duplexes, smooth round logs (fir, spruce or pine) were first squared off, mounted and chinked with clay to form four outside walls and one interior dividing wall. The houses measured about 32 by 20 feet, and the ceiling height was nearly seven feet.

Next came the roof. Some reports stated these were simply thatched roofs, while other reports say they were made of bast (fibre from the inner bark of a tree), with shingles placed on top reinforced with wooden pegs.

There were a couple of windows with outside shutters, two doors, and of course everyone had an oven and chimney.

All in all, most colonists were quite satisfied with their new homes. It was reported that “each colonist has a good living room, a porch, and a kitchen, in most cases also a closet (store-room) beyond the living room.”

Eventually farm buildings were also constructed. The barn (13 by 26 feet) was built next to the house, while the stable (25 by 40 feet) was located at the end of the yard. Again, there are conflicting reports about the materials used. Although initially the farm buildings were supposed to have been constructed of thick boards or small round logs, it appears the farm buildings (including granary) in the yards of the colonists were mostly built from brushwood and thin saplings from the nearby wooded areas (trees which could provide good lumber were very scarce), which were woven together and made air-tight by covering them with clay, and then covered with reeds or thatch.

Fences and gates were also constructed.

Some of the colonists did not use all of their crown loan advanced for the establishment of their homes, for this purpose. Some were compelled through their great need to use the money for other things. The vast majority of the Volga settlers were poor - only a few had brought any money with them.

In addition, the colonists purchased their own livestock (horses and cows), but the increasing flow of settlers soon led to significant increases in livestock prices.

Also, the overseer Volmar complained to the colonial authorities that the main reason for their own poverty, and the need to use the crown building loan for other purposes, was that the villagers had been settled so late in the summer that they were not able to do any sowing, and therefore were completely dependent on the money advances for income: “The biggest mistake was that we were assigned to our colonies too late. We received our colony site on the 15 July, so that the best time was already past.”

There was one case, reported by Vollmar to the authorities, of one man who had simply wasted the money advanced to him. Vollmar had seen his wastefulness and asked the man to show the things he had bought. The man deceitfully borrowed a purse containing forty rubles, showing it to Vollmar and claiming that he still had the money to buy the things he needed. However, that man was an exception to the rule. All of the other settlers were very judicious with their money.

Another difficulty reported by Vollmar, was that the “Hussar colony” had thievishly mowed the grass in their meadows, forcing* the Vollmer villagers to buy hay for themselves at high cost.

In the early fall, the colonists began plowing some land and sowing some winter rye. The plows first used were walking plows fashioned out of the two steel blades which the government had provided. They were attached by an iron rod to a wooden moldboard often made by the colonist himself, with a small halter for one horse. Such a makeshift plow was something the German colonists had never seen the likes of before. Because there were not enough blacksmiths to assemble the plows (the demand was great because virtually everyone needed a plow), often two or three farmers got together to have a plow made. They then worked their fields together. They also needed to work together because alone they did not have enough draft animals.

Another source of food for the colonists in the fall was obtained from wild fruit (apples, plums, pears, etc.) which had ripened in the area. They dried some of this fruit and stored it for the winter.

Schooling was important to the early colonists. After building their homes and attending to the urgent tasks of settlement, even in that first winter the colonists did not neglect the instruction of their children.

For the Catholic colonies, school was closely associated with the clergy. As back in their home land, wherever there was a priest, there was also the parish or church school, with schoolmasters appointed by the parish clergy.

Most of the teachers in the colonies were chosen from those who had some education back in Germany (not necessarily teachers), although included in Vollmer’s first group of settlers was a Peter Roth, who had been a schoolmaster back in Germany.

Since there were only a few pupils in the early years of the colony, a school house was not built. The children simply gathered in the house of the schoolmaster for instruction. Attendance was not compulsory. Reading, writing and bible studies were taught. The establishment of these schools was by German custom, since the Russians did not have elementary schools, and would not have them until 1781.

For the Vollmer colonists, that first winter was a very long season of dark, cold and hungry days. They were poor, and most did not even have a winter coat to protect against the cold. The government provided some rye flour to help sustain them. The flour received was of very poor quality (often mouldy), and it was in the form of a solid block which had to be pulverized with an axe or hammer.

When the flour sometimes did not arrive, the colonists were forced to spend their last possessions to buy bread or flour from neighbouring Russians. The Russians took advantage of the colonist’s desperate situation and only sold at very high prices. The German settlers in many of the colonies complained about this to the authorities. In response, the Guardianship Chancery issued an order to the overseers of the colonies to prepare lists of their needs in flour and in seed grain.

As soon as these lists were handed in to the Guardianship Office in Saratov, crown stores were opened in which the colonists could buy limited amounts of flour, grain (rye, wheat, oats, barley) and other items (peas, hemp) at the same price that the crown itself had paid for these items. These stores were established in Saratov and a few other towns. Payment for items was deducted from the colonist’s daily food allowances. At the time these crown stores where established, the colonial administration in Saratov reminded the colonists that they were expected, at all times, to display “good and desirable behavior and work performance … that through this help they improve their situation, so that they will be able to repay to the crown in an impalpably easy way the loan advances made to them, when the time for repayment comes that was set by the imperial decree.”

That first winter, not having much to do other than tending to their limited livestock, made the time pass even more slowly. Most felt a little homesick for their home land, and some regretted a lot their decision to come to Russia. Some of the villagers also had the added misfortune that first winter of their house burning down.

The only upside to all their struggles, if there was one, was the development of a true sense of community. They had to live and work closely together, which soon developed in them a certain solidarity and strong sense of identity with their new colony. They could at least have some good social times amongst themselves to emotionally lift them up from all their trials and sorrows. Also, there was great equality among them. By the end of that first year in Russia, all colonists had the same amount of property, with the exception of one man who had his horses stolen (a foretaste of things to come).

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Getting Established in Russia (1767)

After a long winter, the Russian spring finally made its much longed-for arrival. However, the melting snow also flooded the area where the Vollmer colonists lived. Some were forced to abandon their homes and seek out higher and drier ground where they could set up temporary camp.

The people were also generally in a very poor state of condition, with many having been afflicted with high fever and illness, particularly a typhus-like disease. Some died during the winter and spring, and the general mood in the colony was quite forlorn despite the coming of spring.

With the spring melting everything became quite muddy. But it soon dried and everyone was quite anxious to begin the work of building up their farms and their village.

From their newly built homes and farm yards in the village, the farmers went out each day with their animals to work the land. For many there was much more work to do than back in Germany.

At first, the colonists laid out their grain fields nearby, behind their village lots, and each of then plowed arbitrarily wherever it suited them best. After breaking the ground and plowing (typically a farmer broke 3-6 acres), grain was sown by hand and harrowed into the ground. However, many colonists did not have sufficient seed to sow all of their broken land.

Alongside their homes the colonists also started gardens. With seeds they had brought from their homeland, they grew the vegetables they had grown back in Germany - parsnips, potatoes, parsley, cabbage, etc. The potato was a staple food of the Germans (but it would not be adopted by the Russians until the mid 1800s), although the potatoes did not grow quite as well in Russia because of the drier climate.

It also appears that many of the women had to learn bread baking skills. Back in Germany they had relied on bakeshops.

With their houses having been built close together, some problems arose between neighbours. And because the farmyards were continuous (no fences) and the space between their buildings was not large, when fire broke out there was more danger of the fire spreading. If they could have rebuilt their homes, the colonists would have built them further apart, and further from the river.

Fire had destroyed many of the first homes throughout the Volga colonies, resulting in an order issued in May 1767 by the colonial administration in regards to fire prevention. The impractical and autocratic order provides insight into the officialdom of those days. The order was: (1) “That every householder at all times, but the overseer once a week, shall examine the stoves and the chimney shafts and, on such occasions, the colonists must be taught not to put too much wood in the stoves at one time and to clean the chimney shafts monthly. (2) Never should all the men of a colony be away at the same time; at least one-fourth should remain at home; they should also take turns at being night watchmen.”

The colonial administration issued another order in July 1767 which restricted the buying of livestock from the Kalmuks. The Kalmuks were a nomadic Tartar tribe, originally from Mongolia, who had lived in the lower Volga region for two centuries before the arrival of the German settlers. The greatest aggravation the Kalmuks provided was in stealing horses and livestock, which were one of the greatest economic assets of the settlers. According to one description of the Kalmuks by one of the founding German colonists:

“… these very skillful horsemen, who like wild animals could accomplish more at night than in the daytime, drove away cattle, singly or several at a time ... Sometimes nomadic Gypsies or Kalmucks camped near a colony in large numbers, set up their tents, 50 to 100 in number, and wintered there, went about as beggars in the daytime in neighboring places, stole everything that was easy to take, robbed at night items that they had spotted in the daytime. Wherever possible, they drove away the cattle and sometimes even stole children, whom their parents never saw again.”

The Kalmuks principally plundered on the west side of the Volga, and mostly in the most southerly Volga colonies (below Vollmer) where they lived. They did most of their damage in the latter part of the 1760s when the Volga region was first colonized, and thereafter a large number of them moved back to Asia.

The order issued by the colonial administration stated that “no colonist under any circumstances is to buy horses or cows or other animals from Kalmuks on the street, but only in Saratov or Kamyshin.” In these two cities, livestock bought from the Kalmuks also had to be registered with officials. It appears the primary motivation for this order was honourable - to prevent the colonists from buying stolen livestock from the Kalmuks.

However, the colonists were not happy with this regulation. It required those needing to purchase livestock to undertake a substantial journey, which required permission or passports from the district commissioner, and which put them in danger while travelling of attack by robber bands who were active at that time everywhere in the lower Volga region. It was much more convenient for the colonists to be able to buy livestock in their own settlements, to which the Kalmuks brought the animals. The colonists were just beginning to get a taste of the abundant regulations which the Russian government would be imposing upon them.

Livestock was purchased for domestic consumption and primarily to serve as draft animals in their farm work. Cattle raising in itself was an activity not undertaken to any great extent by the colonists, particularly on the west side of the Volga. Cattle raising would have required greater absences of the men from their villages, which the authorities did not wish to encourage. That not only would have been a more dangerous lifestyle because of the many thieves about, but also right from the beginning the government wanted to establish the immigrants as a stay-at-home agricultural population.

Fortunately for the Stangs and others who were settled west of the Volga, the soil here would prove generally better for farming than on the east side of the Volga (although where the land was hillier it was a little more difficult to farm).

A scythe was used for cutting hay and crops. The cut grain was tied into sheaves of moderate size and set up in crosswise shocks on the field. After all the grain was cut, the sheaves were hauled back to the farmyards in the village and set up in large stacks.

Other tasks for the colonist farmers in that first full year in Russia were to gather fodder for the animals and firewood for the winter. Some plowing was also done in the fall by many farmers.

Although they made some good progress that year in getting established, it was still very difficult. Wheat flour was usually not on hand, even after the first harvest. To keep the people from starving, the government continued to provide rye flour (they would continue to do this up to the year 1775).

Most of the colonies along the Volga were settled by 1767. Total colonist population was about 29,000 persons. Thereafter, the Russian recruitment was halted because of many difficulties.

The Rest of the 1760's and 1770's

In 1768, it appears Sebastian and Anna Maria Stang were blessed with a second daughter, who they named Maria Anna.

In that year, the government appointed six district commissioners, working out of the Saratov Office (Kontor), to carry out administrative and clerical functions in the colonies. The role of these commissioners would be expanded over time.

The Kontor also served as a type of higher court for the colonists. This not only included the adjudication of civil law infractions (excepting major criminal offences), but also moral violations. For example, village authorities were required to report every illegitimate birth so the proper punishment could be applied. The clergy were expected to attend court cases.

Another moral violation for which the Kontor meted out punishment is illustrated by an order from the Kontor written on October 4, 1768 to Nikolaus Vollmar, overseer of the Vollmer (Kopenka) colony:

“The colonist Johannes Husz, belonging to your colony, who was condemned this past summer, for his laziness and bad management of his farm, to work in the brick factory in the colony of Rossoshi [just a little to the north of Vollmer], which work is now finished, is being sent back to you in the custody of a Cossack, with the instruction that he be put to work by you and that you keep him incessantly and exactly under observation. You are to report to the Kontor that he has been brought to you.” (Johann Philipp von Tiling)

It was recorded that the farmers of Vollmer harvested 5,500 bushels of grain in that second year of farming, during a year of drought in the region, which works out to about 120 bushels per family.

The Instruction

In 1769, the Kontor drew up and authorized an extensive system of rules for the colonists, called The Instruction. These rules were largely designed to discipline, or force, the settlers to support themselves by agriculture, thus preparing them to repay their government loan when it came due. It effectively was an attempt to change the settlers from free and independent farmers into serfs.

The very authoritative attitude taken by the Kontor, despite the promises of freedom made to the immigrants in Catherine’s Manifesto, was in part due to the fact that the officials appointed to the Kontor were drawn exclusively from the military ranks, who largely saw their duty as one of imposing discipline on the colonies in a rather undemocratic way. The whole intellectual, social, economic and political life in the colonies was to be regulated down to the minutest detail.

Moreover, the Russian mindset was very much influenced by the Russian agricultural system, where peasant serfs farmed the land for the Russian nobility who owned the land. The Russian authorities tended to treat the German colonists as the serfs were treated - with a lot of supervision and little freedom. Even the official name of the colonial administration (“Guardianship”) suggested that the Russian government viewed themselves in a very paternalistic way, as protectors and keepers of the colonists.

The governing rules to be imposed upon the colonists were many, including:

• The first section of the Instruction related to religious conditions (Worship Services and General Obligations), which the government considered the most vital factor in bringing about order. All parishioners were required to attend religious services, or pay a fine for the third unexcused absence.
• Fire was considered the most serious internal danger to be guarded against, and thus each colony was instructed to appoint a watchman to warn the people of fire (or thieves) by ringing a bell or by some other understood signal.
• The Instruction set out the compensation which a farmer would have to pay for letting his cattle graze on someone else’s seeded grain fields and hay meadows.
• The Instruction had the following to say about the support of priests and teachers:

“Because the salaries for the support of the priests and pastors during the first two years have been paid by the crown, and because for most of them that time has now expired and both the clergy and schoolmasters have now to be supported irrevocably by the community itself, and because a certain sum is needed for the repair of the church buildings, the Kontor of the Guardianship Chancery imposes the collection of a very light and moderate tax (less than one ruble per family per year) for the past year, 1768, and the present year, 1769.”

In addition to the salaries, every colonist family was to pay its pastor with an annual amount of grain and hay.

A large part of the Instruction dealt with colony officials. Local government functions of the community were to be vested in a Manager/Overseer (Vorsteher) and at least two assistants (Beisitizer). These were to be men of middle age, 30 to 60 years, elected by the colonists from amongst themselves for short terms. The overseer was to be paid an annual salary of thirty rubles, while the assistants received a monthly salary of one ruble (at first, these salaries were to be applied against their crown debt, and not paid out).

In addition to the village overseer’s annual salary of thirty rubles, each colony was to cultivate eight acres of land and provide three stacks of hay as compensation to him because his duties would keep him away from his own farm work. The Kontor permitted the colonists to substitute for these services a money payment of equal value to the overseer (all colonies would chose this option, and thus the grain and hay compensation was nowhere implemented).

The Overseer and his assistants were largely expected to enforce all the laws - i.e. they were the police. Most offences were punishable by the assignment of work or fines (for example, for repeated hostile acts there was a fine of 25 rubles). An assignment to do field work was the most commonly used method of punishment. While working, the person received only bread and water.

For the most serious crimes, where “there is no other way out”, the overseer was also authorized to administer corporal (physical) punishment. The delinquents in these cases were to “receive whippings, but only in their home villages, where the number of lashes imposed will not be decided by the overseer alone, but by a decision of the whole community, up to a maximum of 40 lashes, but with the registration of the crime and of the votes taken.”

These whippings for “serious” crimes would took place quite frequently. Attacking an overseer’s assistant with a weapon was considered to be the most serious crime under the jurisdiction of the local authority, and warranted forty lashes of the whip. Striking the assistant got eighteen lashes, while just offending him produced twelve lashes. Disobeying his command was six lashes. Offences against the overseer were punishable by the district commissioner. Theft or malicious infliction of property damage was punishable by twenty-four lashes along with a week of hard labor in the summer. For disobeying the Kontor’s laws and regulations, the punishment could also be incarceration without food, for up to two days.

The local officials were also to oppose “luxurious living” and extravagance amongst their people:

“Because all kinds of extravagance can plunge a farmer into poverty, the overseers must see to it that at weddings, christenings and other festivities everything is done frugally and in an orderly manner, without any excess, and that at a wedding no more than ten guests are present. They must also, until the crown debt has been repaid, permit no gift-giving; those who act contrary to this are to be fined two rubles.”

The local leaders were also encouraged to oppose such extravagances as the constant gathering of guests and the playing of cards for money. In the first few years of the colonies, the colonists had plenty of free time - commerce and business of any sort had been forbidden by the Russian authorities, and the field work was done quickly, as was the little domestic work at the home. Consequently, the colonists visited often with each other, and while visiting they often played cards as they had done back in their homeland. The colonial authorities must have had observed some playing of cards for money, and while they could not go so far as to forbid the playing of cards, they did forbid the playing of cards for money. Householders were also not permitted to sell or kill any animal for a feast without permission from them.

The overseer and his assistants were to see that the houses were surrounded by well-constructed fences, and they were to go around and inspect whether the houses and farmyards were clean, and especially whether the stoves in the living rooms and kitchens were in good condition, and the chimneys swept.

The overseer and his assistants were to encourage the planting of fruit trees, and the introduction of the growth of hemp and flax. The reason behind the instruction to grow hemp and flax, and to raise sheep, was that the outputs from these activities would provide both men and women work for the winter, which would keep the colonists in their settlements.

The Kontor also proposed that: 

• “To prevent frequent and unnecessary travelling, the district commissars may issue passports only for distances up to seventy-five miles, and the overseers tickets up to forty-five miles; for greater distances a passport from the Kontor is required.” The colonists were also prohibited from staying in another city or village for more than three days.
• No taverns or boarding houses were allowed (note: there never were hotels in the German Volga colonies, but there certainly were taverns), and begging in the colonies was forbidden.
• One-third of an acre of land in each field be plowed by families to give to those impoverished by accidents. In cases where there were no poor people needing this help, the collected proceeds could be used for community purposes.

The colonists, who were required to agree in writing to observing all these ordinances, at first objected to accepting these regulations as “village law”. They pointed to the freedom promised by Catherine’s Manifesto, which stated that colonies would be free to determine their own internal laws and government in accordance with their own wishes. The colonists viewed the Kontor’s new regulations as a violation of that solemn promise, and a breach of faith, and they became fearful that they could also lose their freedom in other matters. In place of the Kontor’s regulations, the colonists expressed a desire to prepare their own local laws.

In addition to their general objections, there were also a number of things which the colonists specifically opposed. Although the colonists were generally community-minded, they felt the compensation for the village overseer, and also the tax for the poor, would impose too great a burden on them at that time of great economic difficulty.

The colonists also found the regulations relating to travel passports to be exceedingly difficult. Since they could not obtain all their needs for household furnishings, food, clothing and farm equipment in their own settlements, they were often compelled to get things from the city. Therefore, they wanted the district commissars and village overseers to be able to issue passports for travelling longer distances.

Despite all the colonist objections to these intrusive rules, the Kontor went ahead and forced their regulations upon the colonists, with only a few inconsequential changes.

Thus, despite the promises of Catherine for freedom of government, the colonists were subject to a seemingly endless barrage of regulations, forbiddings, threatenings and punishments. Given human nature what it is, this served to promote much distrust and quarrels with the authorities, which would characterize much of colonial life over the 150 years of German colonization in the Volga region.

In 1769, the first statistical report on the Volga colonies showed Vollmer had increased in size to 177 people. The average Vollmer family owned three cows and two horses. At that time one could buy from the Kalmuks a good horse for twelve rubles, and a good milk cow for five rubles. There were only a few pigs and oxen in the village, and no sheep.

In June 1769, a Russian professor passed through the German colonies and described them as having many advantages over the Russian villages. The German villages were more orderly and clean, the villagers grew a variety of vegetables not found elsewhere in the Volga region, and in the drought conditions of 1768 the German colonists had more bountiful harvests than their Russian neighbors.

That year (1769), a drought resulted in crop failure.

At first, the colonists had laid out their grain fields nearby, behind their village lots, and each of then plowed arbitrarily wherever it suited them best. However, in time the farm land awarded to Vollmer was divided up more formally. Every family received their portion of the farm land, including Sebastian Stang, according to the number of males in the family. In the system established by the German Volga colonists, only the father of the family was assigned land and had a vote at community assemblies, even though he may have had adult married sons. But the apportionments of land could be equally claimed for each male.

The allocation of village lots and farm land was not an easy one, because not all land or locations were the same. It required good planning and persuasion, with the objective of being as fair as possible to everyone. Some counselling was needed to reach a final allocation which everybody was satisfied with.

In 1770, Sebastian Stang and his wife welcomed another baby into this world - a son who they named Joseph.

At the founding of the colonies, no proper survey of the lands had taken place. After the colonists arrival, the colony Directors set up temporary markers to mark the boundary of their village land. However, when the power of these directors was ended, the boundaries assigned by them were no longer recognized as being authoritative. In July 1770, a German surveyor was commissioned by the Kontor to survey the land and assign definitive boundaries to the colonies. This surveyor was responsible for setting up external boundary markers for each colony, which consisted of holes dug in the ground and wooden posts.

Unfortunately for the Volga colonists, general crop failures continued for many years, from 1769 to 1774. The black soil around Vollmer proved to be good for growing, certainly better than the soil back home. But it soon became evident that it was the climate that posed the biggest challenge for agriculture here.

The weather in the region was not well suited for farming. To begin with, there was a short growing season. While farmers in the Odessa region could begin their spring planting at the beginning of March, the Volga colonists could not venture into their fields until late March or April (the colonial administration had only targeted the twentieth of May as the date that the sowing of the summer grain was to be completed by, at the latest, but most of the colonists completed their seeding by the end of April). Harvesting then had to be completed early, otherwise there was great risk of the crops freezing. There was little leeway on either end of the growing season for delay. The best time for the hay harvest was sometime between the middle of June and the middle of July.

However, the biggest difficulty, weather-wise, was the semiarid nature of the area. Average precipitation was only fourteen inches annually. Most of the limited rain also fell during the period October to March, and not during the spring and growing season when it was needed most. Consequently, there were many years when farming was afflicted by drought. Strong, dry southeasterly winds from the Central Asian deserts often burned up crops and brought drought and dust storms. These dry winds were strongest during the critical growing time of April to May, quickly drying out the soil.

The weather was also extremely variable. It was much more of a continental climate than back in Germany, with hot temperatures in summer, cold winters (with a few big winter storms guaranteed), and temperatures which rose and fell dramatically. All in all, the weather made farming more of a gamble from year to year than what the colonists had been accustomed to.

There was no doubt that the Germans were good farmers, knowledgeable about agriculture. From the beginning their harvests were often better than those of their Russian counterparts. However, the first half of the 1770s was so dry that good crops were just not possible. The colonists were not even able to harvest enough grain for seed, or enough hay for their cattle.

Because of the crop failures, the colonial administration had to provide the settlers with support - daily food allowances, flour and seed grain - for about ten years, up until 1775. If the colonists had not been provided with money and at least the most needed foodstuffs by the crown, they simply would not have survived, and the colonies would have been abandoned. The support provided by the government was considered as a loan, and thus significantly increased the debt load of the colonists.

Although the colonists were grateful for the continual support received, one complaint was that the seed grain often came late in the year, which further hampered their farming efforts.

If the crop failures were not enough of a difficulty, it was not very long before the villagers discovered another problem - robbers. Thieves were particularly a problem here on the west side of the Volga. Because of the type terrain the land here was not as devoid of Russians as on the east side of the Volga. The west side of the Volga, with its hills, ravines and forests, offered many more places to hide or conceal. Largely because of this, the countryside here had long been a mecca for outlaws, army deserters, escaped serfs and political exiles.

Much of Russia’s rural population consisted of serfs, whose only opportunities for freedom were to enter a monastery, live with the Cossacks, or join a robber band in the river valleys, forests and wild gorges of the vast free Volga steppes. The Russian government had also regarded this area as a safety valve zone where undesirables could be exiled and where dissidents fled.

From amongst this motley crew came the robber bands. A century before the Germans had settled there, a famous bandit, the Robin Hood of Russian folklore, had his fortified cave in a mountain not far from the Volga. From here he carried on an organized system of robbery against the travelers and merchants who passed through the countryside. His organization became the model for the robber bands which now infested the region.

After the founding of the German settlements, this robber economy thrived because of the greater booty they could obtain from their plundering. The location of the German settlements in their home territory was also advantageous to these robbers because of their familiarity with the land.

The robber bands continually plagued the new settlers. It was especially dangerous to travel outside the village. Depending on the situation, the robbers sometimes killed their victims as well as robbing them. For example, there were cases of colonists who, while travelling to Saratov to buy flour, were attacked in broad daylight and brutally murdered. On many occasions the robbers appeared in the farmer’s fields during the day, weapons in hand, driving off the colonists livestock and stealing their horses.

