Heart Roman Catholic Church, Watson. Watson and District Heritage Museum Among the specific factors causing Germans to emigrate from their colonies in Russia may be mentioned: the progressive deprivation of rights and privileges granted by Catherine II, particularly the ukase of June 4, 1871, which subjected Russian-Germans to military service, removed their right to extensive political autonomy, and increased pressure toward Russification in Community Schools . Germans were forced to emigrate from their colonies in other regions in Eastern Europe -- including Bessarabia (today in Moldavia and Ukraine), Dobruja (now in Romania), Bukowina (Ukraine), Galicia (Ukraine), Volhynia (Ukraine), Transylvania (Romania), and Banat (Romania and Yugoslavia) -- for similar and other reasons. For example, in Dobruja, a severe drought in 1884 and the imposition of military service the previous year added to the existing problem of land shortage. These German Lutherans (the Adam and Dietrich families) immigrated in the 1890s and settled in the Landestreu district near Langenburg. This 1911 photo shows the new home of the Adam family. Ninita Hautz The German influx into the United States from Eastern Europe may have reached 200,000 annually during the early 1880s. Large areas of the Dakotas and Minnesota were converted into replicas of the Russian-German colonies. Until the notion of German separatism became pass with the assimilated third and fourth generations and with the surge of anti-German feeling during World War I , the homes, schools, ethnic press, voluntary associations, and churches in these settlements all collaborated in an attempt to preserve