Researching Volga German Ancestry Through Russian Archives with Brent Mai
Channel: TopekaLibrary
Date: 2022-12-13

Catherine the Great invited Western Europeans, most of whom were ethnically German, to settle the Russian steppes in the 1760s. Over 30,000 people responded to this invitation and were settled in 106 colonies along the Volga River north of what today is the city of Volgograd. From arrival in 1764 until deportation in 1941, Russian authorities kept detailed records of the activities of these colonists and the local Lutheran, Reformed, and Roman Catholic clergy recorded pastoral acts (baptisms, marriages, and burials) in each of the parishes. Following Stalin’s deportation of the descendants of these colonists to gulags in Siberia and Kazakhstan in August & September of 1941, records that survived the war time were scattered among 4 major archives.  Dr. Mai will be presenting at ID Quest on the documentation of Volga German ancestry that has been discovered in these archives and some of what is available to researchers to-date.

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