In addition to attacks on colonists outside of their villages, the robber bands also utilized a system of espionage whereby their men entered into both Russian and German villages, claiming to be looking for work. In reality they were only there to scout the livestock, study bolts and bars on windows and doors, and locate the room of the housefather where the strong box was kept containing the family money and treasures. Colonists homes were often robbed, with break-ins at night being very common.

Because of all this, for several decades the colonists only went out in companies of several men to do their field work, and they always took firearms with them. One description of the first decades of colonist existence along the Volga was “as a time of constant battles with robbers and nomads, when the colonists went to work as crowds armed from head to toe.” They had to carry out their field work with the fear of a sudden attack by the robbers. On many occasions, the colonists left everything in their fields at the sight of a single horseman, assuming him to be a lookout, and rushed home.

The Russian authorities provided little assistance in helping to combat these thieves. Since the colonists were not willing to merely accept what the robbers were doing to them, it was left up to them to do something about it. Many villages were fortified with rude walls or ditches, and a sentinel was often maintained (usually in the church tower) who set off an alarm at the appearance of any suspicious characters.

The colonists also fought back physically against the robbers. On one occasion, three communities north of Vollmer, which were some of the towns most victimized by robbers, joined together and rounded up a gang of robbers in the forest where they killed nine of them. Many years later, the following account was given by someone who had lived through these times as a child:

So it continued for half a century, as often as was necessary, raids were undertaken by the communities against the thieves in the forest, and I remember very clearly from my childhood, how at times the entire manhood of our village got on horseback, armed with all possible weapons, and took off all at once “to catch thieves”; and I still have a vivid memory of scenes of captured thieves being brought to Balzer and subjected to the most frightful whippings in the midst of a riotous crowd of people. Hardly a week went by during my childhood and youth, in which there were no reports of breakins, horse thefts, etc., out in Balzer, Moor, Anton, Messer, and other colonies. Information such as “last night thieves broke in at Schmidts, Reicherts, etc., and stole everything in the house” was very common and surprised nobody.

Also posing some problem to the early settlers was the animal wildlife. The steppe was inhabited by a variety of dangerous animals, including bears, lynx and especially wolves. It was also for this reason that the men never went outside their village in the early years without carrying their guns. Fires were also built at night to keep the wild beasts at bay.

In addition to these real dangers, the fears of the colonists were often magnified by their own superstitions, which often turned strange sights and sounds into something more than what they really were.

In time, the village of Vollmer built a simple church out of wood. As had been done for their homes, the Russian government advanced the colonists the means to build their churches. In Saratov, a large Catholic church, “with city clock and organ” was built and consecrated in 1772.

Better or larger homes were also built. Due to the scarcity of good lumber, houses were often constructed with sun-dried clay bricks. Also on the family’s property were its outbuildings - these usually included livestock pens, sheds, granary and workshop/toolshed. Right from the beginning it was recognized that the German farmsteads were kept much more neat and orderly than those found in the Russian settlements.

In addition to the robber bands, maybe one of the most severe hardships suffered by the early German colonists, especially for those on the east side of the Volga, were attacks from the Kirghiz. One of the reasons Russia had wanted to establish the foreign colonies in the first place was to serve as a wall against the border tribes which lived along the Lower Volga - of course there was no mention of this to the colonists by the recruiters back in Germany!

The most dangerous tribe to the settlers were the barbarous Kirghiz. These were a short people with long prominent noses, dark eyes and dark hair. Their main habitat was the area on the Russian steppes to the east (and a little south) of the Volga colonies, in modern day Kazakstan. The plains provided grazing for their horses and cattle, which in turn provided them with milk, butter, cheese, meat, wool, hair, and skins. They lived in portable felt tents. The Lower Volga was their plundering ground, especially after it was settled by the colonists.

The German colonists soon learned that they became part of the war raged by the Kirghiz against the Russian government. The Kirghiz were enemies of all people, but especially farmers and Christians. That meant that the German colonists represented all that they hated most. They also resented the German colonists for settling on what they claimed was their territory. Although the Kirghiz attacked only seventeen colonies on the east side of the Volga, they filled the entire colonist population with terror.

In time the German colonists learned the hit-and-run tactics of the Kirghiz and dealt successfully with their attacks, but the first horrible Kirghiz raids on the villages on the east side of the Volga in 1771 had not been expected. During the day when the men were out in the field, the women would hear a rumbling sound. This sound soon turned into a clapping of hoofs, and then billowing clouds of dust rose high in the streets. Kirghiz warriors with masked faces and glittering lances charged into the village with their terrifying war whoops. After dismounting, the tribesmen rushed those who had not fled and struck them down. They then went into the houses and took whatever food or articles they wanted, while usually vandalizing the home. They killed many of the women and children, seeming to revel in the killing.

In the early 1770s, four colonies located a little east of Saratov received significant destruction by these savage people, and other colonies were severely damaged. Altogether, it was estimated that as many as four hundred colonists were either killed or carried into captivity by the Kirghiz-Kazaks during 1773, probably the worst year for attacks (their intention was to keep the captured colonists as servants, or sell them as slaves in Asia). However, many of the captive Germans were rescued by a detachment of Russian soldiers.

In response to these vicious attacks, the settlers fortified their villages by building huge embankments, stockades or deep ditches around them.

Because the stories would be passed down from generation to generation by the colonists, the Volga Germans came to fear and hate the nomadic Kirghiz and Kalmuk for the entire time of their sojourn in Russia. Vollmer was fortunate in that it was located in the middle of the German colonies, and therefore not as at risk as some of the settlements on the periphery.

Because of all the difficulties in the early years, the colonist population did not grow much. Many wanted to leave the colonies because of the difficult conditions. However, Vollmer was reported with a population of 221 people in 1773, which if correct, showed good population growth.

Most, however, persevered, including the Stangs. In 1774, Sebastian Stang and his wife had a baby boy. They named him Michael. That would become a very popular name in the Stang lineage.

As if the Kirghiz were not enough of a terror, in the summer of 1774 the German colonies were also subject to the horrifying raids of the Russian rebel Pugachev.

The Terrorists Raids of Pugachev

Southern Russia was the dwelling place of many discontents who had been suppressed by the Empress Catherine. One such individual was Emelian Pugachev, a Cossack who had served Russia in the Seven Years War in Germany.

Pugachev was a deluded “power-to-the-people (peasants)” type of a person. Near the end of 1772, he claimed to be Peter III - the murdered husband of Catherine whom Pugachev was said to resemble - and he announced his intention of going to St. Petersburg, the Russian capital, to punish his wife and crown his son.

Pugachev never made it to St. Petersburg, but for nearly two years he spread his revolt. He was joined by many, including many Volga Cossacks. Bands of these outlaws roamed about Russia causing great civil destruction - they burned villages, destroyed crops, hung nobles and forced people to join their ranks or be put to death.

In July of 1774, Pugachev, with two to three thousand men in his militant group, was marching down from the north towards Saratov, pursued by the Russian army. In Saransk (about 170 miles north of Saratov), Pugachev hung three hundred persons. In Pensa (a little over 100 miles to the north of Saratov), he burned downed the governor’s house - with the governor inside.

As Pugachev drew closer to Saratov, the head of the Kontor became very worried. One of the specific purposes of Pugachev was to wipe out the colonies which the Empress had established on the Volga, and reclaim these lands. On his way to Saratov, Pugachev had already killed nine officers retained by the Kontor to survey lands for the colonists, as well as twenty-eight officers who had been assigned to the defense of the colonies. The main concern now was for Saratov, and saving the grain storage facilities located there for the German colonists.

Because of the seemingly indifference of the leadership of the city, the Kontor began to make its own preparations for the protection of Saratov. The Kontor head invited a leading figure in Saratov (the poet Lieutenant Derzhavin) to organize the defense of the city and assign army scouting missions to monitor Pugachev’s movements. The Kontor also called up all soldiers who had been assigned to protect the colonists (against robbers and the Kirghiz). Four cannons belonging to the Kontor were put into military readiness.

On August 4, the Kontor head and Derzhavin met with the Russian army garrison commander to discuss what measures needed to be taken. The two citizens made a number of proposals. However, the army commander did not want to leave his fortress. He argued that it would be better to defend against the rebels outside the city. The argument heated up, but the army commander would not change his mind. Consequently, after receiving news about the seizure of nearby Petrovsk by Pugachev, and the crossing to Pugachev’s side of the inhabitants and Cossacks of that city, Derzhavin and the Director of the Kontor abandoned their plans to defend Saratov. The Kontor quickly turned its attention to evacuating by boat the treasury and all their documents to Tsaritsyn.

On August 5, Pugachev entered the first German colony along his way – the colony of Yagodnaya Polyana. The fearful colonists apprehensively met the rebels. But the transfer to Pugachev of three colonists pacified Pugachev and he departerd (some reports stated that Pugachev kidnapped the three men). While in Yagodnaya Polyana, Pugachev sent an attachment of ten men to a neighbouring colony where they stole personal property and a herd of horses.

Pugachev left Yagodnaya Polyana that same day, and by the evening of August 5 he was nearing Saratov. He established his headquarters only three kilometers from the city in a clay brick house of a German colonist. That very same day, evacuation of the Kontor property was in progress. In the evening, the Kontor placed 15,000 gold and silver rubles, plus some of their documents, on a boat which was carrying flour. One other boat was found for the dispatch of the remaining money and documents.

But although they escaped Pugachev, seventy kilometers down the Volga from Saratov, Russian village peasants seized the Kontor boat, stole the money, and threw all the documents into the river. The second boat was also stopped by peasants and robbed.

On August 6, the army of Pugachev entered the city of Saratov. The garrison of Saratov mutinied and opened the gates to him. With no army to contest, the citizens tried to appease the bearded Pugachev by carrying cruxifixes and holy pictures, with their clergy, to meet and pay homage to him.

After his arrival, Pugachev killed eight servants of the Kontor, including the pharmacist and doctor who served the colonists, and burned down the Kontor building. Pugachev also opened the state prisons, salt depots and grain storage warehouses. As a consequence, stolen from the Saratov food warehouses and stores of the Kontor were rye flour and oats valued at over 43,000 rubles.

Pugachev also tore down the liquor stores, and let his followers plunder the houses. He hung all nobility that fell into his hands, and gathered up many more recruits for his rebel army, including hundreds of local Ukrainians and many of the prisoners freed from the jails. Also joining him were some of the Germans who had been living in the city. Why would any Germans join with Pugachev? Apparently, these people had not done well in Saratov. Because they could not influence the Russian population, they joined in with Pugachev with whom they wrongly hoped for a more prosperous future. The nearby German colonies of Beauregard and Katharinenstadt (east side of Volga) were plundered to supply the new recruits with horses, guns and food

With the Russian army just two days away, Pugachev and his army, after having looted and rested in Saratov, left the city on August 9 to travel south down the west side of the Volga to Kamyshin and Tsaritsyn. Fearing an ambush on the main road (the Astrakhan Postal Track), Pugachev instead traveled the village roads next to it. This led them right through the German colonies on the west side of the Volga, including the village of Shuch.

The first colony encountered by the rebels, on August 9, was the colony of Beideck. As would happen for their migration through the German colonies, about five hours before the main forces arrived, five Cossacks arrived and warned the colonists not to abandon their village, otherwise everything would be destroyed. The colonists complied as the rebels approached.

As the Pugachev rebel army neared, the colonists made all possible preparations to save themselves and their property. They hid their valuables, and hid their livestock in the woods.

Generally, it was a very terrifying time once Pugachev’s army finally arrived. The rebels took their best horses, and any of the local men who had a saddle or a gun, unless he was willing to come along himself, had to surrender them without compensation. In addition, the stores had to be unlocked, with Pugachev’s men taking any guns, powder, saws or lead. Stores that were locked were broken into, including the Russian salt depots. The rebels also stole food and large quantities of rye flour from the colonist. Where there was displeasure, the grain or property of the colonists was burned. Many colonists also suffered cruelty. In one colony on the west side of the Volga, six people were hanged, and in another colony the village mayor was hanged when he refused to reveal where the village horses had been hidden. Many men, and even some women and children, were forced to join Pugachev’s army, primarily to help transport the army cargo.

The rebels also attempted to recruit colonists to their ranks, distributing to them copies of the Pugachev manifesto, translated into German. However, few colonists, if any, voluntarily joined up.

In the second colony Pugachev encountered – the village of Norka located less than thirty miles to the north of Shuch - a number of wagons were demanded for the transport of baggage and the army to the next station. Movement along the poor village roads demanded frequent changes of wagons. Some of the colonist men were compelled to consequently follow the army with their wagons, and would also be forced to fight against the government troops.

Separate rebel detachments followed various routes through the colonies, including a detachment that travelled through the east side of the Volga, but the main forces of Pugachev left Norka and went through Huck and then Donhoff (less than twenty miles to the north of Shuch). When Pugachev arrived in Donhoff (August 11), he learned that a Count lived there - Count Donhoff, the village leader for whom the village was named. Pugachev immediately turned his attention to finding him. Pugachev went straight way to Donhoff’s house. His stated intention was to hang the count by his own pigtail, a customary hair style worn by the nobility and educated people of that time.

The Count was not there, as he had already left and found a secure hiding place. However, the Count’s wife was there, who was ill in bed with her two month old child when Pugachev arrived. On entering her room, Pugachev ordered the sick woman to leave immediately, and “knocked her to the floor with his fist, took the small child and threw it into a corner of the room.” He then searched the bed, stabbing through all the bedding with his dagger, until he realized the count was not there. When the village refused to turn Count Donhoff over to him, the upset Pugachev ordered the entire village to be set on fire, beginning with the house of Count Donhoff. After he left the village, however, the villagers bribed his men who were to set fire to the colony with five hundred rubles, a barrel of brandy, and a considerable number of beautiful horses. Pugachev’s men then just set fire to the grain and straw on the threshing floors, and left.

From Donhoff, Pugachev traveled through the Russian village of Topovka, and then the German colonies of Bauer and Merkel.

Next was the colony of Kratzke, where Pugachev erected gallows and strung up four strangers. An eyewitness reported what happened next:

“Thereupon these monsters ransacked the few houses of our then still very small village, took what pleased them, struck old men and women, as well as children, with their whips and rods, but without killing anyone, and then camped near the village. Before dawn was visible on the horizon, a few houses in the village here and there began to burn. At the same time, the whole pack of brigands with their leaders got up and left our village. As there was no wind that morning, the fire did not spread and even in the farmyards where it had broken out, much could still be saved. All the grain, hay, and straw on the threshing floors, however, fell prey to the flames. Also, everything that the robbers came across in the fields was completely destroyed. The livestock that they could catch also was partly butchered on the spot, partly driven away with them.”

Next village in Pugachev’s romp of terror was Schuch, , just north of Vollmer, and then nearby Husaren and Kamenka. It was recorded that Husaren suffered serious destruction.. It is not known whether Pugachev passed through Vollmer, but he very well may have.

Pugachev continued travelling south, passing through many more villages. In Dobrinka Pugachev discovered a German astronomer was on assignment from the Empress to compile a geographic description of the Saratov province. Pugachev had him impaled, “in order to better see the stars.”

Pugachev continued his march until he reached the ill-fated Sarepta, the most southern, and richest, Germany colony in the Volga region. Here, the village inhabitants had been keeping informed of Pugachev’s movements for about two weeks. They were told of the great cruelty and destruction wrought by Pugachev’s rebel army.

This information, with some of the accounts exaggerated somewhat, caused such fear amongst the Sarepta villagers, that they made preparations to evacuate their women and children, and valuables, to the Russian city of Astrakhan. On August 17, a courier arrived with a decree from the Tsaritsyn army commandant to immediately begin this evacuation because Pugachev’s forces were quickly approaching. On that day, the village purchased ten boats which were used to send 110 women and children down the Volga. Many other families left on foot for Astrakan.

Sixty-five men remained in Sarepta to hide property and protect the colony from robbery. First, they scattered any remaining livestock in the steppe. Then, working all day and into the night, they hid furniture and goods in basements and specially excavated pits which were covered with stones. The men then turned to fortification of the colony. Ten small iron cannons belonging to the colony were placed in a defensive trench.

As it turned out, Pugachev and his army were not the only ones to fear. Russians living in the area were waiting at the dock next to Sarepta awaiting the opportunity to loot the village once the people left. But the main threat, before Pugachev arrived, were the Kalmyks. The Kalmyks were a wandering or nomadic Tartar tribe, originally from Mongolia, who had lived in the lower Volga region for two centuries before the arrival of the German settlers. The greatest aggravation they provided was in stealing horses and livestock. One of the founding German colonists described the Kalymks:

“… these very skillful horsemen, who like wild animals could accomplish more at night than in the daytime, drove away cattle, singly or several at a time ... Sometimes nomadic Gypsies or Kalmucks camped near a colony in large numbers, set up their tents, 50 to 100 in number, and wintered there, went about as beggars in the daytime in neighboring places, stole everything that was easy to take, robbed at night items that they had spotted in the daytime. Wherever possible, they drove away the cattle and sometimes even stole children, whom their parents never saw again.”

The Kalmyks principally plundered on the west side of the Volga, and mostly in the most southerly Volga colonies (like Sarepta) where they lived. They did most of their damage in the latter part of the 1760s when the Volga region was first colonized, and thereafter a large number of them moved back to Asia.

Now, the Kalymks approached the partially depleted Sarepta several times, shooting firearms and attempting to take the village by storm. However, a single shot from a cannon, and the armed village horsemen who came to confront them, caused the Kalmyks to flee.

Another attack by the Kalmyks on Sarepta occurred on the morning of August 21. However, they were beaten back with the aid of a passing detachment of Cossacks. Then, one of the colonists, who had been sent out on reconnaissance, reported back that a Pugachev detachment was on the road to Sarepta. The colonist men immediately abandoned the colony, around eight o’clock in the evening, leaving only a few Cossacks behind.

The escapees could only travel down the road to Astrakhan at a relatively slow pace because their wagons were not made for long trips and the majority were pulled by bullocks. Stopping in the deep twilight on a rise not far from Sarepta, the fleeing villagers saw sparks of fire in the windows of their homes. The destruction of Sarepta was begun not by Pugachev rebels, but by the Kalmyks who had returned once the villagers left.

When Pugachev arrived the next morning, he found an empty and basically looted colony. Pugachev was filled with indignation and rage. He sent a detachment in pursuit of the colonists who had escaped to the south, with orders to catch and punish them.

By the evening of that day, the colonists received information from a passing Cossack that the Pugachev army was looting Sarepta and that a detachment sent to catch them would soon arrive. That caused the colonists to continue on without rest. In the evening twilight they moved off the main road. The Pugachev detachment unsuccessfully searched for them along the main road, not knowing the villagers were moving along parallel to them.

As the villagers continued their travels the next day, they received the good news that the Pugachev forces had suffered a devastating defeat.

Pugachev was betrayed into the hands of the Russian army by one of his own men in September 1774. The German colonists amongst his troops were sent back to their colonies. Pugachev was taken to Moscow where he was beheaded in January 1775.

Justice was finally served, but not before the German colonies lost many inhabitants (about ten were murdered altogether) and suffered much distress and large monetary loss. The haunting memories and stories of the Pugachev raids would live on for a very long time. Even one hundred years later, when someone in one of the colonies wanted to clear the streets of children, they just said, “Listen, it’s coming…”, and immediately silence prevailed.

The colonists had virtually nothing by the end of 1774, and coming to Russia seemed to many to have been like a bad dream. Because of all the hardships, including crop failures and the terrible Pugachev and the Kirghiz raids, by 1775 the colonist population was a few thousand less compared to the population at the end of the immigration period in 1767.

However, in 1775, the settlers were finally blessed with a decent crop, despite another relatively dry year, enabling them to obtain their own seed grain and not have to rely on the colonial authorities. That year the colonial administration also provided the colonists an opportunity to earn some additional income. In October 1775, a decree was issued stating that colonists who needed support could earn it by work on fortifications in Saratov and in three colonies, for which they would receive two rubles (paid in flour) for every six cubic feet of digging. Also that year, Father Muller was replaced by Father Trenker (or Trenier) as parish priest (Kamenka parish).

The Guardianship Office and Instruction system of rules which the Russian government had set up in the 1760s as the basis by which all the settlers were to be governed, was initially intended to only be in effect until the colonists had organized their own local government. However, it remained in force for many years, providing the colonies with stability and many benefits. The colonists eventually became quite satisfied with these arrangements, particularly after 1775 when the number of Guardianship Office commissioners was increased to thirteen - one for each district. The people received great assistance from these advisers who personally visited the colonies at regular intervals. When they visited they talked with the village authorities about their needs, suggested measures relating to public health, crops and other local matters, and took issues of weightier importance directly to the Guardianship Chancery in St. Petersburg.

The year 1776 marked the ten year point for the Vollmer settlement, which was a significant point because at the end of ten years the money advanced (for food, buildings, stock, implements, seeds and other provisions) was to be repaid to the government in three equal installments (without interest). Because of the many years for which support had to be provided to the colonists, the crown debt of a typical family had grown to somewhere in the order of 200-250 rubles.

However, because colonists throughout the Volga were barely surviving in those first years, they were unable to meet the debt repayment obligations. Instead of receiving paybacks from the colonists, the Russian government continued to spend (200,000 rubles annually) to assist the colonists with their crops.

In 1778, Father Trenker was replaced by Father de Ducla, who would serve the colonists in that area for the next seven years.

Sebastian Stang and his wife had another baby boy, who they named Johannes. It was unknown when he was born, but it was probably around 1779.

1780-1799

By the 1780s, the German colonists in the Volga region had come to employ the Russian land re-distribution system - the so called mir system. This was actually contrary to the Russian government’s initial landholding prescription. In the original land directives of March 1764, the government of Catherine stipulated “communal household tenure”. This meant that even though land was considered as common property of the community, and not personal property, to each family household was granted hereditary use of the land in perpetuity with no redistribution. Each family was promised thirty dessiatinas (81 acres) of land “in indisputable and eternal hereditary possession,” which was to pass indivisibly to the youngest male member.

This system initially directed by the Russian government would be the system adopted by the German colonists of the Odessa region. However, the Volga colonists found this system impractical. For one, in almost all families there was a desire for all sons to continue farming and receive an apportionment of land.

Consequently, the Volga colonists came to employ the system whereby all farm land reverted back to the village government after certain intervals of time to be redivided equally according to the number of males in each family. The German colonists called this the dusch method since the land assignments were based on the dusha, the Russian word for “soul”.

At the time of the dusch, the first step was to divide all the colony land designated for grain crops (did not include the lands designated for common pasture immediately surrounding the village, or the land designated for vegetable gardens, or forest lands which were also held in common) into three main categories: best, mediocre, and poor soil. Some parceling of the land was also made according to distance from the village. For Vollmer, the land immediately around the village was generally better for farming. It was more convenient to farm because it was closer to their homes in the village. In addition, as one travelled further out from the meadow it got hillier and there were mores stones in the ground. There were also large stretches of sandy land here and there unsuitable for farming.

All male souls who had died since the last dusch were crossed off the list, and all males who had been born were registered. The land parcels were then surveyed into the required number of dusch (male souls), and allocated to families, possibly according to lots drawn by the colonists.

The primary objective of this entire process was equity. Under this system of land distribution, some families would not always have the best farm land, or have land closer to the village than someone else. It also resolved inequalities which had arisen because some colonists had taken the land of those who had left or died without heir.

However, the dusch system also made it impossible for someone to accumulate property. In fact, just the opposite happened - over time there was less land available for individual families as the number of families increased. There was also no natural selection process by which better farmers acquired more land over time. Poorer farmer were entitled to just as much land.

Because population growth was limited in the early years, and they had more than enough land that they were able to cultivate, the colonists did not have to divide up the land for fairly long periods of time. However, eventually das duchen took place at shorter intervals (twelve, ten or six years).

The German-speaking priests of the early colonist years were members of the Franciscan and Capuchin orders. They willingly served under difficult and impoverished circumstances. The Polish priests that followed, beginning in the 1780s, were not as good.

When a part of Poland came under Russian jurisdiction in 1772, it brought to Russia a substantial Catholic population for the first time. In response, the Empress Catherine had decided, without consulting Rome, to set up a bishopric (1774) in the Polish city of Mohylev, to rule over the new Catholic subjects. In 1782, just as arbitrarily, Catherine made Mohylev an archdiocese, with jurisdiction over all Catholics in Russia.

For the German Catholics in the Volga region, coming under the jurisdiction of Mohylev was a major disaster. In place of their present priests they would begin receiving Polish Dominicans and Trinitarians from the Polish monastaries. Most of these priests were old and feeble men, unacquainted with the German language and lacking understanding of the people to whom they were to minister. Religious learning and practice among the Volga Catholics would sink to a low level under their service.

This was not the only disconcerting development at this time. In 1782 the colonial office at Saratov (Kontor) was suddenly abolished by Catherine. Although the Empress was widely recognized for her great support of the Volga colonists, she was coming under some enormous pressures. There had been growing in Russia a lot of opposition towards the German colonists. Right from the beginning there had been many Russians opposed to Catherine’s whole colonizing scheme because of the special privileges endowed on the foreign settlers, and the large sums of money “lavished” upon them.

The peasants in the surrounding area, who were in general revolt throughout all of Russia, were jealous of the preference shown for the foreign colonists who were given free land and generous loans, which was more than they could ever dream of. The peasants, however, carried little political sway. More importantly, hostility to the colonists also came from very influential quarters, particularly the Russian Senate which did everything in its power to indirectly thwart the plans of the Empress and cause the colonies to fail.

Catherine had displayed considerable enthusiasm in promoting and following all the details of her colonization plan during the first few years of its implementation. It was one of her major pet projects. But as time passed, she became more entangled in foreign affairs (including war with Poland and Austria) and less interested in internal matters. She thus succumbed to the pressures and abolished the Guardianship Office in Saratov in 1782. The Decree of 1782 which ceased the activity of the Chancery of Oversight of Foreigners and its Kontora in Saratov, stated that the Chancery and its establishments were looked upon as having fulfilled their objectives – the settlement of arriving colonists.

The result of this was to eliminate the special attention given to the colonies and their special privileges for self-government. The colonists were placed into the general government system of the empire, subject to general Russian laws. Along with the Russian state peasants, they were now subordinated to a crown-appointed Economy Director, and to the Russian courts. District commissioners were still utilized, but these were now appointed by a Russian governor.

With this annulment of the charter by which the German colonists were governed, conditions in the colonies deteriorated somewhat over the next ten to fifteen years. The colonists had to endure many oppressive measures from the Russian officials, many of whom were corrupt. Not knowing the Russian language put them at a real disadvantage and made it difficult for them to seek redress for the wrongs suffered.

Also in 1782, on a positive note, because of the continuing struggles of the Volga colonists, the Russian government cancelled almost one quarter of their crown debt - they cancelled 1.4 million rubles of the total colonist debt of 5.2 million rubles. The cancelled debt was primarily the portion paid for the construction of the first homes and churches. However, starting that year the colonists were required to begin paying back the rest of their loan at the rate of three rubles for every colonist between the ages of sixteen and sixty years. At first very few payments were actually made, and of the payments eventually made, many were illegally stolen by the colonial administration and not reported as debt repayment.

The next additions to Sebastian Stang’s family were two daughters - Susanna born in 1785, and Otillia in 1787. After about ten years of service, parish pastor Trenier was replaced by Father Lenis in 1786. At this time there were over seven thousand Catholic colonists in the Volga region. The Catholic proportion of the settlers had fallen to 26.5 percent.

In 1788 the first census of the Volga German colonists was conducted, indicating a total population of approximately 31,000 individuals. There had only been a very small increase in population over the twenty or so years of settlement.

Also in 1788, the leader of a local robber band was captured. Wassily Polyakov (nicknamed Tshagala) was at first just a petty robber in another band. He had lived for a time in the German colonist area on the Ilavla river, before becoming leader of his own robber band. Everyone in a robber band was required to provide unconditional obedience to the leader (or chieftain).

Wassily was captured in 1788, but escaped from the Kamyshin jail (south of Vollmer) by getting his guard drunk. He left the Kamyshin district with his stolen treasures, travelling along the Saratov highway to the Ilavla river where he buried a sack of money in a forest near the colony of Kamenka (near Vollmer), as he later related in court. Because this was the time of year for the hay harvest, he hired out as a laborer among the colonists, who obviously did not know that he was the leader of one of the robber bands. After finishing his work, Wassily got a ride to Saratov from someone who was selling tar in the colonies. But he was eventually caught and arrested again, and incarcerated in a prison back in Kamyshin.

The final member of Sebastian’s family was son Peter, born around 1790 (or earlier).

Another Russian professor passed through the German Volga colonies in 1793. In his opinion, the colonies had become more “lively”, compared to his visit twenty years earlier, thanks to “the growth of new and better young people,” and the “dying off of the first settlers, the larger part of which was not of the best.” He also noted that the colonists along the Volga considered themselves happy.

In 1796 the Empress Catherine died. The colonists had generally viewed her with great awe and respect. Catherine was succeeded by her son Paul. He was one of the most dreaded rulers ever endured by the Russian people during his short and stormy reign. But he had strong German sympathies (which enraged his Russian subjects even more), and he assumed an attitude of paternal guardianship over the Germans in his empire.

One of the very first acts of Paul I, who was very much aware of the oppressions and great poverty which had been brought upon the colonists, was to annul the directive his mother had made in 1782 which had removed special administration for the German colonies. He again established at Saratov (in June 1797) a separate department for “the better supervision of all now living in the colonies”. Also, the district commissionars in the colonies were dismissed, and in their place district overseers were elected by the colonists themselves.

Paul also commanded that orders relating to the German colonies be written in their native tongue so that the people would not have to rely upon Russian officials for interpretation. Finally, two commissioners were sent from St. Petersburg to investigate the causes for the impoverishment of the colonists.

The economic situation in the colonies was not good, but there were some signs that things were finally starting to improve. The first thirty or so years had been very hard and lean years for nearly all the Volga colonists. However, beginning in the late 1700s, the colonists began to achieve some degree of economic prosperity. This was primarily the result of a series of bountiful harvests. Obviously the weather had much to do with that, but there were also improvements in agricultural productivity. Grains harvested in excess of a family’s needs were hauled to granaries which sprang up along the Volga. Several flour mills existed, particularly German owned flour mills in Saratov.

Unfortunately, offsetting these positive developments somewhat, were the continued disruptive nomadic attacks (horse stealing, plundering of crops, etc.), and also the growing land shortages. Under the mir land distribution system, the population increase had resulted in a significant decline in the number of acres of farm land per family. On average, less than forty acres was now available for each male. The colonists complained to the authorities about this.

To address complaints about land shortages among the German colonists, the Russian government decreed in 1797 that to the lands already possessed by the colonies would be added “an additional 20 dessiatines [54 acres] for each soul among them.” Unfortunately, it would take the Russian authorities many years before actually awarding this land to the colonists.

Right from the early years, each colony had maintained community grain reserves, stored in a community granary, to protect the colonists in times of poor harvests. In 1797 the colonial administration formally regulated that after each harvest each family was to contribute a set amount per male soul to these grain storehouses. This reinforced the desirability of a mir land distribution system. Because a family with more males was expected to provide more grain to the community storehouse, it seemed fair that they should also receive a larger portion of the land to farm.

By 1798, the total colonist population had now grown to about 39,000 persons. Vollmer was shown with a population of 331, a little more than twice its original size thirty-two years previous.

Sebastian Stang died at the end of the century, around 1799. His son Peter was still a young boy.

1800-1810

In 1801, Russia prepared for the coronation ceremony of their new emperor - Alexander I. Two men were chosen to represent the colonists at the festivities in Moscow. Their expenses were supported by a special small tax levy on the colonists. The colonists tried to take advantage of this situation and petitioned their delegates to “present their needs to His Imperial Majesty” regarding their land shortage problem. However, the delegates appear to have accomplished very little.

The two commissioners from St. Petersburg sent by the Tsar Paul I to investigate economic conditions in the German colonies, had spent four years (1797-1801) collecting information from the settlers. In the early 1800s they reported back to the Russian government that one of the primary reasons for the economic woes of the colonies was a government administration that was not adapted to their needs.

As a result of this report, a series of laws were passed from 1801 to 1803 known as Uniform Instructions for the Internal Organization and Administration of the colonies. These laws were designed to restore local self government to the colonial villages, but in a uniform system for all colonies that was coordinated with the Russian central government.

Village administration was now to be vested in a representative assembly composed of one member from each family. The assembly elected the Overseer/Mayor and two assistants, who together with a clerk were responsible for the routine functions of the village. Groups of villages also formed another administrative unit one level up with corresponding officers.

One of the changes also made was to formalize the mir land distribution system. Under this system, ownership or the title of all land remained with the village, with all farm land reverting back to the village government to be redivided (duschen) equally after certain intervals of time.

Like the initial Instructions which had been instituted for the first colonists, the new Uniform Instructions provided detail “advice” as to the personal conduct of the settlers. Hhowever, the new Instructions were shorter - only 58 short paragraphs. As before, these noted that the first duty of a colonist was to go to church. Village authorities were also to discourage luxuries, such as entertaining too many guests or gambling. Any wine shops which existed in the German colonies were also ordered closed because the government felt that the people were less industrious and home-loving where these existed. Although such prescriptions may seem to be quite controlling, this type of personal regulation by government was not uncommon at that time in many places throughout the world.

The Kontor (Guardianship Office at Saratov) continued, but depending on who was appointed there to serve, this colonial administration was often more a source of consternation to the colonists and a suppression of their civil liberties than it was an aid to them. One of the most least loved of the chief justices to head up the Kontor was also the first German in that position - von Roggenbucke. To cite an example of one of his orders (sent to all colonies):

“While I was temporarily living in the colony Talovka (Beideck), and not only there but many times in all the colonies, I noted the immorality of the young men, who speak to their colony officials with pipes in their mouths and hats or caps on their heads, and have no respect for strangers, which is giving the colonies generally a bad name. For this reason, I find it necessary to order that there must be two leg-irons in each colony and a block with a chain in the district office, so that such immoral persons, by the threat of being subjected to such punishment, can be prevailed upon not to put their colonies to shame.”

Improvements were also sought in religious conditions around this time. By 1802 three Catholic parishes existed on the west side of the Volga - located in Kamenka, Schuck and Semenovka - and six parishes on the east side. From each of these parish centres, two or three neighboring villages were looked after.

The problem was that these nine parishes were staffed by only six Polish priests, whom the German colonists were generally unhappy with. Moral life had sunk to a low ebb. Mixed marriages were more common, and many adults and children did not even know the rudiments of their religion.

This poor state of religious affairs was about to change. With the many complaints of the colonists around this time, the new Russian Tsar (Alexander I) sent one of his trusted officials, who was of German origin, to the Volga region to investigate and make policy recommendations. After spending several months in the Volga region in 1802, the official returned to St. Petersburg and recommended, among other things, that German-speaking Jesuits be sent to minister to the largely neglected Volga German Catholics. At the time there were almost three hundred Jesuit priests living in Russia. The Jesuits were extremely well regarded by the Russians, even though they were unwelcome in most of Western Europe.

The Tsar accepted this recommendation. In 1803, Alexander I issued a decree stating that the religious personnel working in the Saratov region should return to their homes, to be succeeded by Fathers of the Society of Jesus. In March 1803, ten Jesuit priests and two brothers were sent to Saratov. They were appointed to replace the Polish clergy and service the nine existing Volga parishes, and also establish a new parish in the city of Saratov.

Most of these Jesuits knew the German language well, and were well received by the Volga villagers. They were very capable priests who worked hard to fulfill their duties and instruct both adults and children. Their schedule was recorded in one place as following:

On Sundays and Holy Days they heard confessions from early morning until 10:30. Thereupon the faithful sing Come Holy Ghost and then reverently listen to the sermon.

After that, the priests are busy with baptisms, marriage ceremonies, making entries in the parish register, blessing women after childbirth. At three o’clock there is religious instruction.

On workdays, the priests offer holy mass daily, write their sermons, prepare children for confession and holy communion, settle quarrels, visit the schools, explain to the secular teachers how they should teach, encourage the pupils, reward the industrious ones with little pictures and gifts, visit the sick, prepare the dying for death, and bury the dead.

It was the responsibility of the parish clergymen to supervise the schools in the colonies. Under the Jesuits, the long neglected schooling of colonist children was revitalized. Many schoolhouses were built (previously, the children simply gathered to the house of the schoolmaster for instruction). The schools built in the Volga colonies were small wooden buildings, which did not have individual desks for the students - only the teacher had a desk. The students sat on benches, much like pews in a church.

School attendance was only voluntary, with boys sent to school more consistently than girls. Generally, only the boys were taught writing and arithmetic. These subjects were considered unnecessary for girls who only received instruction in reading and religion.

The Jesuits also saw to it that good literature for the adults was provided.

Unlike the other priests which the colonists had, the jesuitts did not limit their activity to the parsonage and church. They became counselors to their parishioners in everyday life and gladly offered assistance to them in a variety of matters.

All priests or pastors at that time were paid an annual salary (250 rubles), supplemented by payments from individuals for special services such as baptisms, marriages, funerals and masses for the dead. The Jesuit priests generally provided these services without charge to the poor, and accepted only voluntary donations from the more well-to-do, whatever was reasonable, with never any compulsion. By this behavior, the colonists knew that these priests were truly motivated by their love of God and their duty to their fellow man, and were not in it for the pursuit of their own self interests.

By their good example and genuine interest in the welfare of the colonists, these zealous priests soon brought the people back to a fervent religious life. Later the colonists were to look back on the time of the Jesuits with them as that “golden time”.

Around 1807, Peter Stang married a girl named Mary Zink (?), who was from the neighboring village of Pfeifer. The couple’s first child was a boy, who they named Michael. Babies were usually named after their god-parent, which in most cases were one of the brothers or sisters of the parents. Because of this, the same names tended to be passed down from generation to generation. Peter and his wife would eventually have at least four girls (including Elisabeth and Marianna), and four boys - Michael, Joseph, Johann-Peter and Michael.

It was reported that by 1808 nearly all of the temporary houses first built for the colonists by the government had now been replaced by new and better homes, costing from 700 to 1,000 rubles each.

1810-1820

The Russian national government had initially granted the colonists exemption from all taxes for a period of thirty years as part of the effort to attract settlers to Russia. However, because of the difficulties of settlement, it was only around 1810, almost forty five years after their arrival, that the colonists were finally required to pay taxes.

According to an ordinance of March 12, 1812, the German colonists were to be placed on the same footing as the Russian peasantry on crown lands with respect to the payment of taxes on their possessed lands.

The new tax for the colonists was to be calculated on the basis of the number of male souls (again the fairness of the dusch land distribution system was reinforced), and also according to the amount and quality of land owned. However, the government acknowledged that it was not able to determine the precise amount of land in the possession of individual colonists due to the disarray of surveying and the illegal land seizures which had occurred. Consequently, each colony as a whole was assessed a tax payment based on its total land, and then it was left to each colony to assess the tax payment required from each colonist family.

In 1815, the Saratov Guardianship Office (Kontor) issued the following order after a proposal and presentation to them by Father Superior Meyer:

“All district overseers in whose jurisdiction there are Catholic villages located are commanded: to impress most seriously upon the village overseers and to see to it themselves, that morality and good order are observed by the inhabitants, in accordance with the Instruktion, and that no gatherings at night, card games, and drinking are tolerated. Young people of both sexes are not to be out on the streets at night without proper reason, children are to be sent to school by their parents, and vodka is not to be dispensed in the taverns at illegal times…District overseer Paul, in particular, is directed to admonish colonist Bauer, who exhumed the body of his mother-in-law, and colonist Breit, who missed going to confession, to fulfill the church penance imposed upon them by their parish priest, with the express warning that they will be subject to punishment by law, if they do not do as directed.”

The community overseers, who had the responsibility for upholding “morality and good order”, did not always have the necessary respect along with it to be able to proceed strongly against the disobedient. They could easily punish those who offended, but often a stubborn colonist would not let himself be punished by the overseer and appealed to the Kontor in Saratov. If clever enough, that person knew that delivery of his appeal by personal appearance at the home of the Kontor official, along with a generous gift, might accomplish a favorable outcome of his case. Then, it could happen that the overseer might lose his case and himself receive a reprimand. The overseer would then probably avoid punishing his victorious opponent if he caught him offending again”. With all the rules and regulations, legal proceedings were widespread in the colonies, even against the overseers. Through his work, an overseer acquired many enemies.

The colonists were very strict in many things, including their Sunday observance. Community decrees were issued and punishments set (usually fines) for those who worked or hunted on Sundays or on Holy Days. With the influence of the clergy, the colonists came to designate additional Holy Days beyond the Holy Days registered in the calendar. These special days were specifically set to invoke divine intervention in the prevention or ending of epidemics, livestock plagues and grasshoppers. Although no work could be done these days, this was not much of a problem at certain times of the year when there was not much farming work to do. Later it would take much effort by the Kontor and the clergy to abolish these additional Holy Days.

The settlers were particularly harsh with thieves. Even small thefts usually earned a whipping, carried out before the entire community with even children present. After the punishment, the thief, accompanied by young people and anyone else who wanted to come, was led through the streets of the village carrying the stolen object, if possible, either in his hands or bound upon his back. During this procession the thief was subject to the taunts of the villagers. If valuable items were stolen, or a person caught several times for smaller thefts, the community banished the person (usually to Siberia).

Drinking was not forbidden in the colonies, but the Instruktion forbade “drinking binges”, and drunkeness was considered morally wrong. The Kontor required colony officials to send in annually the names of all “drunkards” in their colony - a drunkard was defined as someone addicted to drinking enough to cause them to neglect their work.

Back in Germany, the drinking of beer had been commonplace among the people. However, German beer was not available in the colonies after their founding. Even though the listed occupations of Germans immigrating to Russia included several beer brewers, no breweries were set up in the newly established colonies. Without beer, the people took to drinking Russian vodka and brandy, which enjoyed great popularity among the colonists and were never missing at any celebration, be it a wedding, a baptism or a burial.

After church services on Holy Days, many gathered at the local tavern. Drinking was also always present at New Year’s celebrations and annual parish festivals. However, vodka was not consumed nearly as much in the German colonies as amongst the Russian population. One reason for that was that during the first many years the colonists were so poor that they often lacked the money to buy vodka, otherwise they may have taken to drinking more. In most colonies there were only two or three such persons who were listed as “drunkards”.

The colonist population was growing very fast in the 1800s. Over the first twenty years in Russia (1767-1787), there was almost no population growth. However, the population size doubled to 61,000 persons by 1816.

The years 1815 to 1820 were very prosperous years for the German colonists, as agriculture flourished. Although farm sizes were declining, there was still at this time sufficient land per family to make a decent living.

By now the crude implements initially provided by the Russian government had been replaced by better German tools. The wooden hook plow of the Russian peasant was replaced by the one-blade plow which the Germans had used in their homeland. The Russian plow was heavy and not very efficient. It had to be pulled by three horses, and often by up to eight oxen, and it proved virtually useless where the ground was full of couch-grass or other strong roots. This plow was only used by the German colonists for sandy soil. To tear up the soil of the virgin steppe (prairie), the colonists were now using the German pointed plowshare. For working the potato fields, they used another type of implement.

In addition, only in the German colonies were iron harrows found. The Germans also replaced the harvesting sickle with the cradle, and the clumsy Russian pole wagon gave way to the German rack or shaft wagon.

The German colonists also boosted agricultural productivity through the introduction of better breeds of cattle and horses than the Russians had. The livestock in the colonies often had a scrubby appearance, but there were, here and there, some improvements made via the acquisition of good breeding animals for the community herds.

The German colonists also benefited from having community grain reserves. They enjoyed some “insurance” from economic downturns that their Russian neighbours did not enjoy, an important benefit for a society so dependent on agriculture and the whims of the weather.

In the early years the colonists had worked their farms as they had learned, or seen, back in Germany. This meant returning home at nights to sleep in their homes (this was also safer due to the robber bands which had existed). However, they eventually noticed that it was better in peak work periods (seeding, harvesting) to save travelling time by bringing linen tents so they could stay over night in the fields. On the Sunday evening before the work week began, the community gathered in the open to offer public prayers for the planting. The farmers left for their fields in their wagons early Monday morning, taking food (mostly bread and potatoes), and sometimes water, with them.

One area of agriculture that the Volga German colonists could not be considered advanced at, was their practice of a primitive and wasteful land fallow method, which lacked the features of any sensible crop rotation. Yielding abundant harvests with very little effort, virgin fields were sown with the same crop until exhausted, and then left as fallow pasture or hayfield for long periods to restore soil fertility. Part of this practice was attributable to the mir land distribution system. With a redistribution of the farm land every ten years or so, there was little incentive for a farmer to take care of the land assigned to him at the time, and to employ good soil conservation techniques to build up the soil for future use.

Another area where farming practice of the colonists was not particularly good was in the plowing of the soil. There were not many draft animals in the colonies, in part because of the many years of economic difficulty and famine which had resulted in the death, sale or slaughter of their livestock. Consequently, the fields of the colonists were shallowly plowed, clump-filled and weed-infested. With the mostly hard soil, deep plowing was time consuming and exhausting for the livestock. In addition, the farming community was generally unaware of the importance of deep plowing.

The 1820's

Around 1820, son Joseph was born to Peter and his wife. After growing up, Joseph would live most of his life in Saratov as a cobbler.

In March 1820, Russia issued a decree banishing the Jesuits from Russia. The atmosphere in Russia had never been very favorable to Catholicism, but the expulsion of the Jesuits was mostly attributed to the political lobbying of the Russian Orthodox clergy. The success of Jesuit schools and the influence they were gaining in the governing classes had aroused the envy and fear of the Orthodox clergy. They became particularly alarmed when the Russian prince Alexander Galitzin converted to the Catholic faith. The Orthodox clergy continually urged the Russian government to take action to defend Orthodoxy against the “heretical Jesuit band of zealots”.

The banishment of the Jesuits was a great tragedy for the Volga Catholic colonists. It meant the return of the Polish clergy and their general lack of understanding and concern for the colonists. The new priests would do their duty as they saw it - they said mass and read German sermons to the people - but they failed to provide the leadership that the colonists needed. For the next several decades Catholic life in the Volga villages lacked vitality. Religious fervor declined again and morality deteriorated.

Education was a main casualty resulting from the loss of the Jesuit priests. The Polish priests took little active interest in the German schools, where attendance was not compulsory, leaving them in the hands of generally incompetent schoolmasters from the ranks of the colonists, most of whom had little education themselves. As a result, the Catholic villages fell behind their Protestant neighbors, not only in religious fervor, but also culturally.

There were very good crops in the German colonies during the period 1825-1829, resulting in much prosperity. At least that promise of Russian immigration seemed to have finally been fulfilled somewhat.

Around 1829, Peter Stang’s oldest son, Michael, married Maria Eva Froschauer.

The 1830's

Peter and his wife became grandparents in 1830 when son Michael and Maria Eve gave birth to a son who they named Michael.

Peter Stang and his wife themselves had a son born to them, on Friday November 30, 1832, who also came to be called Michael. He would be the last child born to Peter, as Peter had been the last child born of his parents. Peter was in his forties.

Because the newborn son was born on the feast of St. Andrew, under normal circumstances he would have been given the name Andrew. However, the story is told that a relative named Michael Stang (could have been Peter’s brother) from Saratov happened to be visiting at the time of his birth, and this relative insisted that he would be the baptismal sponsor only if the child was baptized as Michael, even though Peter and his wife already had a son named Michael (the oldest boy). Whatever the reason, there would now be two Michaels in Peter Stang’s family - as if there was not already enough Michael Stangs!

There was widespread famine in Russia in 1833.

The initial teachers and village leaders in the colonies had been chosen from the ranks of the many settlers who had been educated back in Germany. But despite the importance of education to the early colonists, no schools beyond elementary schools were established to educate future teachers and leaders. It appears the pioneer colonists had wanted to establish such schools, but the colonial authorities made no plans for them. The authorities were only focussed on the colonists becoming good farmers, and for such a livelihood more advanced education was deemed unnecessary.

Consequently, after the initial teachers and village leaders were gone, there were virtually no educated persons from amongst the colonists ranks to replace them. That would prove to be a severe blow to the intellectual life of the German colonists. Under such conditions, illiteracy flourished.

In response to colonist complaints about ill-prepared teachers and village leaders, in 1834 two new central training schools were finally established to provide education beyond elementary school. One school was located on the east side of the Volga, and the other on the west side - in Grimm which was a Protestant village not too far north of Vollmer. Each school was to have twenty-five students.

These schools would produce almost all of the teachers, village clerks, and colony and township leaders in the Volga colonies. The schools would teach the Russian language, very necessary for the colonists who had to deal constantly with Russian authorities. In fact, concern by Russian authorities about the inability of the colonists to speak Russian was one of the main contributing factors to the establishment of the two schools.

The improved prosperity in the colonies at the turn of the century was accompanied by a large increase in population. The total number of Volga colonists nearly tripled between the years 1800 (40,000 people) and 1834 (108,000). With the improved prosperity, many new and better homes were built by the colonists. This time, the people of Vollmer built their houses further away from the river bank, and closer to Lavla creek to avoid the regular flooding which occurred.

With the increase in population, the colonists on the west side of the Volga experienced more serious land shortages - there just was not enough land for the size of the population. When the first German settlers came to Russia and saw the uncultivated prairie extending as far as the eye could see, they probably thought there was little possibility of a land shortage ever occurring. But that in fact did happen. Contributing to the problem was illegal seizures of land by peasants and by Russian nobility which earlier had been designated for the colonies to accommodate population growth.

The colonists repeatedly petitioned the colonial administration and the Russian government for additional land grants, but soon learned that imperial bequests to royal favorites took much greater precedence over colonist claims.

In 1834, the wife of Peter Stang died. Peter was around fifty years of age. The young two year old Michael would therefore never really know his mother.

Peter Stang developed dropsy, which is a swelling of a part of the body due to excess fluid in the tissue. He died a few years after his wife’s death.

With the passing of both parents, Michael’s oldest brother (Michael), who was about twenty-four years old and married, was left to raise the younger Michael. To add to the confusion, the older Michael also had a son named Michael, who was two years older than Michael.

The 1840's

Compulsory school attendance for children was introduced in the colonies in 1840.

The colonists petitions to the Russian government in St. Petersburg for more land went unanswered for many years. However, in 1841 the colonies finally received supplemental land allocations. That was good news.

The younger Michael attended school, but he did not seem to like it and left at a very young age (eight years of primary education were available to the German colonists). It was not because Michael lacked either intelligence or ambition. In fact, when Michael put his mind to something he was very ambitious and very adept. That would become evident throughout his life, as will be seen.

When Michael left school (early 1840s), he was supposed to learn how to be a carpenter / cabinet maker. But he did not really warm up to that idea. Instead he learned the craft of shoemaking, as had his older brother Joseph who employed his trade in Saratov. For whatever reason, that is what Michael wanted to do.

In 1845 the last payments were made on the crown debts by the colonists. Due to corruption in the colonial administration, the colonists had paid back much more than the amount of their original debt (although maybe the additional payments could have been considered as “interest”).

The 1850's

Upon reaching the age of majority, Michael received his ward money, thus making him independent from his family. It was not much money, because his family was large and not very well off. He worked as a farm laborer in the summer, and apprenticed with a shoemaker during the winter.

Robberies continued to be a problem for the colonists. Many horses, in particular, were stolen. This led to the following order by the commissar in 1853 to the overseers of the German colonies: “during bazaars, observe strictly whether any horses are being offered for sale or trade and inquire from people who are there why they are in the horse-trading area on that day.”

A seminary was established in Saratov in 1857. There were simply not enough priests for the size of the German colonist population in Russia. Moreover, the few parish priests that served were either Polish or Lithuanian, with generally poor knowledge of German. What was badly needed was a steady supply of German-speaking priests. The intent of the new seminary in Saratov was to provide a training facility for local young men from the German colonies to become Catholic priests. This new seminary would eventually become a saving grace for religious life in the German Catholic colonies.

By 1858, Michael was soon to turn twenty-six. At such an age it was generally expected of him to marry. In terms of who married who, one usually married within his or her own class. Over time there had developed rich, middle and poor classes in the German colonies. Although people often married someone from their own village, it was not uncommon to find a marriage partner from a neighboring village.

In 1858, Michael Stang married a girl from the nearby village of Shuck. His new bride was nineteen year old Anna-Maria Elisabeth Baumgartner. Anna Maria was supposed to marry someone else, but thought Michael a much better prospect.

Right from the beginning, the colonial administration (the Kontor) forbade music and dancing at weddings. As late as 1853, a colonial inspector issued the following letter to all colonies under his jurisdcition:

“I hereby prescribe to the colony officials that they see to it strictly that music and drinking do not take place in the colonies at parish festivals, at weddings, and at other occasions, because these desecrate the festivities and provide opportunity for immorality and drunkenness.”

However, these laws where seldom obeyed.

Michael obtained a building lot from the community. It was located in the southern part of the village, about eight properties down from the school and church. Between the few rubles he had saved and some inheritance money which Anna-Maria had obtained from her father, they were able to establish their own home built of clay brick. The house was modest, but large enough for Michael to employ his shoemaking trade. A small barn or stall was also built on the property, which was the norm.

Most houses in Vollmer were one-storey, built of sun-dried clay blocks 4x8x12 inches in size. The inside walls were given a coat of white wash. Most properties also had a separate summer kitchen and a root cellar. Over time, tall wooden fences were built to demarcate the yard of each dwelling.

Although Michael Stang continued at his cobbler trade, he also decided to obtain a license and open up a whiskey (schnaps) tavern, in his house as well, to supplement his income. The taverns of the day kept no regular hours, with the tavern keeper free to open or close the tavern whenever he wished. A tavern was normally kept open most of the time to maximize business, with people coming to drink both day and night.

Operating a tavern in addition to his shoemaking business, made for a busy life for Michael and Anna-Maria. By nature Michael was hard working and not one to ever be idle. He was greatly assisted in all his endeavors by his good wife Maria Anna, who was described as a “determined” woman. Both of them could have been characterized as somewhat ambitious.

Vollmer continued to grow. In 1859 a new church was built, constructed of wood. Unlike the Odessa region, most community buildings, and some houses, were made of wood. Wood was available for construction, although was not generally found in abundance in the area. There had been a few trees to begin with on the west side of the Volga, but over time the colonists unrestricted cutting had depleted most of the standing forests.

Forest conservation is one area in which the colonists would have benefitted by listening more to the Russian authorities. The initial Instructions had contained clear regulations regarding the use, preservation and planting of forest trees. This practical foresight on the part of the Russians was likey due to the country’s vast forest wealth, which gave government officials more experience in forest management than the German colonists had. The Germans simply did not recognize the importance of forests to agriculture.

In the upper eastern part of Vollmer (the newer part), by Lavla Creek, was an apple or­chard. Apple trees, cherry trees and raspberry bushes were quite common in the area.

Most families also maintained large vegetable gardens down by the river. The land for the gardens was also part of the dusch. In addition to potatoes and vegetables, they also grew watermelons.

The river is also where the women did their washing.

By now there were about a quarter million German colonists in the Volga region, living in 165 colonies. The population had more than doubled over the last twenty-five years. But, unlike the early years, the majority of these colonists were now living on the east side of the Volga.

The 1860's

In 1860, the Volga Germans were finally relieved from the harassment of the robber bands which had plagued them since their arrival in Russia. In that year, the governor of Saratov was successful in finally breaking up the last of their hiding places and having them executed.

During most of their time in Russia, the Volga colonists had been governed by Russia through a special administrative set-up (the Kontora), which was financially supported by a tax levy on each colonist household. Several highly paid German-speaking inspectors were sent out regularly from the Saratov Office to inspect the colonies. These visits were intended to assist in the improvement of the well-being of the colonists, maintain order in the colonies, and ensure that the colonists adhered to government directives.

In the summer of 1860, the Director of the Kontora himself traveled around the colonies to inspect township administration (several villages formed one township). His arrival was a great event. He was given royal treatment. Anyone passing by him, or even the house or building where he was in, was required to doff their hat in respect (the men of the German colonies usually wore hats when out, while women covered their heads with kerchiefs). Everyone was very much concerned with making a favorable impression.

Although the Kontora supervised the colonies, most of the day-to-day village matters fell under the jurisdiction of the village assembly. Every household sent, or was entitled to send, one member to the assembly, which met at least monthly.

Chief duties of the assembly were: the periodic re-distribution of the land (the dusch), the levying and collection of taxes, maintaining order in the village, the administration of penalties for unfit households, and the construction and repair of village buildings (including the church and school). Probably the most difficult task for the village assembly was the land repartition, which usually proved to be contentious because of the impact it had on people’s livelihoods.

Assembly officials were elected by the villagers from amongst themselves and charged with upholding the laws for a two year term. The chief official or mayor acted as the justice of the peace, presiding over the village court to judge in minor disputes. Although these officials held considerable power, it was often a group of the prominent village figures who tended to dominate village life. Influential individuals usually included the more prosperous colonists, the pastor, the village mayor and the clerk.

The taxes levied on the colonists included the Russian head tax (one or two rubles for each male), the Russian land tax (based on the amount of land tilled), and a general assessment which was mostly for road maintenance and transportation (colonists who didn’t have the money sometimes paid for this latter tax by providing service).

The colonists also had to pay taxes to support their local government - this accounted for about one-quarter of the total taxes paid in the 1860s. Most of this tax revenue went to pay salaries. In addition to the governing duties of the village elder and clerk, there were also a number of village duties carried out by clergy, drivers, watchmen, shepherds and teachers. Village buildings were also financed from the local tax, and village maintenance such as the periodic sweeping of the streets.

In August 1860, Michael and Maria Anna gave birth to their first child - a son who they named Michael (yet another Michael Stang!).

In time, there proved to be a good demand for both of Michael’s businesses. Generally, the old farmers who did not have much to do at home in the winter, but enjoyed company, were among his most regular tavern customers. Pipe-smoking was not uncommon in the tavern. Michael was strict in terms of what was acceptable conduct, and physically threw out anyone causing trouble.

Michael’s shoe business also prospered. Because of the good quality of work which he did, Michael’s clientele increased over time.

This allowed Michael to earn a decent income while many others struggled. Thus, despite his lack of formal learning, Michael became relatively prosperous. With some of the money he and his wife were able to save up, Michael leased about 5½ acres of farmland at the community auction (a substantial amount of the village revenues resulted from leasing out the land of those who had emigrated). Michael’s original intention was to acquire some cows and have them raised on the land.

In 1861 a relatively significant event occurred in Russia which would come to have an important indirect effect on the German colonies. In that year Czar Alexander II abolished serfdom. More than twenty million men became free as a result, and were given government loans to purchase small farms.

In the 1860s the apparently enlightened Russian government also prohibited corporal punishment for school children, and corporal punishment of women.

The 1870's

After the birth of their son Michael in 1860, Michael and Maria Anna went through a number of difficult years when several children died in childhood. It was not until 1870 (Sunday, January 9) that a surviving child was born - son Peter. There was therefore a 9½ year difference between the oldest child (Michael) and the second oldest (Peter). Son Johannes was then born in 1872.

In 1871, the German colonies changed the representation at the village assembly. It had become very difficult to get enough heads of households to convene regular village assemblies. In addition, changes in the colony government meant less responsibility for the assemblies in developing colony policy. Starting in 1871, colonists now elected only one man per ten households to represent them at the village commune.

In pictures of Michael Stang, he appears to not have been a big man, but he had manly and handsome features - and very contemplative eyes. He also had the appearance of quite a serious person.

Michael also seemed to have something of an inquisitive nature. When something new became known, he was often the first to become interested or get involved. For example, he was the first to bring a petroleum lamp and lamp oil into Vollmer, obtaining it while in Saratov. When news got around that someone in the village had obtained this wondrous new invention, curious people from all over Vollmer and surrounding area came to see it. People crammed into Michael’s tavern to see this latest marvel demonstrated for them.

Unfortunately, the first demonstration did not go so well. Michael had either forgotten, or not bothered to ask the salesman in Saratov, how to properly operate the lamp. After filling the hanging lamp with oil and lighting it, he put the glass chimney over top. But the lamp smoked so much that it filled the whole room with an awful sooty smoke. Not quite knowing what to do, Michael bored a hole in the ceiling above the lamp to let the smoke out. Those in attendance were naturally not impressed with this latest invention, which they predicted would never replace the old fat lamps or the simple candle!

Michael’s wife, Maria Anna (who was considered by many to be the real brains of the family!), immediately reasoned that such an acclaimed invention could not work that bad. The following day when she was all alone she cleaned the glass and carefully examined the lamp. She discovered a little screw which obviously was put there for some reason, and figured out how to operate the lamp. That evening when a new set of guests gathered, it was Maria Anna who lit the lamp and adjusted it properly. Lo and behold, the new lamp produced a splendid light which was far more powerful than a candle. Now it was indeed proclaimed to be a marvelous wonder. Word quickly went around that it was the wife - Mariann - who discovered how it worked!

Michael was therefore one of the first to be able to use this new source of lighting, allowing him to better work at his cobbler’s bench late in the evening or early in the morning. However, soon many others also acquired this type of lamp, particularly the weavers.

Another new technological advance which Michael was one of the first in Vollmer to obtain, was a winnowing mill. Some Volga colonists had manufactured a basic and no frills winnower that separated a cleaner wheat which brought a higher price on the grain market. Not being a farmer and therefore having no need for a winnower did not stop Michael from being one of the first to buy one. He purchased it simply as an investment, leasing it out to farmers who could not afford to buy one themselves. Michael truly was an “entrepreneur”.

As Michael and Maria Anna’s family began to grow, Michael decided to get out of the tavern business. The tavern was located in their house, and he felt it did not always provide a good atmosphere in which to raise his children. His decision may also have been connected to a directive from the Kontora to restrict the sale of hard liquor to only one tavern in each colony, in an effort to help combat drunkenness and heavy drinking in the colonies.

Although Michael ended his tavern operation, he bought into a butcher shop with a partner, which he was able to do with the cash from his other operations.

But shoemaking still remained Michael’s primary occupation and his main source of income. Above all else, the shoes of those days were required to be strong and durable. Marianna lent a helping hand to Michael with his cobbling work. She could handle the awl and tar the thread as skillfully as the best apprentice. In fact, when she did some sewing, it was said to be just as good as could be done on a machine.

Some of the shoes were sold out of their house, but many of the shoes were sold at the large annual fall market. Whenever the time of the annual market approached, Michael worked day and night to finish as many pairs of shoes as possible.

Michael was known to love listening to songs. When sleep threatened to overcome him as he laboured long at his cobbler’s bench, he often said to his wife – “Mariann, sing!” And Marianna could sing well.

At the markets Michael sold his shoes. He also bought leather supplies which he processed during the winter to make more shoes.

Although Michael’s main customers were the German colonists, he also conducted a fair amount of business with Russians who liked the good quality of his work. Some of the colonists disapproved of dealings with Russians. However, Michael himself did not hold a personal prejudice towards Russians that many of the colonists did. His dealings and friendships with Russians would prove to be very beneficial to him on many occasions throughout his life. This included one time, many years later, when some Tarters who had come to have some cobblery work done by Michael, gave Michael some medicine that helped heal a serious wound that one of his horses had.

With a decent income coming in from all their efforts, and still a relatively small family by the standards of that time, Michael and Maria Anna enjoyed a pretty good life. They were not extravagant in their lifestyle, but they were also not ones to be stingy with their money. Maria Anna was always well dressed, and both her and Michael believed in having good food. Michael also made sure all of his business equipment was well maintained.

Michael was also known to be generous at weddings or christenings. Between his relations and his business associations with others, he was frequently required to attend such social events. As a tavern keeper, Michael had become well known and popular amongst the villagers, and he associated with many rich farmers and prominent people.

In 1872, two men - Johannes Bach and Johannes Beilmann - were the first native men of Vollmer to be ordained as priests. All church services were held in Latin (except the sermon). Also that year, Michael’s nephew Joseph Stang married (to Elizabeth Dukart). Another wedding to attend in 1873 was that for another of Michael’s nephews (Michael Stang).

In the 1870s many things began to happen in the German colonies which the colonists were not happy about, and which eventually combined to result in their mass migration to the Americas.

As explained previously, the German landholding system in the Volga region was different than that of the Odessa region. In the Odessa region, a farmer’s landholding had to be passed down in entirety to one of his sons. That meant all other sons had to obtain other land if they wished to continue farming. This forced the Odessa colonists to embark on the purchase of considerably more land than the Volga colonists. This proved to be a good thing in the long run, as it resulted in larger farms and generally more prosperous circumstances for the individual farmer of the Odessa region.

However, in the Volga region, the mir system was employed, which periodically re-distributed the land to all eligible males as the population increased. With such subdividing, coupled with large population growth, each male’s portion grew smaller and smaller. In time, the smaller farm sizes made it increasingly difficult to support a family. This was a problem for Vollmer, although not quite as bad as for some other villages where the population growth was much greater.

Also occurring around this time (1870s), was a repealing of the privileges previously granted to the colonists. This in part was intended by the Russian government to provide the same treatment to the colonists as the emancipated Russian serfs.

Among other things, the Russians changed the administration of the colonies. Up until 1871, the Volga Germans enjoyed extensive authority to address local needs through their own community governments, but were also subject to Russian authority under a special administrative setup - the Saratov Office for the Guardianship of Foreign Settlers. This Office reported directly to the Ministry of the Interior (in St. Petersburg).

Under this system, the colonies experienced much closer government supervision than did the Russian peasants who lived in rural areas. But the Saratov Office, manned by German speaking men and many colonists, was also sympathetic and responsive to the colonists, and provided a ready channel of communication to higher authorities. In a state as enormous as the Russian Empire, with an administration generally known for its ineptness, the small foreign speaking group on the distant Russian frontier did well to have its voice heard so loudly in the government centre of St. Petersburg.

In 1871, this administrative system for the colonies was abolished. Now the Volga Germans were subject to the same provincial government (Samara Province) as the Russian peasants. The Russian bureaucracy which began governing them was far removed and not nearly as friendly. They generally regarded the colonists as privileged, and even spoiled by the Russian national government. The new governing officials even seemed outright antagonistic towards the German colonists.

Another very disconcerting development was that in 1874 the colonists became subject to compulsory conscription to the military. This is something that the German colonists had always feared. In fact, of all the unfavorable measures that the Russian government was instituting, the military draft seemed to cause the most concern. When the Volga Catholic colonists learned that they were no longer exempt from Russian military service, a large meeting was held in the Catholic colony of Herzog (east side of Volga) where the matter of emigrating was discussed at length. At that time Brazil and the United States (state of Nebraska) were under consideration as possible emigration points. Five scouts were sent to America, who eventually returned with favorable reports.

Many young German men were in fact drafted into military service starting in 1874, serving six year terms. The consequences of this became even more serious in 1876 when Russia went to war with Turkey.

The colonists generally viewed this change of policy (military conscription) as a renegment of Russia’s initial promise to the German immigrants. From the viewpoint of the Russian, however, it did not seem fair that a Russian, even a Russian of some standing, could be subject to compulsory military service, while the German colonists, who had now been living in Russia for one hundred years and enjoying all the privileges of Russian citizenship, were exempt.

In time, military conscription proved to be not as terrible a thing as the colonists thought it would be, but it was the cause of great anxiety when first introduced.

Increasing crime of Russians against the Germans was yet another cause of great concern. In 1874, as part of the government changes, supervision of colonist and peasant affairs was undertaken by an understaffed three-member (Russian) committee, consisting of the district police chief, the district marshal of the nobility, and a member selected by the Russian provincial assembly. With a staff far too small to supervise the numerous rural villages, these committees could not adequately enforce the administration of justice and maintain law and order. The result was an upsurge in crime.

Gangs of thieves roamed the country, stealing cattle, horses and other property. Contributing to this law-breaking was the fact that a Russian was almost always favored if ever caught and brought to court for a crime against a German. In response to the increased thievery, the colonists were compelled to take such measures as using lanterns to light up their farmyards, and training dogs to guard against robbers.

When it came right down to it, the German colonists never truly considered themselves as Russians, despite having lived in Russia for one hundred years. The fact that they had maintained their own culture and villages quite separate from the Russians greatly contributed to this feeling of separateness from the country in which they lived.

The German colonists also felt that the average Russian did not like them - and they were probably right about that. The Russians resented all the privileges and apparent special treatment given to the colonists that had not been extended to them, including the precious commodity of land which had been awarded to the colonists for free. The Russians were also envious of the prosperity in the orderly German colonies, which contrasted greatly from the poverty and shabbiness of the Russian villages. The Russian government contributed to the negative feelings by often praising the German colonists and setting them up as an example to the Russians of good agriculture. The government often commended the Germans for their work ethic, cleanliness and thrift, while condemning the Russian worker for being lazy, disheveled, spendthrifts and unruly.

Because of all this, most Russians disliked the Germans. Naturally, the German colonists felt this hostility, and resented being viewed as second class citizens. This feeling of separation between the German colonies and Russia made the decision of the Germans to leave easier. They felt no strong sense of heritage or belonging to Russia.

Significantly more Germans now began emigrating to the Americas, particularly the Germans of the Volga region who generally enjoyed less prosperity than their Odessa counterparts. Initially, most of this emigration was to the United States. Emigration was the talk of the day.

As the colonists began leaving for the Americas, the Russian Government tried to keep them in the country by offering them the opportunity to trade their land for new land in Siberia if they were not happy with the conditions in the Volga or Odessa regions. However, the German colonists maintained a general mistrust of the Russian government, and only a few actually took up this offer.

Meanwhile, life went on for Michael and Maria Anna and their family. In March 1874, Michael and Maria Anna gave birth to a son who they named Joseph George. Joseph George would turn out to be a very smart lad. They now had four children, all of them boys.

Michael taught shoemaking to all his sons, starting with his oldest son Michael while he was still attending school. A person could make a living from the cobbler trade through diligence and hard work. When Michael (oldest son) finished his schooling, he immediately began assisting his father with the shoemaking.

When it came time for Vollmer to reapportion (dusch) the land, Michael and his sons obtained about nine acres of farmland (being a cobbler, they did not get as much land as the farmers). Michael leased out this land.

Meanwhile, Michael purchased another village lot a little south of where he lived, where he built a small “bakehouse” (likely a summer kitchen) out of clay bricks. He also built a stall there. Then, in 1875, Michael sold his original house and built a new house out of wood on this newly acquired lot. It was not really a large house, but it was beautiful and well furnished. Michael and Marianna purchased a beautiful wall clock for the living room. It was a cuckoo clock - the latest fad. Peter was five years old.

Michael also decided to acquire two horses and begin to do a little farming (mostly rye), but only as a sideline to his shoe trade. It would give some experience to his boys in farming. Although the timing did not appear to be the greatest, given that the harvests were generally poor in the 1870s and the farmers were struggling, like his other endeavors Michael also proved to be fairly successful in his farming. It also proved to be a wise business move because many years later the cobblerly became less profitable when many other individuals took up the trade, forcing the family to rely more and more on farming.

Michael was probably feeling pretty good about himself and his life, having accomplished much up until this point. Daughter Margareta was born that year (1875), and he now enjoyed all five of his children, ranging from the new baby up to son Michael who was age fifteen. He felt good about being able to provide a nice home for his family and good clothing. He was also keeping busy and productive, with the flexibility to do some of the things he wanted to. The prospects for the future also looked good, particularly since his boys were growing up and were able to help him out more.

But life has its ups and down, and Michael and Marianna were about to go through a very difficult trial, something which Michael would never fully recover from. In 1876, when things were going so well, many colonists were suddenly seized with emigration fever. Indignancy had been building among the German colonists about the changes which were being forced upon them by the Russian government. The situation seemed to swell to a boiling point in 1876 when many young German men were drafted into the army to fight in the Russia-Turkey war.

Many colonists had either migrated (several families from the nearby villages of Pfeifer and Kamenka had migrated in the fall of 1875), were migrating, or were planning to migrate, mostly to South America which was being talked about as a land of opportunity. The year 1876 marked the 100 year anniversary of the village of Vollmer, but the villagers felt there was little to celebrate.

In that atmosphere of emigration frenzy, Michael and Marianna decided it would be best if they also migrated. Their own individual circumstances were not so bad, but they did not want to remain in a depleted village with a bleak future. Besides, they had always been a couple inclined to take on new adventures. Consequently, in the fall of 1876, they applied for passports and purchased ship tickets for South America.

While waiting for the passports to arrive, Michael and Marianna sold or auctioned off most of their possessions, including some rye grain they had stored. Because so many villagers had decided to leave, they could not get much of a price for their goods, and it was not possible to sell their home. Instead they tore down their beautiful house and sold the materials, in addition to all their beautiful furniture and possessions. They sold at very low prices, mostly to Russians from the town of Dobrinka.

Winter came, but the passports they were waiting for did not arrive. It appears that the Russian government had become concerned with so many Germans colonists wanting to emigrate. The immigration agents had been willing, of course, to accept people’s money for filling out the papers and assuring them that their passports were forthcoming, but someone in the government threw a monkey wrench into the process, and the necessary papers simply did not arrive.

Some of the Vollmer families actually started out on their journey without the necessary papers, in the hope that their passports would be provided at the border. But Michael and Marianna decided that was too risky, particularly in the middle of winter. That was a wise decision, as the families who had set out in such fashion were turned back at the border. One of those families was that of Marianna’s oldest step-brother, whose wife died while they were waiting at the border. Marianna received the tragic news upon their return. Although Michael and Marianna had lost many of their possessions, at least they and their children were all alive and well.

Because Michael and Marianna had anticipated moving to a warm country, they had sold all their winter clothing, and had not stored any burning fuel. They were forced to rent a house that winter and get buy on their savings. Needless to say, it was a miserable winter for them.

The immigration enthusiasm seemed to die down after that winter, and Michael and Maria Anna, and many others, gave up on the idea of leaving. Altogether, less than five hundred families from the Volga region emigrated in the 1870s, representing only about two percent of the entire Volga colonist population. Michael was able to return his purchase ship tickets, but he got back less than what he had paid for them, another stinging rebuke for his fateful decision to leave Russia.

Michael and Maria Anna would never fully recover from that unfortunate event and financial setback. They had basically lost their nice house and most of their possessions, which were the fruits of all their hard work over many years. Michael was forty-four years old when it occurred, and after he never wanted to talk about what happened. He was very sensitive to the issue. (But although he was very reluctant to ever talk about emigrating again, many years later that is what he would do.)

In 1877 it was time to get re-established, pretty well starting from scratch. With the help of some family and friends - which Michael and Marianna had many of - Michael was able to restart his shoemaking business. After the winter the family also moved into their little bakehouse, which was all that was left remaining on their property other than the stall. Fortunately, they had not been able to sell these structures the previous fall.

Peter also began his schooling in 1877. The German language used in the school textbooks for teaching the children how to read and write was High German. This was a little different than the German language of everyday use in the Volga colonies, which was generally characterized by a Hessian dialect. Each village had also developed its own local dialect over time, and thus there were small variations in pronunciation from village to village. Vollmer had a dialect that was distinguished by the use of a “chte” sound in such words as hoschte, kannschte, willschtte, musschte, geschte, etc. (people from other villages said hoste, kannste, willste, etc.). These differences were easily understood from village to village, and the home village of someone speaking could be readily identified based on the dialect. Of course, being in Russia, many Russian words had also crept into their vocabulary over time.

Also in 1877, Peter Bach became the third man from Vollmer to be ordained a priest, and Michael’s nephew Joseph married (to Magdalena Gartner).

Money was a lot scarcer now, and Michael and his oldest son (Michael) also helped with the farming for Maria Anna’s step-father (Johann Schroh), in addition to farming their own land. Wheat was the predominant crop of the Volga farmers, which after harvesting was hauled to huge granaries along the Volga from where it was shipped out. Harvested grains were hauled each year either to Saratov (75 miles to the north) or to Kamyshin (50 miles to the south), a fair distance for the slow moving wagons. Several men and a train of wagons were always used to haul grain to provide better protection against bandits.

Fortunately, the crops were good in 1877, which provided the family with a little money. Also, when the annual fall market rolled along, Michael worked hard with his shoemaking, again assisted by his oldest son. Marianna also helped out a lot. They put in long hours, especially in the fall and throughout the winter when there was little farming to do. Their shoes were bought not only by the German colonists, but also by Russians who would come to them on occasion to request shoes.

In the fall of 1877 the family had to move back into rented quarters. But they returned to their little bakehouse in the spring.

In June 1878, the final addition to Michael and Maria Anna’s immediate family arrived - daughter Anna Elisabeth. After four boys, they ended off their family with two girls. Michael was now forty-six years old, and Maria Anna forty-one.

In the fall of 1878, while the family was back living in a rented house, Michael and Maria Anna’s attended the wedding of their first child to marry - their oldest son Michael married Elisabeth Blatz. Michael was only eighteen. Elisabeth was from a wealthy family, the daughter of one of the most prosperous farmers in the village who had lived nearby Michael and Maria Anna. Elisabeth Blatz could have married the son of a rich farmer, but she preferred Michael Stang. The two were only two days apart in age.

In the colonies, material differences between families were never great, and often fleeting, and no rigid hierarchy evolved which prevented rich colonists from interacting with poorer colonists. However, prosperity was usually associated with moral behavior, resulting in somewhat of a two-tier social division. The prosperity of an individual was often attributed to the fact that they were hard working, honest, morally upright and reliable, while those who were poor were considered to be that way because they were moral failures (lazy, etc.). Despite Michael and Marianna’s misfortune, which was due to unfortunate circumstances, they were still highly respected in the community, and their son was expected to take after them.

Son Michael and his new wife Elisabeth lived with Michael and Maria Anna, who now rented a larger house (clay brick) in the spring of 1879. Also on the property, which was located just across the street from Elisabeth’s family, was a good-sized barn. The larger barn was needed for some cattle (a cow and two sheep) which had been bequeathed to son Michael’s new bride (in addition to the animals, Elizabeth’s dowry also consisted of all her bedding), and also two horses which Michael purchased for their farm work. The new rental accommodations were more permanent, and so the family did not need to move every spring and fall. The house was also conveniently located only a couple of lots away from their own property.

Peter was now old enough to come with his father and brothers out to farm, and he assisted in the spring plowing and seeding. It was not easy work, but because it was their livelihood there was no question of whether someone wanted to do it or not - they simply did it. They arose early in the morning before sunrise, ate breakfast (usually pancakes, eggs or noodles cooked in butter), and then headed out to the fields where they worked until late at night. That was very tiring, and after just a few hours sleep they would have to do it all over again.

As mentioned previously, the German colonist farmers had long practiced a wasteful system of land fallow, without utilizing any sensible crop rotation. Fields were sown with the same crop until exhausted, and then left as fallow pasture or hayfield for long periods to restore soil fertility. With the population growth which occurred and the smaller farm sizes, the fallow periods became shorter and shorter, resulting in the progressive exhaustion of the soil. Consequently, by the last two decades of the century, poorer quality of wheat was grown and harvests declined.

Around the late 1870s, some colonist farmers began to adopt a three-field system with regular crop rotation, a system which had been increasingly used by the surrounding Russian peasant farmers who farmed the land for their wealthy landowners. The most frequently followed rotation used by these colonist farmers was winter rye, spring wheat and then fallow.

The 1880's

The up and down economic cycle continued for the Stang family. A poor harvest in 1880 led to a very difficult winter for all in Vollmer. There was only limited food for both families and animals. Because the poor harvest affected everyone in the village, it also meant that Michael’s shoemaking business suffered. In order to make some extra money, Michael decided to go with two other men, who had learned cobbling from him, to a large Protestant village to the south to do some shoemaking. He made a few extra rubles there.

Also, late that winter, Michael took his two horses and went to the town of Waronesh (west side of the Volga) where spans of horses were needed to help build the railroad. However, upon his arrival he discovered that there were many more men looking for work than work was available. So Michael had to sell his sled and one horse just so he could make it through the rest of the winter before returning home in the spring.

Meanwhile, back home, Marianna and Elisabeth were alone with the children. They received some grain from the community storage elevator, but it was not enough. Marianna had to scrounge a little from her step-relatives, while Elisabeth and Peter (just turned eleven) went to Elisabeth’s parents (Blatz) to work. Peter helped the serfs who were employed by the Blatz (note: seasonal Russian peasant laborers preferred working for German colonists, who paid better wages, supplied the best food, and treated laborers more as an equal - for example, they ate the same meal in the field with the hired hands). Between all their efforts the family survived the winter, but just barely.

For all of his efforts that winter, Michael returned home in the spring with a few extra rubles - but one less horse.

Seed was scarce that spring because of the poor harvest. But Michael, with the help of a friend, got a hold of some good seed for sowing. That was fortunate, because after that most difficult year there was a very bountiful harvest in 1881. The good harvest also meant that the cobblery became busy once again. All this allowed Michael to purchase a horse to replace the one he had to sell the previous winter.

Also in 1881 was the Russianization of the schools - the German colony schools were placed under the jurisdiction of the Russian Ministry of Public Enlightenment (Instruction). The biggest change was that Russian now became the language of instruction in all colonist schools, except for religion and German class. (However, Vollmer continued to run a small community school.)

The teaching of Russian to the German colonists had been the goal of many Russian officials for numerous years, but was something the Germans had, until now, successfully resisted. However, even though their children would now be taught Russian at school, only German was ever spoken in the home and village. In addition to German and catechism, arithmetic and writing were also taught in the schools.

Peter Stang, at age eleven, was still attending school at this time. It was said that the children generally liked going to school. One of the things they enjoyed during the winter was being allowed to go skating after school.

In the spring of 1882, Michael borrowed another horse, from his older brother Michael, to help in the farm work. Another good crop was harvested that year.

With the income earned, Michael built onto the small bakehouse on their property. The new addition was mostly made of clay brick. The house was still not big, especially for nine people now in the family (including son Michael’s wife). There was one big room, one small room used by Michael and Marianna, and a kitchen measuring approximately 18 x 25 feet. In the kitchen was a large table and benches. At meals everyone sat around the table on benches   there were few chairs in the houses of that time. Food was served in one or two large bowls or pans placed in the middle of the table, out of which all ate with wooden spoons or fingers. In the colonies, a typical family had only one fork, a sharp bread knife and, on occasion, a few plates.

Their new house was ready to move into in the fall of 1882. Michael and Marianna would remain in that house until leaving Russia. The road ran along the west side of their property, with a “cross alley” or lane on the north side. The yard was only partially fenced in at the front along the road - it was open where the house was, but fenced where the barn/stalls were (the south end of the property). The front fence had a big gate. The north side of the house was completely fenced in, and is where the cellar also was. This was considered to be the “front yard”, with the barn/stalls in the “backyard”. The east side of the property was only partially fenced, and on the south side there was no fence.

The entrance to the cellar was at ground level, with stairs leading down to the cellar which was completely underground. The height inside the cellar was five feet. Down there it was cool during the summer, and cozy in the winter.

Michael turned fifty in November of 1882. In February 1883, Michael and Maria Anna’s first grandchild was born, when their oldest son Michael and his wife gave birth to a boy who they named - what else - Michael Stang! The birth of a healthy baby boy was a very happy event, especially since Michael and Elisabeth had lost their first two children. As usual, the child was baptized shortly after his birth. Two of his aunts - Anna Elizabeth and Margaret - were only five and eight years older than him, respectively.

There was another good harvest in 1883. Also that year, Michael’s niece Margaret Stang married (to Joseph Prediger). It was one of the many, many weddings attended over the years. The vast majority of weddings were held in the fall, and there was usually more than one wedding to attend each year. No matter how much one was involved in work, when wedding invitations were received one had to go. At weddings (as well as at Christmas, Easter and the Kerwe festival) it was customary to have a two course meal.

After his schooling, Peter took up cobbling which had been taught to him by his father. They were very much a cobbling family.

In the fall of 1884, one of Michael’s horses was stolen, leaving him with two horses. Such thefts continually plagued the colonists. It was very aggravating.

In 1885 the farm land was once again surveyed and divided up. The new allocation was to remain in effect for six years. Michael bought another horse from an old Tartar, while his other mare gave birth to a pony. Then in the fall he purchased a young black stallion from his nephew (Michael Stang). That gave him four horses and a pony.

Significantly more emigration to the Americas began around 1885, a combination of the changes having been imposed on the German settlements by the Russian Government, and a poor harvest in 1885 and the deteriorating economic conditions.

People were getting by, but it seemed to be getting harder to do so. Fortunately, being in a farming community they usually had sufficient food on hand. In addition to their farm produce, some food was also ob­tained by hunting, and also fishing. Mostly pike was caught in the river and creek located alongside Vollmer, using spears and nets. (However, colonists were required to pay a fee to the authorities for the right to fish.)

Michael and Maria Anna’s second grandchild (first granddaughter) was born in December 1885, just eight days before Christmas. Son Michael and his wife, who were still living with them, gave birth to a girl who they named Maria. Thus, both of their children were named after Michael and Maria Anna.

The young stallion which Michael had purchased from his nephew died in the spring. With just three horses, despite all of Michael’s efforts to have four, they had to go together with another farmer to get the spring seeding done (two spans of horses were needed).

Although everyone worked hard, visiting and socializing were very common after the day’s work was over, and especially on Sunday’s. Michael and Maria Anna were visited by many relatives on both sides. This included Samuel Baumgartner, a cousin of Maria Anna.

The harvest in 1886 was good. That year the Russian government eliminated the annual poll tax (one or two rubles per male soul), which the colonists had been subject to over the last seventy-five years. Also, the more substantial land tax, which was based on the amount of arable land belonging to a colonist, now became “redemption payments”. All-in-all, the taxes paid by the colonists did not seem unduly burdensome, and never seemed to be much of an issue with the colonists. A typical family maybe paid seven rubles a year in taxes, which was not excessive. There were also indirect taxes on goods such as liquor, tea and sugar. The colonists were very much community-minded, and so the idea of contributing something to public services seemed not unreasonable.

In the winter of 1886-1887, the family wintered one of the Blatz’s cows, for which they were reimbursed with some cash. Also, one of the horses (a black-brown mare) caught the flu and had to be separated from the other horses. She grew progressively worse, and in an attempt to save her they brought her into the house (the small room). That showed just how important horses were in those days. Despite their efforts, the horse died. That was hard on them.

However, in the spring a young foal was born. Because the weather was still very cold, and the stalls cramped, they brought the mother and the new foal into the house (the big room) to keep them warm and dry. They put the foal behind the door by the stove.

Also in 1887, a baby boy was born to Michael and Elisabeth - Michael and Maria Anna’s third grandchild. This time they named the baby boy after Elisabeth’s father - Joseph.

The horse situation continued to fluctuate. In the summer of 1887 one of the two young horses caught the flu and died. Then the mother became too old and weak to work in the fields. In the fall they had her butchered to provide meat for their dogs and pigs. Michael had to get another horse. He purchased a young light-colored horse from his brother-in-law, Johannes Sieben, who lived in Schuck.

Over the winter they trained a pair of three year old oxen to pull the span. Thus, by the spring of 1888, Michael had enough animals for his farming, with two oxen and three working horses. A span of two oxen and a span of two horses were all that was needed for the plowing, and so they did not have to rely on someone else. They also had two colts. (A 1888 survey of the size of livestock holdings in the Volga region showed that Michael’s household belonged to the top one-third of all German households that owned more than four draft animals)

Most of the plowing was now done by Peter, who was eighteen years of age. The family had six dusch (land portions) to farm. The six dusch corresponded to Michael, his four sons, and his first grandson (over time, these land portions tended to become long but very narrow strips of land). Thus, there was a lot of land to plow for Peter. It wasn’t an easy task to balance the plow and keep in a straight line with both oxen and horses. Peter was a fairly strong man to begin with, particularly for his height, and the plowing made him even stronger. Peter’s older brother Michael sometimes spelled him off at the plow.

They were short a couple of hands that year. Michael’s sixteen year old son Johannes had gone to Saratov to learn cobbling from Michael’s brother Joseph. In Saratov he could learn Russian, giving him the option to work in the big city where the opportunities were better than in Vollmer (however, Johannes would eventually return and take up farming). In addition, Michael’s fourteen year old son - Joseph George (“Oss”) - wanted to continue going to school, which he had a real interest in.

Consequently, they had to employ Michael’s five year old grandson (also named Michael) to help out in the seeding. The oxen which pulled the plow required someone to lead them and to egg them on. For this purpose, the young boy was put on a horse which walked ahead of the oxen. They tied his legs to the horse so he would not fall off if he happened to fall sleep - it was hard on such a youngster to work all day without getting much sleep at night. Peter would often sing to the young boy to keep him awake, and when that did not work he threw clumps of dirt at him.

They worked all day until it grew dark. By the time they came home for supper they were extremely hungry - the meat soup and beans or mashed potatoes tasted so good. And they were extremely tired - they fell asleep seconds after getting into bed, but only to be awakened a few hours later for another long day of work.

Over time Michael also added a few farm buildings to his property, made of clay brick and covered with straw. The added buildings included another stall, a barn in between the two stalls where feed could be stored, and a shed connecting the small bakehouse to the small stall where they kept the horse equipment. He also built another little stall for the sheep and lambs in the winter.

Unfortunately, there was no well on their property to provide water for the animals. They had to haul water in barrels from Lavla creek, using the wagon in summer and a sled in winter. That was never an enjoyable task, especially during cold winter weather.

Michael enjoyed hunting, and from time to time he joined a group of avid hunters in the area. Both he and his oldest son Michael owned a gun, which were always kept loaded should they be needed quickly. Hunting provided a much enjoyed break from their daily work. Ducks and geese were hunted in the spring, and rabbits in the winter.

In December 1888, Michael shot a wolf which had entered his property. Even though the wolf population was not nearly what it had been in the earlier years of the German colonies, there were still wolves living in the Krons Forest along the Volga River, which sometimes posed a problem for the villagers, particularly when they attacked young horses as the men worked in the fields.

One winter night, one of the family dogs suddenly became very excited outside, so Marianna let the dog into the kitchen. Michael had obtained this particular dog (named Sirke) from a Russian trapper, so she had long experience in sniffing out wolves. So when the old dog’s agitated barking turned into a whining, everyone in the house knew that wolves were in the area.

During the middle of the night the dog, which had been let outside again, began barking frantically once more. Marianna got up and put on the light, and then went to let the dog in again. She opened the door wide and looked outside. Sure enough, just a few yards from her, stood a wolf on top of a pile of snow that the wind had blown around the house from the street up to the stairs.

Marianna quickly went back to get Michael. Michael hopped out of bed, put on his felt boots, grabbed his rifle and carefully walked out the door, the dog right behind him. The wolf immediately reappeared on top of the snow drift. It directed its attention at first toward the dog. The wolf then noticed Michael edging along the wall of the house, his rifle ready to shoot. Michael had to be careful, because if he rushed off a shot in the excitement he might miss the wolf and then the situation could become even more dangerous. He wanted to get in the best possible position and fire at the right time. The whole time Elisabeth (Michael and Marianna’s daughter-in-law) was kneeling at the window, watching the events and praying.

The wolf seemed to freeze when he saw the gun pointed at him. Michael took advantage and pulled the trigger. The wolf toppled over. Michael’s oldest son Michael (who was twenty eight years old) had been watching along with the rest of the family inside the door. The minute the wolf went down he went out to grab at the dead wolf’s tail. Michael screamed at him to be careful, because the wolf may just have been stunned. Sure enough the wounded wolf sprang up and ran off.

That was a disappointment. It would have been quite an accomplishment to bag a wolf, because one had not been killed by the villagers for many years, and wolves were much feared. Michael said that they could chase the wolf until he possibly dropped dead, and suggested they go up to Pfiefers Little Head (a bush area about 6-7 kilometres away) where he suspected the animal might go. His son Michael needed little convincing. They quickly went back into the house, got dressed, got their rifles ready, and left.

Because the wounded wolf was bleeding badly, they were able to track its path quite easily. They did not have to go far. About fifty metres beyond the village they found the wolf collapsed on the road. Their dog circled and circled the wolf until he must have sensed that it was dead, then he pounced on it.

Michael and his son brought the dead wolf back and took it into their house. Upon examination, they discovered that the bullet had gone through the animal’s throat and main artery, likely causing the wolf to slowly bleed to death or suffocate. That was fortunate, because it was a big wolf, and a shotgun would not have normally killed it at the distance it was shot from.

As the wolf warmed up, his mouth suddenly opened. Michael Jr. hit it several times on the head until they positively knew it was dead. That just added a little more excitement to the night.

With the killing of the wolf, Michael became the village hero for a while. The house was full of visitors all of the following day, with everyone wanting to see the dead wolf that the cobbler Michael had shot. Although wolves were greatly feared by the colonists, at the same time they also admired the wolf for its size, strength and beauty. Michael was the talk of the town, particular amongst his hunting buddies. The Stang household was very proud that day of what their father, or husband or grandfather as the case may be, had done.

Michael and sons added another pair of oxen to their farming in 1889. They were not only able to work their own land, but they also had time to sow sixteen acres for someone else in the village.

In October 1889, Michael’s nephew Michael, who was actually two years older than Michael, and who he had grown up with, died of an infected bladder. Two months later tragedy then struck Michael’s own household as son Michael and Elisabeth’s two and a half year old boy Joseph died of “blue cough” (probably whooping cough). Infant mortality was high in those days.

Vollmer was too small to have its own hospital, and did not have a doctor. Most sicknesses were treated with household remedies. To cite one example of a home remedy, to treat pneumonia plasters made with fresh cheese and sweet or sour milk or flax-seed were used. For serious illnesses a doctor could be summoned from Kamenka. If medical facilities (hospital) were required, a trip to Kamenka would have to be undertaken. Certain prayers were also said, depending on the sickness.

The 1890's

A few months later, in the spring of 1890, after having lost their boy Joseph, Michael and Elisabeth gave birth to another boy who they named him Joseph Alexander.

Around the beginning of the 1890s, in an effort to boost soil productivity, the farmers began to change some of their growing practices. Previously, the land was plowed and seeded only in the spring. That meant they were limited in how much land they could cultivate. Now some of the land was plowed and seeded (especially winter rye) after the first harvest in August.

Farmers also began the practice of turning the land over in the fall. The big clumps of dirt kept the snow better. Being in a semiarid zone with normally dry springs and summer, the winter snow runoff was essential for soil moisture. In the spring, the wheat was sown (still by hand), and then the big clumps were harrowed and cultivated. Manuring or fertilizing was not extensively done.

In August 1890, as they were in midst of sowing winter rye, Michael received word that his older brother Michael died. He was in his late seventies, and in many ways had been a father to Michael in his early years.

In 1891, there was a very bad harvest throughout most of Russia, and particularly in the Volga colonies. In the fall of that year, Peter’s lot was drawn for service in the army. However, due to a medical problem - he had lost many of his upper teeth and gums due to a disease in childhood - he was declared unfit for duty. Also that fall, another one of their horses was stolen.

In the winter of 1891-92, Peter, now age twenty-two, was hired by Joseph Blatz (his sister-in-law’s father) to feed his livestock. Michael’s animals were fed by his nineteen year old son Johannes, which “Hannes” did in addition to cobbling.

It was a difficult time for all the farmers in Vollmer. Because of the disastrous harvest in 1891, the little bit of hay stored away in the fall was soon gone. In this desperate situation of no fodder for their cattle, the community of Vollmer bought up straw roofs from nearby Russians. After putting this straw on the snow and threshing out the dust and dirt, the straw was carefully weighed in baskets and distributed among the farmers who had no fodder. Michael’s family also purchased a straw roof from a very poor man, and took some of straw from the roofs of their own buildings as many of the farmers were doing wherever they could.

To make the salvaged straw go as far as possible, it was cut fine with a scythe and fed to the livestock in small portions. But all of this still did not provide much fodder, and the under-fed cattle bellowed in the barns with hunger. That was hard on the farmers.

It was not only the livestock which suffered from a shortage of food. The shortage of grains also meant families could not make much bread, which was a basic staple of the colonists. The Stangs principally grew rye, and ate a lot of rye bread. Like most of the colonist farmers, almost all of the wheat which was grown was sold because there was a higher price for it, with the colonists depending on the cheaper grains for their own domestic use. Over the winter, some grain to make bread was available from the community storage granary, but that supply was very limited. Families had to eat whatever bread they could make very sparingly.

Michael and Maria Anna’s family fortunately had enough meat from their only cow and two sheep, which they were compelled to butcher. They kept one calf. Also, as down payment for some shoes, some Russian customers from Dobrinka (a large Protestant colony south of Volmer) provided them with some peas, rye and another two sheep already butchered. All of this amounted to a fair amount of food, especially meat, but there were thirteen mouths to feed. In addition to Michael and Maria Anna’s family, less son Joseph George, there was son Michael’s family, a cobbling apprentice living with them, and a mute person for whom the community paid board (the mute man was auctioned out every year from the community). Fortunately, the needs of everyone could be looked after. Other staples provided from the family vegetable garden were potatoes and cabbage.

Then there was the matter of paying for the tuition to the Saratov Seminary for son Joseph George. Joseph was seventeen, and had excelled in school, unlike his father. He was now attending the Seminary for further education. When the Saratov Seminary was opened in 1857, there were almost no German young men educationally qualified to enter the seminary. This had been the result of the neglect of education in the German Catholic parishes for many years.

Consequently, in addition to the major seminary, it was necessary to establish a preparatory minor seminary, in which necessary secondary education was provided. So in addition to training priests, for many years the seminary’s preparatory school, or minor seminary, was the only institution providing secondary education for the German colonists.

Thus, not all the boys who entered the minor seminary intended to end up as priests. Some, after spending three or four years there and completing their education, but not feeling a vocation to the priesthood, returned to their home villages. Back home they were well regarded because of their education. They became part of a bilingual (German and Russian), intellectual and elite leadership, rising above those who could not read or write very well, or perhaps not even at all. The graduates of the minor seminary often became leaders in civic life, or teachers. After a short period in a state teacher training institution, they were able to take the state teacher’s examination and become qualified teachers. This is in fact what would eventually happen to Joseph George. For now, however, Michael was very proud of his son, and promised the Seminary that he would pay the tuition after the spring seeding, despite the difficult times.

In the spring of 1892, just before the thawing, the Russian government provided a subsidy to needy communities, including Vollmer. The community of Vollmer used their money to buy some hay from a Russian village to the south. All of the men in the village lent a hand in hauling the hay back to Vollmer, where it was fairly distributed among farmers so they could strengthen their draft animals enough for the spring plowing and planting.

The animals had grown so thin that the farmers had wondered whether the oxen would be able to gain enough strength for the work at hand. After the oxen had been strengthened with some hay and more nutritious feed, the farmers commenced slowly with the plowing. Fortunately, the oxen responded well.

Michael was starting to get old, at fifty-nine years of age, but he came along to work in the fields because his sons Michael and Peter had gone seeking work. They went with their shovels and some of the other young men in the village about 75 miles to the west of Vollmer to supposedly help build a railway dam. Since they were gone, the work of the spring seeding was left principally for Michael and his twenty year old son Johannes (next oldest son after Michael and Peter).

After the spring seeding, Michael had to come up with the money to pay for his son Joseph George’s tuition for the seminary in Saratov. Michael decided to sell the best of their four horses - a dun coloured gelding which he had previously purchased from his brother-in-law in Schuck. This was not an easy decision. Horses were needed for both farm work and transportation, and were extremely important to the colonists. Michael’s son Johannes said that if Oss (Joseph George’s nickname) did not become a priest after that huge sacrifice, he would kill him! (He did not become a priest, but he did eventually become a teacher.)

The family was still left with their two mares and a two-year old stallion colt. The Blatz’s also sold them, at a very good price (and paid for in installments), a four-year old mare. The mare was fat, but good-natured, and proved to be a really good work horse for many years.

Meanwhile, the work for the railway that brothers Peter and Michael had gone seeking, although supposedly a good opportunity to earn some extra cash, did not materialize as expected. Having no means to return home, they and some of their likewise disappointed friends were forced to go begging through the Russian villages for food and shelter as they returned home. When they were only twenty-three miles from Vollmer they came across a small country estate belonging to a rich Russian by the name of Schumakin, who offered them a job of completing a large well and a dam with drainage channels. The Russian knew that the German colonists were good workers. Since Michael knew the Russian language the best out of the group, it was left to him to negotiate a deal with the Russian.

Because the contract involved a fair amount of woodwork, some of the carpenters in the group returned home to get their tools. Peter and the rest of the men were eager to start the job. Peter would be getting married in the fall, and maybe he knew that and wanted to earn some money to help him start his marriage.

However, as the men started to work on the project all did not go well. They were to be fed, according to the terms of the contract, but the food was provided to them in a raw state, which meant they had to do the cooking themselves in addition to their construction work. To solve this problem, the men hired an old Russian woman to do the cooking and baking. Living and working accommodations were also not very good. Only some old buildings were provided.

But the worst thing they discovered as soon as they started to work, was that they had accepted the job too cheaply. The work was a lot more than they had expected. Making matters worse, because of the difficult circumstances and food shortage over the last winter, about six of the men were still physically weak (or at least claimed to be) and not able to work at full capacity, leaving the others to pick up the slack.

The Russian had known that the work would be hard, but he negotiated as good a deal as possible for himself. This soon led to complaints and grumbling from the Vollmer men. Since Michael was their foreman, it was up to him to go to the Russian and ask for more money - not that he wanted to do this, having a fairly non-aggressive personality by nature.

Michael had little luck in his request. The Russian granted a very small increase, but stood his ground and would not significantly change the terms of the contract. The German colonists of those days lived by integrity, and Michael knew that even though they disliked the way things worked out, a contract was a contract, and they would not go against their agreement with the Russian. So they unhappily proceeded with the work.

If all this wasn’t bad enough, the men were also not satisfied with the meals prepared by their Russian cook. It was not up to their standards - the Germans were used to eating very well! They especially did not like the bread which was baked for them. It always had a burnt crust, and was soggy and doughy inside. One day one of the men, known to be a jokester, peeled all the crust off of a loaf of bread. He then took the inner lump of dough to the Russia cook, saying: "Babushka (little grandmother), you call this baked? Look, I peeled the crust off, and see what I got. Now put it in the oven!” The Russian woman took this criticism well, laughing so hard she had to hold her belly.

Despite these negative circumstances, the work was completed. The men were happy the experience was over. Even though they had not earned a lot of money, they had at least earned a little cash. It was now time to return home, for soon most of them would be needed for the haying and summerfallow work.

Another grandchild for Michael and Maria Anna was born in 1892, when daughter-in-law Elisabeth gave birth to Johannes.

As their own family grew in size, Michael and Elisabeth moved out from living with Michael and Marianna and into their own home.

The crop in 1892 was better than the previous year, but it wasn’t great. That fall the farm land was re-distributed.

On Sunday, October 16, 1892, Michael and Maria Anna’s son Peter married Anna Elisabeth Schroh. Anna-Elisabeth, also from Vollmer, was the eldest daughter of Jakob Schroh and Margareta Gartner. Anna was twenty years old, and Peter twenty-two.

Unlike modern times, opportunities for young men and women to get acquainted were limited by the fact that the practice of dating was unknown. Also, although young men and women would see each other in church on Sundays, it was not customary for them to converse.

Haying and harvesting time probably provided the best opportunity for young people to meet and associate, as that was a time when the older girls were required to help with the work in the fields. Other opportunities to associate were provided by festivals and community events. This included the Kerwen (a dialect form of the High German word kirchweih), which was a type of country fair held in Vollmer in the beginning of October. This “church” festival was celebrated on different days in different communities, usually from one to three days after the harvest was completed, and often connected with the annual fall market. There was dancing, merry-making, and good food for all.

Peter knew Anna-Elisabeth through family connections. Peter’s mother - Maria Anna - was a Baumgartner, but her father had died when she was a young girl and her mother remarried to Johannes Schroh. Jacob Schroh became Maria Anna’s step-brother, and this Jacob Schroh had a daughter - Anna Elizabeth - whom Peter was now marrying. The Stangs were quite familiar with the Schroh family. A celebration was held when the engagement was announced.

Vollmer had grown significantly over the years, increasing the choices for a local marriage partner. In the 1890’s, about fifteen hundred people resided in the village. Many years previous, Vollmer could have been described as a linear village, with houses located along both sides of a dirt main street, with just a few shorter side streets. It was a much bigger and broader village now, with streets parallel to the main street. The upper village was on the east side, by Lavla creek. The original lower village was located towards the Ilovka River. The most common names in Vollmer were Gartner, Beilman, Doetzel, Schroh, Sauer, Graf, Ostertag and Stang.

The size of houses in Vollmer varied. The largest were 35 feet by 25 feet. One characteristic of the houses of Vollmer, and the other western Volga villages, was the haphazard addition of rooms to existing houses over time to meet the need for more space with growing families.

Like most of the other colony settlements, the church and school were located in the centre of town. Vollmer also had a community grain elevator, flour and oil mills, a tavern, a blacksmith, a tailor and various stores.

Tanners were also available to tan all kinds of hides, and to make rawhide leather which the farmers themselves fashioned into harness. The tanners also prepared sheep skins which the tailors made into coats.

Vollmer had grown over the years, but was still small compared to some of the other villages in the area. The largest village in the district of Frank was the Protestant colony of Frank, which consisted of nearly twelve thousand residents. The largest Catholic village was Walter, with about 6,500 people. There were nearly five thousand people in nearby Pfeifer, and Kamenka claimed about 3,300 citizens - about twice the size of Vollmer even though each village had about the same number of people in the early days.

The year 1893 proved to be very busy for Michael Stang and family. They worked hard at various ventures in order to earn some extra income. One thing that could be said of them is that they were very much a family in everything they did, including work.

In the spring of 1893, the family purchased a two-share (blade) iron plow from the local blacksmith, which they put to good use with the four oxen they now owned. For years the iron plow had been used much more by the Odessa colonists than the Volga colonists. The new plow was a big improvement over their one-blade wooden plow. Both were walking plows, but the new two-blader required less guiding, allowing the plowman to concentrate on guiding the oxen team. Plowing proceeded at a faster pace.

For the fields furthest away, the men sometimes stayed over night during seeding. They took food with them. For breakfast they made the famous steppe tea, while eating field dumplings for lunch. For supper it was lentils or cabbage or beets with meat soup, or boiled potatoes with oil. The men prepared these meals themselves in the fields during the seeding season.

With the re-distribution of land that had occurred in the fall of 1892, Michael Stang and family now had ten dusch of land to work. With more land, there was enough work for all the adult members of the family during the summer. However, other opportunities to earn money were also seized.

After the spring sowing, to earn some extra cash, the family did some hauling with their oxen. They transported flour from the Borell mill (sixty miles west on the Medvitza River), and also wheat from the Volga granaries to the mill.

When the mill burned down, the Vollmer villagers, including Michael Stang family, gained another opportunity to earn some additional money, by hauling lumber for the mill’s reconstruction.

Meanwhile, newly married Peter and Anna-Elizabeth (who became pregnant in the spring) had gone to work in the Voronesh area (south of Vollmer), where many young people from Vollmer had earned fairly good wages. However, they did not make as much money there as they had hoped for. After a while Anna-Elisabeth refused to work as a maid, while Peter became ill with malaria. They returned in the fall because they did not want to remain among a Mennonite settlement. They were glad to be back in Vollmer, which they had missed. However, it gave them some experience of being away from their home village, which would help them in a few years time when they would decide to leave Vollmer again.

Also gone in the fall were Michael and Maria Anna’s son Michael and their daughter Margareta (18 years old), who went to work among the Cossacks. Although they earned some money, they had taken with them one of the mares and the stallion colt, and unfortunately the colt died while they were gone.

Back in Vollmer, it was not too bad of a year for farming. Michael Stang continue to grow mostly rye, which turned out fairly well.

In January 1894, Peter and Anna-Elisabeth gave birth to their first child. They named their new son Jacob, after Anna-Elisabeth’s father. The birth of a child was always a joyous occasion, but that winter there was also great sadness when one of Michael and Elisabeth’s little boys died.

Some housing re-arrangements were made in the spring. Elisabeth (son Michael’s thirty-four year old wife) and their youngest child moved back to live with Michael and Maria Anna. Her husband Michael was away, having been hired out as a farm hand for one year. Their other three children stayed at their house, although the two youngest of these stayed with Elisabeth during the day. Elisabeth helped Marianna, who was starting to get old at fifty-seven years, in the garden and around the house.

The harvest of 1894 (rye, Turkish wheat) was a very good one. Harvesting required dry weather, but this was seldom a problem for the Volga colonists. Because of the bounteous crop that year, Michael hired some Russians to help Peter thrash out the rye. That was not a fun job because of the dust. Even with the hired help it could not all be done. They simply had to leave some of the unthreshed grain outside, some of which was used for feed during the winter, and some of which also provided a good feast for the mice!

What they were able to thrash was cleaned right away, put into 120 pound sacks, and then hauled by wagon to a storage granary (not their own). The rye was stored on the second floor of the granary. All of this made for a lot of hard work at harvest time. Sometimes the workers only got four hours of sleep at night after a grueling day of work. They would get to bed shortly before midnight, and then get up early in the morning. They would even get up before dawn if the moon was providing enough light. They must have slept very well during those few hours of sleep!

Michael wanted to replace his oxen with horses, so in the fall he sold two oxen, allowing him to buy two horses next spring from their neighbour Johannes Roht.

Also in the fall of 1894, on a sad note, Michael and Maria Anna’s two-year old grandson (Johannes) died. He was the second son of Michael and Elisabeth to die within a year. The death of a young child was always hardest on the mother. It was an extremely difficult time for Elisabeth, as her brother Joseph Blatz also died (tuberculosis) just a couple of weeks before Christmas.

Much of the farm work in 1895 was left to Michael’s two oldest sons - Michael and Peter, who were now quite experienced farmers in themselves. Michael was getting old, turning sixty-three in the fall.

Michael wanted to replace his remaining two oxen with horses, so in the fall he and son Johannes hitched the two oxen to a wagon and travelled 75 miles west to a market located on the newly built railroad. Here Michael planned to sell his oxen.

The German colonists, as a rule, only had limited travels beyond their village boundaries. However, when occasion allowed for a journey, seeing Russian peasant villages along the way often made the colonists take more pride in their home village. The drab Russian villages of the Lower Volga had no regular arrangement compared to the orderly and parallel streets of the German villages. By comparison, the Russian villages were also dirty, with the vast majority of houses unpainted and in disrepair. Dilapidated sheds attached to the houses added to the appearance of poverty and neglect.

At the market Michael managed to successfully sell their oxen. They also met a miller named Johannes Baumgartner who was short on money and wanted to sell Michael a gray mare with its filly. The mare was not in good shape, but Michael’s son Johannes was quite impressed with the filly, which was big and beautiful. However, after much deliberating and negotiating over a period of time, Michael ended up purchasing just the mare (for 65 rubles).

Upon returning, Peter and a couple of Michael’s other sons did not like purchasing just the mare - they had wanted the filly. But in time the mare proved to be a good purchase. The mare was a better horse than it appeared. It was thin and old looking when they purchased it, but that was largely because it had not been fed well. It was actually only six years old. The family ended up owning six horses, enough to do all their farm work.

In the spring of 1895, during seeding, a new wagon was stolen right out from the Stang’s yard. That was aggravating, but it seemed just to be a part of life in the Volga colonies.

In July of 1895, Michael and Maria Anna’s daughter-in-law Elisabeth nearly died giving birth to twins. Babies were born at home with the help of mid-wives.

In the fall of 1895, Michael and Maria Anna’s son, and Peter’s brother, Johannes (often called Hannes), married Anna Elisabeth Hollman. Johannes was the tallest of Michael’s four sons. Also that year, Michael and Maria Anna’s twenty year old daughter Margareta (Peter’s sister) married Johannes Weinkauf. When a daughter married, the parents usually provided a dowry.

Because the house was getting too crowded, Michael and Maria Anna’s son Michael moved with his family into his wife’s parents (the Blatz’s). Also, upon the advice of Michael’s father (Michael) and father-in-law (Joseph Blatz), Michael planned to become independent. Up to this point the money he earned had gone into the Stang household. This was one difference from the families of today. In those times, even when sons and daughters married and had children, they usually remained in their parent’s household. They continued to help farm the same land, all of which technically belonged to the family patriarch. And their finances were simply part of the larger family finances. In the case of Michael’s son Michael, he had now reached the point where his family had grown large enough that he separated himself in some ways from the larger extended family.

In the fall of 1896, Peter and Anna Stang were seriously contemplating leaving Russia. Many were doing so, with immigrations ads appearing often in the new weekly church newspaper (the Clemens, published in Saratov by a priest).

The economic situation was bad at that time, with many living in real poverty. Some families could only afford to eat good bread on Sunday, having to content themselves during the week by eating the dark rye bread. Houses were getting overcrowded as new ones could not be built for growing families. In many cases two families shared one small house.

Robberies were also becoming more common, with bands of thieves roaming the country, stealing horses right out of barns. It seemed that these thieves were rarely caught, but even if they were, they were set free the next day.

Many colonists were also not happy with the growing intrusiveness of the Russian government, which greatly interfered with their local government. In the “good old days” the villages were very autonomous in governing themselves. But by the 1890s many more appointed officials, often Russians and outsiders, appeared on the local scene. These included the land and police captains, and school and tax inspectors. Increasingly, village decisions and functions required the review, consent or supervision of a Russian bureaucrat. Gradually the village elders went from representing the concerns of the colonists and administering the local affairs, to one of executing bureaucratic requirements of the Russian authorities.

Around this time, particularly the first half of the 1890s, there was also a lot of anti-German sentiment developing in Russia, coinciding with tense relations between Russia and Germany. The Russian press was particularly harsh on the Volga Germans, falsely claiming that they posed a grave threat to national interests. Since the Volga Germans had no public defenders to refute the outrageous charges against them (for the most part the law-abiding Volga Germans were not even aware of the hostile anti-German propoganda being directed against them from St. Petersburg and Moscow), the upper levels of Russian society came to regard the colonists as German nationalists, anti-Russian, and therefore untrustworthy.

In many ways the Volga settlers had become a people without a nation. The Russian government still viewed them as Germans, while the recently established German Empire regarded them as Russians. The attacks by the Russian press on the Volga Germans had brought the settlers to the attention of the German diplomatic corps. These men alerted Bismarck (leader of Germany) regarding the potential economic and political benefit to Germany of the Volga colonists. However, Bismarck considered the Volga Germans to be Russian subjects, having long forgotten the German lands they deserted over a century ago. At his directive, the German government washed its hands of the Volga Germans.

In reality, the Volga Germans, although they had largely maintained the Germanic language and culture which they had brought with them, were truly citizens of Russia. In the colonies there were no German flags or any close associations with modern day Germany. The only Kaiser they knew was Alexander or Nicholas, whose pictures hung in the local schoolhouses. Most telling was that those who left Russia did not return to Germany, but instead went to other lands.

All of these factors contributed to increasing reasons for the colonists to emigrate. Opportunities existed for immigration to both North and South America. One of the South American countries seeking farmers was Argentina. Free transportation across the ocean was offered, and free land. Representatives even came from those countries to Russia to invite the colonists to their country, and naturally they made it seem very promising.

Anna Elisabeth had an aunt from her mother’s side (a Gartner) farming in South America who was corresponding with Anna. Without her husband Peter knowing, in the early fall of 1896 Anna wrote to this aunt’s husband, inquiring whether he needed help, and also whether he would help them to move there. The man did need help, so he immediately replied, indicating that if Peter and Anna left right away they would arrive in Argentina in good time for the harvest.

Upon receiving this reply, Anna informed Peter, who knew nothing about what had transpired. Anna was convinced that they should go. Peter agreed, seeing that the outlook in Russia was not that good. They felt they had nothing to really lose by trying. However, Peter first sought his father’s consent, who was still the patriarch of the family.

After receiving Michael’s approval, Peter and Anna quickly prepared to move to Argentina with their young son Jacob. Anna was also several months pregnant. Their hope was for better fortunes than seemed possible at that time in Russia. One of their priorities in their preparation was to obtain a passport. Peter’s brother Michael also gave him some cash to help them get over to Argentina. Many years later Peter would have the opportunity to return the favour.

Peter and Anna Stang left in October. The goodbyes were very sad. They would be missed.

After Peter and Anna Elizabeth’s departure, Michael and Maria Anna’s son Michael moved backed with his family into the Michael Stang household. That was mainly the result of Michael not getting along with his brother-in-law (Jackel Blatz).

In 1897, it seemed many wanted Michael’s big white mare, which was a beautiful horse. Michael was willing to part with it, because he knew he could get a good price. He allowed his son Michael to negotiate a deal with the Blatz’s. In return for the horse, they got another mare (a good strong horse), one cow with it’s calf, two sheep with their lambs, and some wheat for seeding.

That summer the family did some butchering.

In the spring of 1898, the family bought back the big white mare from the Blatz family for one hundred rubles. The Blatz’s had wanted the mare primarily for a breed horse, but it did not breed. Also, noone but Michael's son Michael seemed to be able to drive or ride her because of her temperament. Michael’s sons were happy to get the mare back, because it was a horse to be proud of.

Also in the spring of 1898, Michael and Maria Anna’s son Joseph George returned. He had left the Saratov seminary during the winter, going straight to South Russia (Landau) to be a private tutor for a Johannes Dauenhauer. His companion in the seminary, Peter Raphael Schafer, who was from that area, had helped him to get that job. Going to South Russia was also somewhat of a holiday for Joseph George. Upon returning to Vollmer, Joseph George immediately applied for a teaching position in the neighbouring village of Husaren.

There was a good harvest that year. Joseph George married in the fall, to Katharina Schultz. The prevailing custom was to hold the wedding at the house of the groom’s parents. Because their house was too small for the wedding, Michael rented a house, the same house where Michael and Maria Anna’s son Michael had his wedding twenty years previous. After his marriage, Joseph George became independent from the family.

Also that fall, the land was again dusched. It would turn out to be Volmer’s last apportionment of the land. Michael received eleven dusch for his family, and also accepted nine more dusch as their responsibility. This put them up there with some of the largest farmers in Vollmer. However, they had not built up their farm buildings and operations as much as others, largely because they had only gone into farming in a big way much later than others. They did not even own a storage granary, although they planned to build one eventually.

Over the winter, Jackel Blatz’s father-in-law, a rich man who lived in Kamyshin, visited Michael. He had become quite sick with stomach cancer. Even though he had a big farm, he only had one servant, and his oldest son was only nine. He begged Michael to send him Michael’s son Johannes and his wife to help him out with the farming.

Michael did not like that idea. Michael himself was now sixty-six, and he needed Johannes to help him with his farming. Son Peter was in South America, son Joseph George was a school teacher and independent, and son Michael was quite sick in bed with rheumatism and it was not known if he would be able to help with the fieldwork by spring. In addition to their twenty dusch of land to farm, the family had seven horses, pigs, a stall full of cows and other small animals (including chickens), and fourteen sheep to take care of. Naturally, Michael had concerns about letting his son Johannes go.

However, Johannes and his wife wanted to go. So on their behalf, Michael suggested to Michael that he should let them go, and that God would help them out somehow. Michael also said that he felt that he would be up and around by the spring seeding time. In addition, Johannes promised to help as much as possible with the feeding during the winter. Finally, Maria Anna talked to Michael. She said that this would be good for both families.

With everyone but him seeming to think it was a good idea, Michael eventually gave in and allowed Johannes and his wife and child to move out.

All of this showed how the patriarchal family worked. Even though Johannes was twenty-six years old and married, he still needed his father’s consent to move out. Michael, as long as he was alive, was the “housefather” and master over all. Everything had to go according to his will. He was the only one to control the money, with all expenses and income going through his hands. In his older age, Michael made his eldest son Michael his executor, but in everything they were all still accountable to Michael.

Michael and Maria Anna’s son Michael was quite sick with rheumatism that winter. In fact he nearly died. They tried many remedies and cures. They even tried bloodsuckers. Whether any of these cures had any effect on him is unknown, but as soon as spring rolled around he fortunately recovered.

In July 1899, Anna Elizabeth, Michael and Maria Anna’s youngest child and Peter’s sister, married (to Joseph Stang). That Stang family was related, but they no longer lived in Vollmer. They operated a water-mill on the Medvitza River to the west. Again for the wedding they rented the same house where Michael and Maria Anna’s sons Michael and Joseph George had their weddings.

Now all of their children were married. Michael was sixty-six and Maria Anna sixty-two.

For the harvest of 1899, the family hired a man with his wife, and another single girl, so they could cut with three “raff” or cradles (the German colonists had produced a scythe with rakes and hooks which was technically more efficient than the backbreaking and laborious peasant sickle). For harvesting the fields furthest away, the men and women (women helped with the harvesting) sometimes stayed in the fields over night. They brought along their food, cooking meals over fires fueled by dried manure and plants.

The harvest that year was fairly good - sixteen tons of rye and 27 tons of wheat. That allowed the family to pay their community debt (nine hundred rubles) that they had accumulated over the previous twelve years. It was common for farmers to acquire debt during the year, which they paid off with the proceeds from their harvest. But if the harvest was poor, or unusual expenses had to be incurred, as often happened, then debt could accumulate.

The family also purchased the 1½ acre garden orchard bordering on the Lavla creek. They purchased the orchard for only 100 rubles from a family who was migrating to South America. The orchard had about a dozen apple trees, two rows of cherry trees and quite a few raspberry bushes. The soil was good, as was the water in the well located right in the middle of the orchard.

The family still maintained their vegetable garden where they grew potayoes and other vegetables. But in their newly acquired orchard they also began to grow pumpkin, hemp, beets, sunflowers, cabbage, cucumbers and carrots, where it was easier to maintain the garden, particularly to water it (water for the community vegetable gardens had to be hauled from the river).

Although the orchard would provide the family with much fruit and vegetables, it also would take up much time for Michael and Maria Anna, particularly in the fall when they had to guard the ripened fruit from would-be thieves. But in many ways they also enjoyed it. Among other things, it got them out of the house and from their seemingly never ending chores there. They could sit in the little wooden shack in the garden and talk, or just enjoy the outdoor nature. Sometimes the children also helped to guard the fruit.

It is unfortunate that thievery was such a problem, but it was just a part of life in the colonies. In addition to having to guard their fruit trees, the villagers also had to keep a collective eye on their vegetables gardens which were kept on the outskirts of the village. Even more important, was guarding their horses and other animals from robbers. Some of these thieves were gypsies, whom the colonists came to dislike and distrust.

In terms of the cobblery, the family now only made shoes for themselves. Because so many had taken up the trade, it no longer was a business that could support a family. The family seldom took cobblery work for anyone else during the winter. They also no longer butchered any more, except for themselves.

The 1900's in Russia

The dawn of the new century was probably greeted with mixed feelings by the Volga colonists. Economic conditions were not great, and many of the same old problems continued. On the other hand, life was not all that bad either. It had been about ten years since the last very bad harvest, and for many some stability and economic advances had been achieved over the last decade.

For Michael and Maria Anna, life was getting on. Their children had now all grown up and married.

In September 1901, Michael and Maria Anna attended the wedding of their first grandchild to marry, when grandson Michael Stang married Suzanna Baumgartner. Suzanna, a pretty girl by all accounts, was the daughter of Johannes Baumgartner, the man whom Michael had met six years previous when he travelled to a market west of Vollmer to sell his oxen and buy a horse. As seemed customary now, for the wedding they rented the same house where Michael and Maria Anna’s sons Michael and Joseph George, and daughter Anna Elizabeth, had their weddings.

Suzanna now became a part of the Stang family household. In her family she had weaved during the winter to help with the family finances, even though her family was fairly well off. When Suzanna married Michael Stang, she thought she was finished with weaving, which was very hard work that she did not particularly like. Her new husband agreed. However, the harvest of 1901 was not that good, and the wedding had been expensive (Suzanna’s family did not pay for any of it, and had provided no dowry). Consequently, after the wedding Michael and family decided to buy a loom so that Suzanna could weave during the winter, and also teach the craft to Maria (Michael and Maria Anna’s fifteen year old grand-daughter who was finished with school). Many of the well-to-do farmers had two-to-three weaving machines going. Weaving had become very popular, and provided one of the few products exported by Vollmer and other villages.

Suzanna and her husband did not like the decision to weave, but according to the culture and patriarchal system of those days they had to go along with it. The loom and materials were obtained through the village agents. The addition of a loom made their already crowded house even more cramped. In the main room, there were two big beds and the loom on one side, and the cobbler bench and table on the other side. There was just enough room in the middle to pass through. The noise from the loom also took a little getting used to.

The wool for weaving was obtained from the sheep which were shorn twice in summer. The first wool was mixed black and white, which turned into a fine greyish cloth after it was combed and spun. The second shearing wool was made into felt, for the making of boots and blankets. Hemp was also spun into a cloth, to make linen and bed sheets, but fine linen, for sheets and trousers, was one of the few products purchased. For womens’ dresses, the wool or hemp was spun finer, and sometimes dyed a beautiful red or blue. Lambs wool was spun for female garments. All spinning had to be completed by February 2, the Feast of Maria Lichtmesse (CandleMass Day), and then weaving did not resume again until the sheep were shorn in late summer.

The experiment of the loom did not work out for the Stang household. The main problem was that neither Suzanna nor Maria liked it, and it showed in their moods. Suzanna did not want to teach it, and Maria did not want to learn it. Both did everything to discourage the other, and many threats broke out. The loom stood still more times than being used. Rather than force them, the loom was sold right after winter.

In August 1902, Michael and Maria Anna became great-grandparents.

For the August harvest, the family again hired one man so they could mow with three “raff”. That year quite a few of the farmers, but not the Stangs, were using mowing machines pulled by horses (these were not binders). These made the cutting easier and faster. However, because two farmers usually went together for one machine, they had twice as much crop to cover, so they did not necessarily finish ahead of those still using just the scythe (although their work was easier). The possibility of a mowing machine excited the farmers, because all the hard work of cutting could be done by horses and machines, not by men as had always been the case.

After the crop was in (mid-August), the rye was then seeded and the ground turned over. It rained a lot during the fall that year, and stayed warm until late November (it was very warm on the diocese feast day Klamentz on November 22). Under these conditions the winter rye grew to such a height that they feared it would go to seed. The community also decided to let the animals graze. When the animals were brought in at the end on November they were good and fat.

In 1903, after the spring seeding, the Stang men did some major work to their farm buildings. The barn which stood in between the two stalls was torn down, as well as the two stalls which had become unsafe. With the help of others, particularly a stone mason, they rebuilt the stalls right beside each other. The new clay brick walls were covered with boards. They planned to rebuild the barn at a future date. Also in the back yard was a shed, and an area for the pigs which was separated from the front yard by a little brick wall.

There was a good harvest that year, especially the rye. They started cutting with the “raff”, but then the Stang family became part owner, with the Weinkaufs, of one of the mowing machines. A span of horses pulled the machine, which required two operators. One person drove or operated the machine, while another scraped down the cuttings and threw them with a pitchfork onto a platform. The men and the horses were replaced so the machine could continue operating without a break, except for at noon when everything stopped for lunch. With the mowing machine they were able to cut nearly twenty acres a day.

After the cutting every family did their own thing - the gathering of the bundles (tied with straw rope), hauling the wheat, seeding and turning the earth over. With their orchard and vegetable garden, the Stangs also had all that work in the fall.

On Tuesday, September 29, 1903 (the feast day of the church patron St. Michael), Maria Anna was struck by a heart attack. Other than having a bad heart (she had suffered several small attacks in recent years), Maria Anna was in pretty good condition for someone sixty-six years of age.

After the heart attack Maria Anna had the last rites administered to her, but she recuperated well. She was feeling very good by the Friday. However, her oldest grandson (twenty years old at the time) wrote about what happened that day:

That morning my brother Joseph (he was twelve years old) and I had to get up early, three o’clock in the morning. If there was no school, we had to plow, just one day before Kerwe. When Mother gave us our food, Grandmother came out from the little room very spry and happy to see us. The weather was cold, and Joseph had newly darned pants and a new flannel shirt. She said to him, “Oss-che, you will not be cold. You have new pants, a new shirt and a new pocket in your pants. When you come home tonight, I’ll cook your favorite meal (darm cabbage and mashed potatoes).” These were her last words to us. When we came home in the evening, she laid already on her deathbed.

Maria Anna had gone back to bed in the early morning after her grandsons had left, and got up again at sun-rise. Early that morning she went outside where she conversed with different neighbors. Maria Anna then climbed the little wall into the pig sty to see how the pigs were doing (they had two fat pigs). That must have been too hard for her heart. As soon as she reached the stall door she was suddenly struck by another heart attack. Before collapsing, she only had time to call out and desperately try to get the attention of her sister’s son who was working in the backyard. Her nephew heard the cry and immediately came to her aid. That was fortunate, otherwise the pigs would have eaten at her. With the help of a neighbour, they picked Maria Anna up and brought her into the house.

That evening, as everyone gathered around, Maria Anna died. All attempts to revive her from her stroke were hopeless.

Maria Anna had in fact predicted she would die that way. She had often said that she would die suddenly, unexpectedly, as she was walking along, just as her mother had died.

There was no funeral home. Maria Anna was kept in her bed, after dying, until placed in a coffin for the funeral. That made for a very sombre evening. Everyone was quite sad. Maria Anna was a loving person who would be dearly missed.

The funeral was held the next day, Saturday. It was also the day of the Kerwen, but it would not be a festive day for the Stangs.

Maria Anna’s death left Michael a widower, which he remained for the rest of his life (he would live for another eleven years).

In 1904, Michael and family sold three of their smaller horses which they did not really need. In early summer, as they had planned, they built a granary and a barn on their property. The barn provided them a place where they could store their wagon, machinery and other things for the winter.

Argentina

Peter and Anna (with son Jacob) moved to Argentina in 1896. It was an extremely long trip, but they made it safe and sound.

They lived in one of three German colonies (the Third Colony) of Colonel Suarez, which was located in a hilly region about 280 miles southwest of the city of Buenos Aires. This village had been founded only nine years previous, in 1887, by twenty-four families and one unmarried person from the village of Kamenka (founding family names included Graff, Schroh, Schneider).

Shortly after arriving in 1896, on a Tuesday ten days before Christmas, a second baby boy was born to twenty four year old Anna Elizabeth and Peter. The young couple named their newborn son Michael. Once again this popular family name was being passed down to the next generation.

Peter farmed (wheat) in Argentina, working for the man who Anna had written to. Other relatives of Anna were also living there. Peter became good friends with George Graf, who at age sixteen had apprenticed as a cobbler with the Stang family back in Vollmer. Peter also became well acquainted with Michael Blatz, Lawrence Beilman, John Peter Kloberdanz and Peter Brost. But Peter and Anna were also among the Spaniards and Italians whose customs were much different from what they were accustomed to.

The next child of Peter and Anna Elizabeth was Ann Margaret, born nearly two years after Michael in September 1898. Then son Johannes came in June 1900.

Peter and Anna Elizabeth gave birth to their fifth child, son Joseph Herman, in January 1902. Peter had just turned thirty two. Their oldest child, Jacob, was soon to turn eight. Son Michael took more after his mother (a Schroh), in terms of looks, than his father (a Stang). All the children were blond in their young years.

Less than three weeks after the death of Peter’s mother (Maria Anna) back in Russia, in the fall of 1903, Peter and Anna Elizabeth welcomed another baby into this world - a boy who they named Peter.

In 1905, Peter and Anna Elizabeth made the decision to return to Russia. Even though they were making good money, the future outlook was not great as they were not permitted to buy or own land there. This was a concern, particularly because they had five sons who would soon grow up.

On top of this, they did not like living in Argentina. For one, farming was harder without a winter break which they were used to - farming all year long was possible because of the warmer climate there. There was also great disparity between the classes. The Spanish land owners heavily oppressed the people who worked the farms, and Peter did not like that. Back in the Russian colonies, they were much more of an equal and closely knit farming community. Furthermore, all of the Spaniards carried swords and seemed to draw them at the slightest provocation. Finally, in addition to all of this, being in such a strange country they were naturally homesick for Russia and their family.

In the spring of 1905, the family sold what they could and made the long trip back. The children, who did not know Russia, felt their father and mother’s excitement about returning to their homeland. It probably seemed to the children to take forever to cross the ocean and reach Vollmer.

Russia was a strange country for the young children of Peter and Anna, but they noticed the very warm welcome which they were given by their relations who were glad to have them back with them. They now met many relatives, including several cousins. Cousins around Michael’s age included uncle Michael’s twins Reinhold and Maria (1½ years older than Michael), uncle Michael’s daughter Justina (½ year older), and aunt Margaret’s son August Weinkauf (1½ years younger).

It was a year of revolution in Russia in 1905, but much of that was far removed from the Volga colonists, and they did not fully comprehend the implications of what was happening.

Peter had earned about four thousand rubles while in South America, a considerable sum of money for a Volga colonist. This allowed him to acquire some good farm land and have a nice farmstead built in Vollmer. He built a large wooden house on a property which his father (Michael) had purchased as a young man. It was located in the southern part of the village. Neighbours included Donas, Wiesner, Schroh, Gartner and Sauer. Between building and farming, it was a very busy year for Peter and family.

Everyone felt better when the family eventually got settled into their own house. All of the children slept in one room. Bed mattresses were simply covers stuffed with straw. Candles and oil lamps were used for lighting. Like all houses it had a stove to cook on and provide heat in the winter.

Peter dug a well in the front yard. That was very convenient for providing water to the animals. Those without a well had to haul water in barrels from the river   not a pleasant task, especially in the winter. In addition, Lavla creek was getting so low it could no longer provide enough water for all the animals.

The experience gained in farming while in Argentina proved valuable to Peter, who introduced some new and better methods of farming to the Vollmer farmers.

Michael attended school in Vollmer. Although school attendance by children had been compulsory for many years in the colonies, in the 1880s, after the transfer of jurisdiction of the colonist schools to a Russian ministry, the regulations for compulsory school attendance were gradually allowed to lapse, and school attendance became only voluntary. Russian was taught at school along with the other subjects. Peter’s brother Joseph was the new village schoolmaster.

Shortly after returning to Russia, another child was born to Peter and Anna Elisabeth. The baby girl Maria lived for only a few months.

The harvest was bad that year. In one sense that was not good timing for Peter, his first year back, but on the other hand it also meant many more were looking for work, allowing Peter to hire cheap labour for the harvest.

After the autumn harvest of Peter's first year back in the "old country", most of the villagers watched as officers from the Russian army came to inspect horses. Russia was cur­rently embroiled in a war with Japan. Farmers would be happy to give up their horses to the Russian army because they would be paid handsomely. They would receive 130 rubles (over fifty dollars) for each horse, which was enough to buy two work horses.

Eleven horses from Vollmer were first deemed potentially suitable for the military, including two horses of Michael Stang and family. One was a small black gelding which was the first horse born from the big white mare that they had bought back from the Blatzes. The other was a big fat horse that Michael’s son Michael had obtained for his father-in-law (Blatz). The other farmers from Vollmer, and those from Hussaren, taunted them saying “the cobbler Mischke can stay at home with his two horses, they won’t be accepted anyway.”

However, at the final selection in Kamyshin only two horses were chosen, and both of these were the horses of Michael's family!

As winter set in, the young children of Peter and Anna realized that it would be colder here than in South America where it was relatively warm even during the winter season. However, sheepskin coats and felt boots kept the people here fairly warm.

For the harvest of 1906, Michael and family went in with Peter to buy a cutting machine, and together they worked to harvest both farm lands. Peter enjoyed working with his family again.

After the harvest Michael’s family was able to pay all their debts, and they were in a pretty good financial situation. Michael was proud of what he and his four sons had accomplished. Son Michael was working with him and all debts were paid. Both Peter and Johannes operated very successful farms (Johannes had purchased his farm from his wife’s family). Their farms were amongst the best in the village. Finally, son Joseph was a teacher, a position of considerable repute.

Given their prosperity, Michael, although seventy-four years of age, began thinking about acquiring a bigger house, perhaps in the upper village where they had the apple orchard. There were a few places for sale with wood buildings which had belonged to families which had moved to South America.

Peter and Anna Elisabeth gave birth to son Wendelin in February 1907. As the family grew in size, mealtime for the family started to become a crowded affair. The food was good, including meat (pork, mutton, beef), rice, potatoes, dumplings, peas, cabbage, beets, cucumbers, carrots, lentils, eggs, pancakes, noodles, bread, soup and tea (Russian national drink). Cooking oil was made from the harvested grains or from sunflower seeds.

In the village, when families and friends visited, there began to be considerable talk of emigrating to Canada and other countries (such as Brazil). In fact, it seemed that was all they talked about.

People were not satisfied with the living conditions in Russia. It was the same old story - it seemed to be getting harder to make a living. Colonists also feared having someone in their family called to serve in the Russian army. This fear became worse in 1904 when the Russian government mobilized the reserves to fight in the Russian-Japanese War (1904-05). Up until then, many young men from the German colonies only served in the reserves. John Peter Stang from Vollmer (the grandson of Michael’s older brother Michael) was one of those conscripted to fight in the Russian-Japanese War, where he was struck by three bullets while on the battlefield. Luckily he was not killed.

Families with draftable sons were amongst those most anxious to emigrate. Finally, there was also a lot of political upheaval occurring in Rus­sia. The radical Russian Bolshevik party was advocating revolution, which made some people nervous.

The place most talked about for immigrating to was the great Canadian West. The Canadian government had been promoting, throughout all of Europe, the benefits of immigration to Canada. They advertised that quarter section homesteads (160 acres) were available. Volga colonists who had already migrated to Canada began sending back Canadian newspapers and letters confirming that Canada was indeed a land of great opportunity, and that land was available exactly as it was being described. These materials were being circulated around the village.

Even the parish priest, Father Johannes Bach, was strongly advocating emigration to Canada, while the German Oblate fathers in Western Canada were inquiring directly about the names of families in Vollmer who would possibly be interested in immigration. Father Bach was quoted as saying, prophetically, to the Vollmer villagers, that “you will most likely want to move out of Russia later on, but you will not be able to. You have a good opportunity now to become free citizens of Canada.”

The offer of essentially free farm land in Canada was very tempting, and many began to respond. One of the first in the Stang family to leave for Canada was Michael’s granddaughter Maria and her husband Peter Brost. Other families leaving in 1907 were Brilman, Gartner, Hollman, Schroh and Prediger. The people leaving auctioned off their possessions. As it turned out, Maria and Peter Brost were not accepted for immigration by the Canadian consulate at Libau (Russian port city) because of an eye sickness. So, instead of Canada, they opted for South America, where they ended up staying for the rest of their lives.

In the fall of 1907, Michael’s son Michael also decided to join the growing throng of people emigrating to Canada - but only after getting his father’s permission. He planned to leave in the spring. Michael, the patriarch of the family, was not happy with his son Michael leaving. But he supported his son’s decision, saying that he did not want to stand in the way of Michael doing what he thought was best to do.

Peter with his brothers Johannes and Joseph, bought all of the property (livestock, surplus grains, wagons, animal feed, etc.) belonging to their brother Michael. Patriarch Michael bought out Michael’s share of capital, and took the four dusch (Michael and his three sons) of land to go along with the two belonging to Michael and his son Joseph. Peter continued to farm amongst all this commotion.

Life seemed pretty good for Peter's family, but at the end of January 1908, Anna Elisabeth fell seriously ill and died in her bed at home. She was only thirty-five years of age. Peter’s brother Michael helped him with all the funeral arrangements. That was a sad time for the family. To make matters worse, Peter’s brother Michael developed pneumonia at the same time which was so bad they suspected he might also die (he did not).

Tradition normally called for a year of mourning before re-marrying, but with so many children (seven children ranging from one to fourteen years of age), and lots of farming work, Peter was advised by his family and relatives to remarry right away. Even Father Bach coun­selled him to do so.

After looking and inquiring everywhere without success to find another wife, it was suggested to Peter that he marry Maria Hollman, the nineteen year old maid who had been doing all the work since his wife's illness and to whom the children had be­come attached to. It was the practical thing to do.

So Peter asked Maria's parents for their con­sent to a marriage between him and their daughter. They were then married, in February of 1908. Maria was only five years older than Peter’s oldest son Jacob.

Just a couple of days after the wedding, both Michael (Michael’s son) and Anna Elisabeth (Michael’s youngest daughter) left with their families for Canada (Michael had recovered from his illness). Those departing included Michael (Michael’s grandson) and Suzanna, and their three young children, and Herman Blatz, a nephew of Michael’s wife. After all the goodbyes, a big caravan of sleds (ten families were travelling together) left from Vollmer. It was a foggy morning, and the sleds disappeared from view shortly after leaving for their two month journey to Saskatchewan. The travelling party would arrive in Canada on April 10. All were missed that spring and summer.

In late November, Peter’s new wife Maria gave birth to her first child (Alexander). Altogether, eighteen children were to be born to Maria and Peter. Even though four died as infants, it would become a very large family!

Late in 1908, Peter also made the decision to move to Canada - but only if his brother Michael confirmed that land was available near him in Saskatchewan.

In Canada, Peter’s brother Michael at first had to go all the way to Battleford to send or receive mail. However, a post office opened near Macklin in February 1909. That resulted in more frequent correspondence between Peter and Michael.

Michael wrote describing in detail the conditions in Canada. It had been difficult for him personally, but things were working out, and he noted that there was plenty of land available. Peter proceeded to make the necessary preparations for emigration.

Everyone from Vollmer made their travel arrangements through the Karlsberg Shipping Company. This company had agents in the colonies who helped the immigrants with their passports, ship tickets and itinerary, and arrangements to go on the first available boat in the port without being detained.

The price of a train ticket to the Russian port city of Libau was a little over ten rubles per head. The price of travel (boat, train) from Libau all the way to South Battleford, Saskatchewan, which was just a name to the immigrants, was sixty rubles per person over twelve years of age, thirty rubles for children between eight and twelve, and free for children under age eight. A family passport cost another thirty rubles. In total, the cost for Peter to get him and his family to Saskatchewan was around 430 rubles (about $215). He also paid the way for Peter and Rose Brost (his wife’s sister).

Before get­ting their exit visa and emigration papers, the whole family had to travel to Saratov to have a doctor examine their eyes for trachoma. Whoever had this disease was not allowed into Canada by the Canadian government.

In 1909, it came time to leave. Peter sold their farm and house. They had to decide what things they were going to bring with them. Letters were sent ahead to relatives in Canada, both in Winnipeg and in Saskatchewan, to let them know when they would be arriving.

So, as their forefathers had done 143 years previous, they prepared to leave their homeland to begin a new life in a far away country, which held the promise of a better life.

Migration to Canada

Peter and family departed for Canada in August 1909. Although they were excited in some ways about leav­ing, it was also an anxious time because of the unknown which lay ahead. Peter was age thirty-nine. There were eight children now in the family, in­cluding a nine month old baby, plus Peter's new wife was in the early months of her second pregnancy.

The family travelled with a group of others from Vollmer, including Peter and Rosa Brost (the sister of Peter’s new wife Maria), who were a young couple in their twenties. Others in the travelling party included another young couple with the last name of Roht, Fran­ziska Beilman (a young women going to meet her husband who had left previously), and Marie Wolf (a woman in her late fifties who was travelling to join family in Lincoln, Nebraska).

After saying goodbye to all the relatives, Peter's family was taken by wagon to the big train station in Netka, near Saratov. They boarded a train there and continued their long journey to a new world. For most in the travelling party (but not Peter’s family) taking a train was a new experience. It was also a little unsettling for them, for they were no longer in the familiar and safe environment of their home village.

It took nearly three days to reach the Latvian port of Libau on the Baltic Sea, which was over one thousand miles to the northwest. They had to take several trains, and the travelling seemed to take forever. They were not used to just sitting around and doing nothing. They brought food supplies with them in sacks. Food and drink (including vodka) could also be purchased at some of the train stations along the way.

Upon reaching Libau, the travel agents were there waiting for them - they seemed well organized. Peter found out that it would be a few days before their ship left for England. The agents assigned them to billets (living quarters) until it was time to depart.

In Libau, the family had to undergo medical examinations again, where they were especially checked for eye diseases. For the children it was already a long time from home, and the longest part of the journey still lay ahead! Peter and some of his older children had some comprehension of how long the journeying would be, having had the experience of travelling from Argentina to Russia four years previous.

The day finally came to board the ship. The boat trip to England took only four days. But it was four uncomfortable days, as the choppy waters of the Baltic and North Sea made for a lot of swaying, rocking and seasickness.

The boat sailed to the port of Hull in England. Upon deboarding they were led into a huge immigration centre where sandwiches and coffee were supplied. From Hull, the family crossed England by train to Liverpool.

At Liverpool they were picked up at the train station and taken to the custom or immigration house right on the harbour where they stayed and un­derwent more examinations. Here they received the bad news that Jacob, Peter’s oldest boy, would have to stay temporarily behind because of an inflamed swelling on the edge of one of his eyelids. He was not allowed to board a ship until it healed, which ended up taking about two weeks (he left Liverpool on September 9).

After the examinations and arrangements to leave Jacob behind, Peter’s family then rushed to try and make a boat that was leaving for Canada. They were too late. They were dis­appointed to miss the boat because it meant they had to wait until the next one left. The family waited until Thursday, August 26 to catch another large vessel of the White Star Line.

Their boat, the Megantic, was designed for over twelve hundred passengers, but for this trip slightly less than a thousand people were on board. There was an unusually high proportion (about six hundred) of first and second class pas­sengers on this particular voyage. Peter's family were amongst the nearly four hundred passengers in steerage class, which is how most of the immigrants to North America travelled. Being in steerage class, conditions were not the best, but each family had their own (small) room. There was a little over one hundred children on board, with a much higher proportion amongst the immigrants in steerage class.

It was not a pleasant experience to endure the hazards and uncomfortableness of an ocean voyage, Peter and family’s second trans Atlantic crossing in four years. When the seas got rough many got scared, and a lot of people got sick. A medical officer on board had to check all immigrants. Anyone with a contagious disease was quarantined in the ship’s hospital.

On the other hand, this ship was not as crowded as it could have been, and the food was plentiful and not too bad - pea soup, pork hocks and pork, coffee or English tea, good bread, buns and butter and orange marmalade. Bells rang when it was time for supper. To pass the time people went on the deck and just watched.

Exactly seven days after departing England, the boat pulled into Quebec City late in the afternoon of September 2. It was exciting for everyone to finally reach Canada, their new home about which they had heard such good reports. But as the boat pulled up to the dock everyone realized that they would be moving to a strange country.

Upon disembarking in Quebec, all immigrants were met by immigration officials from the Government of Canada. About 170,000 immigrants a year were coming to Canada, and the government had organized itself well in receiving them.

Immigration sheds were set up where medical officers checked Peter’s family and all others once more for diseases before they could get their immigration papers stamped. Inter­preters were available at a fee for those who could not speak English.

Peter exchanged his Russian rubles for Canadian dollars. He had carried with him a considerable sum of money from Russia. Even after paying for transportation from Russia for his family, and also for Peter Brost and his wife, and the unexpected expense for his son Jacob who had to stay behind in England, he still had about nine hundred dollars left, which was more than most immigrants brought with them. Peter Brost had only $100.

At Quebec, food for their journey by train was also bought.

The family then travelled by train to Winnipeg. They did not realize what a long journey that would be. At times it seemed like the travelling would never end. They often felt restless, but there was not much one could do on the train. The children sometimes thought of their departed mother and how they missed her.

Winnipeg was the main dispersal point for settlers head­ing further west. Many immigrants were provided free temporary accommodation in the three-storey Winnipeg Immigration Hall, or elsewhere. Peter and family, however, had relatives living in the north end of Winnipeg (the German Catholic community of St. Joseph), and so they were able to visit and stay with them. Again they noticed how different everything was here.

Peter Brost and his wife, who had travelled with them from Russia, decided to stay in Winnipeg to earn a little money first before coming to Saskatchewan. Many of the Germans from Russia were doing that. Living conditions were not very good in Winnipeg, which was experiencing a large influx of immigrants, but one could get employment and earn a little money.

After about three weeks of visiting, Peter and his family said goodbye and boarded the CNR train for Sas­katchewan.

When they first arrived in Saskatchewan, prairie grass, a foot high in places, covered most of the land as far as the eye could see. Only small clumps of trees and willow edged sloughs dotted the landscape here and there. Their new home would be out there in this wide open and largely unsettled land. It would be a challenge, but they had a good feeling about the land. They certainly felt more comfortable here in the country than they did in the big city.

Upon reaching South Battleford, after a much shorter train ride than they were getting accustomed to, Peter and his family disem­barked. They were immediately ushered into the immigration barracks. This was a long row of buildings divided into many rooms con­structed for newly arrived settlers. Cooking and washing facilities were provided.

At the immigration house they met the fairly prosperous Franz Joseph Lange, an American who was now the Canadian government agent responsible for helping immigrants in all their needs and getting them settled in their new homesteads. In addition to his government salary, Franz benefited from this duty because he was also part owner of a livery stable, as well as a farm machinery and wagon business, which benefitted from much business with the settlers.

Mr. Lange helped Peter file for his homestead and sign the necessary papers. This was done on Thursday, Sep­tember 30. The German Oblate priests had prevailed upon Mr. Lange to see that the German Catholics settled in a territory known as St. Joseph's Colony.

Mr. Lange showed Peter on a map where his homestead was located. He had claimed two quarter sections of land about eight miles southeast of the town of Macklin (South 12 38 28,W3), which was about one hundred and forty miles west of Saskatoon and near the Alberta border. Peter did not know that this land would not be the best for farming because it had so many rocks.

Mr. Lange also helped Peter and family purchase some needed farming implements and some basic groceries. After all of these things were done, Mr. Lange saw that the family was taken out to Macklin by wagon.

It was about an eighty five mile trip from Battleford. Everyone was anxious to get to their final destination. It was early fall and the days were getting noticeably shorter and cooler.

The whole area where their homestead was located was in the midst of a population surge. In the six square mile township where Peter claimed their homestead (Township 38, Range 28, 3rd Meridian), there had been no settlers in 1901, and only eight in 1906. However, by 1911 the population of the township would grow to 113, and eventually to 275 in 1921. The town of Macklin was just begin­ning to form, with the first buildings, including the hotel, under construction. The railroad from the East had been built up to the crossing south of Macklin.

In fact, the whole province of Saskatchewan was ex­periencing a population boom with the large influx of im­migrants. Although homesteading had become available in 1872, it was only during the period from 1906 to 1922 that large numbers of settlers came. This included Peter's family, as well as a lot of other Germans from Russia. In 1901 there was less than a million acres of crops planted in Saskatchewan, but by 1911 there would be over nine mil­lion acres of field crops.

In the country there were no roads yet, only wide open prairie and the occasional prairie trail. There were very few trees around. It was not easy to find the location of one's homestead. At each corner of each quarter section were four square holes about two feet apart in a square with an iron stake driven in the centre by the surveyors. On each iron pole was the number of the section, township and range.

At the time of Canadian Confederation the politicians were interested in developing the west. The first step was to survey the land. The survey divided the agricultural land of the prairies into six square mile townships, which were further subdivided into thirty six (six by six) one square mile sections, and finally quarter sections of 160 acres each.

As in the United States, the government enacted legisla­tion making it possible to obtain a quarter section "homestead" upon paying a ten dollar fee and committing to certain conditions. These conditions included building a house and cultivating at least ten acres a year of the quarter sec­tion, for the first three years. If these conditions were met, a certificate of title was issued to the land owner. Building a house on their homestead meant they would not live in a village or town, which they were accustomed to.

It was not easy to always find one’s homestead, and it was not uncommon that a family would have to be put up in someone’s sod shack while they looked for their land. The settlers were quite hospitable, however.

When Peter 's family saw their quarter section of land, even though it was just wide open land and completely undeveloped, they felt proud of it. It would be their challenge to build their home and a prosperous farm here, all from scratch.

However, it was too late in the year to get started. Peter and family would have to stay the winter with Peter’s brother Michael. When they were taken to Michael's, it was a very happy reunion for all. They were a very close family that had not seen each other for 1½ years. Living conditions would be crowded, but after the long journey through many strange places it was nice for Peter's family to be with familiar faces again. Other relatives were also being temporarily put up by Michael Stang, including Herman Blatz and the George Stang family.

Very soon after arriving, Peter drove back to Battleford with his brother Michael. He enjoyed the opportunity to talk and spend some time with his older brother. They had a fair amount of catching up to do. In Battleford, Peter purchased a couple of horses - Buckskin and Sandy. Peter also loaned Michael some money so he could pay all of his store debts. The two also brought some liquor back, and the Saturday night of their return they had a good party, inviting the neighbors.

Peter was worried about son Jacob, who had to be temporarily left behind in England. But eventually Jacob arrived. That was also a happy reunion, especially for the fifteen year old Jacob who had many adventures to tell of since he had parted company from his family in late August. As soon as he could, Peter took Jacob up to Battleford where he was able to claim a quarter section of land for him also (in Section 12). That fall Jacob also got work helping to build the railroad.

All three families lived in the small sod house (16 x 30 feet) on the farm for the fall and winter. That meant twenty two persons, plus two babies in cradles, had to share two rooms, one which was sixteen by sixteen feet and the other sixteen by fourteen. Luckily they had bunk beds. The inside walls of the sod house were smeared with clay and colored with gray wood ashes. The ceiling was made of wood, with straw on the roof-top.

There was little to do outside, so inside there was lots of time to talk about life back in Rus­sia, and what the future would be like here in Canada.

Because there would not be much work to do until the spring, going to church on Sunday’s was a welcomed activity and a chance to get out. They were located in the parish of Grosswerder. This name (German for "get bigger") was also the name of a German Catholic village back in the Odessa region of Russia, where the first German-Russian settlers in St. Joseph’s Colony were from. Grosswerder parish covered a large area, stretching south to past Denzil and west to Macklin.

Like the first homes in the area, the first church had been built from sod in the summer of 1908. It was located southeast of Mack­lin, and named St. Anthony's. Peter’s homestead was six miles from there. There was no parish priest until 1909 when Father Palm, from Germany, arrived.

The original sod church was very small (16 x 32 feet). With more and more settlers moving into the area, a wooden annex was added to accommodate the growing congregation. That was in 1909, just before Peter and his family arrived. Also, the sod roof, which often leaked, was replaced with wooden shingles.

That fall (1909), the government provided all families in the area permits to get food relief supplies in Wilkie. Dirt roads soon developed between towns. Be­cause of the influx of new settlers there were shortages of food for some during the winter. Not expecting much, Peter and family were pleasantly surprised when they received coffee, tea, rice, beans, syrup and a piece of salted meat.

When supplies ran low the men also made a trip up to Battleford where they could purchase flour, sugar, salted meat, lard, syrup, coffee, rice, beans and other needed commodities. With a wagon and a team of oxen, the trip over a prairie trail took about a week, sometimes more. A one hundred pound sack of good flour cost only $1.75, while sugar was 4 to 5 cents a pound.

Battleford was where settlers could buy the things they needed, in­cluding household goods, farm equipment, horses and cattle. There were about three to four thousand people living there. The town, particularly North Battleford, was increasing rapidly with the influx of immigrants. Ten years earlier only six hundred people had lived there.

However, with the building up of Macklin, and a railway line to it, soon trips to Battleford would be necessary only on occasion. The first store in Macklin was the Brady store.

Although Peter had brought with him a good sum of money from Russia, he began to be concerned with all of the expenses he had to incur. In addition to the cost of just get­ting to Canada, including the unexpected extra expenses for Jacob, he had all his farming start up expenses. He had also lent some money to his brother Michael with whom he was staying with.

During that first winter, in February 1910, another baby was born into Peter and Maria’s family. As usual for those early pioneer days, the baby girl was delivered at home without the assistance of a doctor. There were no hospitals or doctors yet in the area.

In early March the men had to go up to Battleford again. Their six month homestead deadline was to expire that month, so Peter and son Jacob had to get the final papers for their land.

On March 10, Michael Stang made arrangements to have Joseph Bichel drill a well on Herman Blatz’ land. They had to drill about eighty feet, and even then there was not much water. Peter then had one drilled. They only had to drill down a few feet before hitting a plenteous water source. That was fortunate. Peter had always been lucky that way.

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Getting Established in Saskatchewan

After being so crowded that winter, come spring Peter's family did not waste any time building their own house on their homestead and starting up their farm. Fortunately, spring came early that year. The snow melted by the middle of March (however, it turned wintry again in April).

It was a big undertaking to start up a farm from scratch. In addition to building a house, a barn had to be built and some land broken. Everyone in the family worked, including children. Neighbours and relatives also worked together helping each other out. That was just the way things were done. People looked out for one another.

The sod house they began building was only meant to be a temporary home until a nicer one could be constructed. The sod for the house was cut out of the ground by a walking plow pulled by two oxen or horses. Two feet long sod strips were laid half overlapped, like brick, to form the walls. Although it was small, with nine children in the family Peter’s house had to be a little bigger than many of the sod homes normally built in those days.

A couple of windows were built into the walls to let some light into the house. A sloped roof was made by laying the sod over poplar poles. If done right, the roof would not leak when it rained.

The sod walls inside were plastered with a mixture of clay and straw chaff. A floor was also made with a mixture of clay, straw chaff and fresh cow dung, all well mixed. When almost dry it was packed down by tramping on it with bare feet so it would not crack while drying. It made a nice hard floor, cool in summer and warm in winter. There was no draft under­neath.

Inside their sod house they built a big bake oven out of clay brick. Making clay blocks was a skill learned back in Russia. The bricks were made out of selected clay to which straw chaff was added and some water. The mixture was shovelled into a mould and shaped into bricks, and then set up in rows to dry.

The baking oven was large - six feet long and three feet wide. It was oval shaped on top. There was an opening for the oven out­side the house, as well as inside, so the straw or wood used to heat the oven could be put in from the outside and not make a mess in­side. After heating the oven for an hour or so, all the ashes were scraped out and the baking done.

Outside an outhouse and a clothesline were put up.

Peter’s brother Michael had to bring his livestock over for watering. Michael’s family also had to come over to get water for their household use.

Peter purchased four oxen, two cows and some chickens. The cattle cost nearly forty dollars apiece. Until fencing was put up the cattle just grazed on the open prairie. Wood for fence posts was not readily available because there were so few trees in the area.

Wild antelope, which once roamed the prairies in large numbers along with buffalo, were occasionally spotted in the fields. There were also coyotes about, which could be heard howling at times. There also seemed to be a lot of blackbirds.

Ten acres of land had to be broken on each quarter sec­tion in the first year in order to claim the homestead. There were few, if any, trees to be cleared away from the fields, but there were large stones that had to be removed before plowing with a team of oxen.

Peter had a two blade plow with a riding seat. They worked together with Peter’s brother Michael and his boys who had a one blade plow and four oxen as well (but three were small). The ground was hard and difficult to break. The top soil was a rich black colour, with clay beneath which held the moisture.

A drill disc, usually pulled by the horses, was used for making furrows. Because of the hardness of the ground, several passes with the disc were needed to get enough loose soil for a seed bed. Some oats were sowed, and then some wheat.

Work in the fields usually went from five o'clock in the morning to eight at night, six days a week. It turned hot and dry in the summer of 1910. When it got too hot the oxen would tire quickly and lay down, and there was little one could do to get them moving. Everyone was very tired by the end of the day.

Peter’s family and his brother Michael's family together broke more than forty acres each in 1910, which was quite an accomplishment on top of all the other things that needed to be done. But farming was in their blood, and they were no strangers to hard work. Everyone put their shoulder to the wheel and worked hard, and at the end of the day there was a good feeling about what they were able to achieve.

Peter’s wife, Maria, also started a garden with vegetable seeds she had brought from Russia. Peter had received letters from family in Russia (brother Joseph George and father Michael) asking them to plant an extra large garden so that enough would be available for them when they arrived in mid-summer. Many potatoes and cabbages were especially planted. Potatoes were a major staple at that time. It kept them going when food was scarce. Turnips were also cultivated.

There were no cattle or pigs yet to slaughter for meat, although some meat was bought on occasion because it was relatively inexpensive   the most expensive beef was only seven or eight cents a pound.

Peter’s brother Michael wrote back to their father (Michael) in Russia telling him not to sell their land (dusch) even if he decided to move to Canada. Michael was seriously contemplating returning to Russia, which he missed, but he could only do that if he had land there. But it was too late. Michael and Joseph George had already sold all the family land, and were about to leave for Canada by the time they received the letter.

Michael had not been keen on the idea of emigrating at his age - he was about to turn 78 - but with so many of his family gone, and so many more leaving from Vollmer, he also decided to join the exodus to America.

Thus, in the spring of 1910, Michael Stang, along with son Joseph George and daughter Margareta (married to Johannes Weinkauf), and their families, left for Canada. Only son Johannes and his family remained in Russia. Also in their travelling party from Vollmer were some Gartner relatives.

They travelled the same route as Peter, taking the train to Libau, and then boarding a relatively small boat for the voyage to England. In Liverpool England, they boarded the ocean liner Maurentania, one of the largest ships of those days. After only four days on the ocean, they landed in New York.

From New York they then travelled to Montreal, and then went by train to Winnipeg. They arrived in Saskatchewan near the end of June. They stayed with Michael in his sod house, as Peter’s family had done. It was another happy reunion.

Peter and family had just gotten settled on their land with everyone’s help, but now there was a new group to look after. The first task was to find some good land in the area for the newcomers.

Michael’s son Michael (Michael’s grandson) helped in finding land, because he had the most experience in breaking the land and had a pretty good idea what land would be best for farming. They were not having much luck in finding a property, due to the large influx of settlers over the last year. New settlers were arriving into the area all the time (however, there still was not nearly as many people yet as mosquitos!). But one day Michael (Michael’s grandson) was in the post office when he saw a paper on the wall advertising two quarter sections in section 16, with a 12 x 14 sod shack, for only sixty dollars.

Michael reported this to Joseph George, who immediately purchased the property. He took one quarter section for himself, and one quarter section for Michael (where Bride School would be built the following year). Johannes Weinkauf (Margareta’s husband) found some land in section 27.

As Michael settled, he met several families he knew back in Russia (Vollmer and neighbouring villages), including Reschny, Johannes Gartner and Rollheiser.

It was already the end of June. However, the new families were anxious to have some land broken. Michael and sons helped them to do that, but not without difficulties. It was hot and dry, and it was extremely hard work removing all the stones in the fields before plowing. Then the ground proved very difficult to plow. Joseph George, who was a schoolteacher back in Russia and not used to such back breaking work, one day collapsed in exhaustion while removing rocks. Michael’s son Michael found him laying exhausted on the ground, with his head on a stone, and told him just to leave the rocks, and that he would manage to get the five acres ploughed (which he did). Johannes Weinkauf’s land had fewer rocks.

After the land was broken, it was haying season. The new families also wanted to build homes on their properties. Joseph George wanted a wood house, but there was not enough time to build that before the harvest.

Because of the hot and dry weather in that first summer, the grain (wheat and oats) did not grow well. Although disappointing, this was not something new to Peter and the other farmers from Russia. The climate was fairly dry in Russia, and droughts and dry winds had frequently damaged their crops.

The first crop here was just barely tall enough to cut with a binder which was pulled by horses. Peter had gained experience in handling a binder while in Argentina. After being cut, the wheat was bundled into stooks or sheaves, and then hauled to the threshing machine were it was pitched in for separation. That was hard work, especially on hot days. Peter and Michael had obtained a threshing machine (separator) in Macklin from two Lutherans.

That first harvest provided Peter and his brother Michael with about one hundred bushels of wheat, which would provide seed for the following spring. They also harvested fifty bushels of oats.

In September, Peter's family took in Peter and Rosa (Maria’s sister) Brost, and Johannes Schneider, for about one month. They had just arrived from Winnipeg and needed a place to stay while they built homes on their homesteads.

In October, Michael’s grandson Michael built a wood house for Joseph George.

Peter's family, like most of the German Catholics in the area, were very religious in all their doings. They read the Bible, had regular family prayers, and faithfully attended church every Sunday, the first Friday of the month, and on Feast Days. Every summer the younger children would also attend Catechism for two weeks.

Grosswerder’s original sod church, with wooden annex, was very primitive. A new, bigger and better church was built in 1910. In the earlier pioneer years, when there were few social get togethers and no telephones, communication with many relatives and friends only occurred when the people met at church on Sundays. Over the years church was also the centre for many social activities. Such activities included parish picnics held after church during the summer. These were very popular.

Unlike some of the others in the parish who refused to go to church because of a dispute, Peter's family always attended. Peter also paid the con­tribution requested from them for the support of the church and rectory.

In the fall of 1910, Peter and family started going to church with the Haags and the Brosts who had set up their homestead to the west of them. In the winter the women and children travelled to church in a sleigh pulled by oxen, while the men walked. It took about two hours to get to church.

After returning from church the three families usually visited at Peter's house and stayed for dinner. During winter everyone would be quite cold by the time they reached home. A shot of whiskey helped the adults unthaw. Everyone was quite hungry by the time they sat around the table to eat.

Sometimes other relatives or friends would also visit. All would be dressed in their Sunday finest   the men in suits and hats. When people visited, they played cards, sang and sometimes even danced. The children enjoyed playing with their cousins. After a week of hard work on their farms, the Sunday socializing was always something looked forward to.

The winters in Saskatchewan were about as cold as they were in Russia, and so the warm winter clothing they had brought from Russia was put to good use.

They also kept the inside of their home nice and warm. All baking was done in the evening, and the heated clay bricks of the oven kept things fairly cosy for most of the night. The foot thick sod walls kept the heat in very well. A clay shelf along one side of the oven was used for drying felt boots, socks and children's mittens, which were usually wet from snow by the end of the day. Everything would be nice and dry by morning.

Coal was widely used for heating. In the earlier years many families also burned cattle chips, especially during the summer. When more horses were acquired, people started going out to the reserve with wagons to get firewood (the oxen were too slow and awkward to handle for long trips).

Because there was less farmwork in the winter, Peter spent more time with his family. During many of the long winter days he read "Bible Stories", in German, with his children. To help the younger ones learn how to read German, which would not be taught in the schools here in Canada, everyone took turns reading one paragraph at a time. After each paragraph Peter explained what they had just read. They also had a German ABC book to help them read and write the language.

The sun went down early in the mid winter. A coal oil lamp gave them some lighting, but they usually retired to bed quite early.

In 1911 more hard work was needed in building up the farm. Another twenty five acres of land was broken. In May, Peter’s brother Michael paid him back the money he had borrowed from him. It was always a struggle financially to start up a farm, but some prosperity was gradually achieved.

It was an unusually dry spring that year, with the first decent rain not occurring until June 23. However, it rained a lot after that, and because the seeds were sown in fresh and undepleted soil, the crops grew exceedingly well.

The wheat grew tall, but unfortunately much of it did not ripen in time. It stayed green and soft. Farmers could not afford to wait too long to harvest it, because the longer they waited the greater the chance of damage from frost. Some early frosts did indeed occur the end of August. Peter began to wonder if it had been a good idea to come to Canada.

By 1911, there were three hundred and twenty people living in the town of Macklin. Peter's younger sons and daughters also began attending the newly built Bride school which was located five miles away. Another child was born to Peter and Maria in September - a boy they named Reinhold.

In late fall, Peter went in with his brother Michael to buy a cow from Johannes Gartner to butcher for meat for the winter (700 pounds, dressed).

Even though coal was cheap (anywhere from $3.50 to $6.00 per ton, depending on the quality), they took their wagons out into the bush to get wood for burning. Going into the bush to get wood with his brothers (Michael, Joseph George) was actually an enjoyable outing and a time for them to be together.

There was a lot of rain in 1912. A wet spring was followed by a wet summer. Nevertheless, Peter's family managed to break another twenty five acres of land.

In a short time the Grosswerder pioneer church became too small for the attending congregation, not to mention it was staring to decay. The young and energetic Father Palm wanted a larger and more modern church building. Some of the parishioners protested due to financial concerns, causing Father Palm to hesitate in the construction of a new church. However, following a partial collapse of the sod church in the spring of 1912, construction of a new 40 by 75 feet Gothic church, with tower, began in July. Most of the parishioners lent a hand in helping to build it.

By mid August, the new building had progressed to the point where the celebration of First Holy Communion was the first church service held there. However, in spite of the great efforts to complete the church, it would not be sufficiently ready for dedication until November (it would not be fully completed until 1915).

The wet weather in 1912 had been good for growing, but it also delayed the wheat from ripening again, and therefore delayed the harvest. Since there were only a few threshing outfits going around to the farms, it was possible they would not be able to harvest this first good crop in time.

Peter did not want to take that chance. He decided with his brothers Joseph George and Michael, and also another Peter Stang, to go in together to buy a threshing machine on credit. The four men purchased a Titan tractor and separator. At that time gasoline threshing machines were starting to replace the steam-powered machines.

The problem was that no one was experienced in running the machine. Michael’s son Joseph (twenty-two years old) drove the tractor because he knew something about gas tractors, while Peter’s son Jacob, and Peter Stang’s son John, helped operate the separator.

With four farms and time growing short, they drew lots to determine the order of threshing. Peter was first.

The new tractor took a lot of time to get going, especially since the mornings were now quite cold. And once they got it going it was heavy, slow and clumsy. The steering mechanism was simply a heavy chain wound around the front axle. The steering wheel had to be turned six or seven times around until the wheels started to turn.

The men and boys worked all day, usually sleeping in the fields over night, even though the nights were starting to get quite nippy.

Although everyone was a little inexperienced with the new gasoline thresher, with hard work they managed to get the crop done in time. They even had enough time to help out some others in the area. That would be the first of seventeen years of work for that threshing machine.

Unfortunately, the price of wheat and oats fell very low in the fall of 1912. The average price for wheat was about 54 cents a bushel. By the time the threshing machine payments were made, there was not much money left over. Such was farming.

By 1912, Peter had also fenced seventy acres, and purchased a couple of cows and a couple more horses. Horses were fairly expensive, about $150 each, but they were much easier to work with than oxen. Most farmers would replace their oxen with horses by 1915.

The Grosswerder church dedication was set for Wednesday November 13, 1912. Back in Russia, the dedication of a church was a great festivity, with large processions and ceremonial decorations. Here in Canada, there was less festivity, but the dedication was still an event of some public importance. Bishop Pascal arrived at Macklin on the Monday evening for the event, where he was greeted by Father Palm. The following day a group of men on horseback escorted the bishop and Father Krist (Superior of St. Joseph’s Colony) from Macklin to the new Grosswerder church, where they were welcomed by a joyous throng of people.

The following day, Wednesday, was the dedication. It was a beautiful and mild sunny day. There were no bells yet in the tower to send out their invitation across the prairies, just a fluttering flag on the tower. But everyone in the area attended the ceremonies and many Holy Masses that day.

The blessing of the church took place at ten o’clock. At the appointed hour, the assembled clergy and servers walked in solemn procession from the church to the rectory to meet the Bishop. They escorted him to the entrance of the church where the congregation was waiting. Attired in full regalia, the bishop walked around the outside of the church, praying and sprinkling holy water. The Bishop then entered the church for the blessing of the interior. A glorious mass was then held. That afternoon a picnic was held, in so far as it was possible so late in the year.

In 1913, Peter and Maria welcomed another child into this world - a girl who they named Justina. That year Peter was able to obtain the quarter section of land (SW 12 38 28) adjacent to his own land. Wheat prices nudged up a little higher for the 1913 crop, with farmers getting about 64 cents a bushel.

Also in 1913, construction of the new church continued. The bells for the church arrived. Father Palm started a passion play which generated some much needed funding for the building of the church.

The winter of 1913 1914 was a mild one. Over the winter most farmers in the area spread manure on their fields, which was the first time many had done that in several years. However, a cold wave set in by the end of March, and a heavy snow storm also hit on May 5, which delayed sowing. However, with the manure on the fields and the abundant moisture, once the weather im­proved the prospects for a bumper crop were very good.

An important parish event in July 1914 was the dedication of the church bells. The three magnificent bells from Germany, weighing 1,200 pounds, had arrived in 1913 and were mounted on a low structure lumber frame just south of the church. On the middle bell was inscribed: I call the living, bemoan the dead, shatter the lightning and storms.

On July 16, 1914, the parish held First Communion, a parish picnic, and the blessing of the bells. Because of the illness of the Bishop, attending in his place was the German Abbot Bruno Doerffler from Muenster. Many other priests also attended this special occasion, including the brother of Father Palm, who was pastor at Humboldt.

A large crowd of people assembled on the Sunday morning, including some non-Catholics. At 8:30 a.m. the Abbot was met at the rectory by a solemn procession, and then proceeded to the Hall where the First Communicants awaited. All then proceeded to the church for mass. The Abbot gave the sermon in both German and English.

After the High Mass the children were escorted from the church to the hall where the hands of many women were busy at cooking, roasting and baking for the picnic. Besides nourishing food, there were all kinds of candies, ice cream and fruit. For fun at the picnic, there was bowling and a wheel of fortune.

The dedication of the bells started at 3:30 in the afternoon. Each bell had eight sponsors (godfathers and godmothers for the baptism of the bells) who stood beside the bells at their blessing. The Rev. Abbott undertook the dedication of the bells. After a little more than a year later the bells were lifted into the church belfry and hung there.

The 1914 crop had started out very good, but it became very hot and dry during the growing season. It was the driest year since Peter and family had come to Canada. The ex­pectations of a bumper crop did not materialize, and yields were very light.

The family garden also experienced some problems because of an outbreak of cutworms. An increase in the gopher popula­tion caused further trouble.

Peter and family did not want a small sod house to always live in, so they had begun making clay blocks for a better home. In 1914, with the help of relatives (Peter’s brother Michael was the main architect), they built their clay block house in just a matter of a couple of days. It cost about ten thousand dollars to build. The house had a roof made out of boards and a basement with a water pump.

That year the wheat ripened faster than usual, and after some early frosts farmers began cutting end of August. The cutting and threshing were finished very early. This allowed farmers to plow a larger portion of their fields in the fall than usual. The oat crop was especially poor which meant a likely shortage of feed. Fortunately, wheat prices shot up, to about $1.48 per bushel.

Also in 1914, news was received of the outbreak of a major war in Europe.

In November 1914, Michael Stang died just before turning age eighty two (he died in the same month in which he was born). He had lived a long and very productive life. Living at his death, were four sons (three in Canada, one in Russia), two daughters (one in Canada, one in Argentina), forty-six grandchildren and numerous great grand-children. Peter was forty-four.