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Location: Volga > Volga Villages Overview
Volga Villages Overview
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From 1764 to 1767, 104 German villages, or colonies, were established in the
Volga valley of Russia. Over the first 2 decades a few villages were
abandoned and new ones were established. Due to population growth, 68 new
villages, called daughter colonies were established from the late 1840s through
the 1860s. They were predominately located to the south east of the original
villages. By 1865 there were 170 German Volga villages. An additional 10
small Mennonite colonies were established from 1854 - 1875.
This comprehensive chart of about 300 Volga villages
includes the village alternate names, map coordinates, village coordinators, religion,
year established and population in 1912. Additionally,
if there is a website for the village,
the village name is linked to that website.
Over time smaller
hamlets, sometimes called chutors and other small villages were established
throughout the Volga. These were often referred to as grand-daughter colonies.
Some of these smaller properties were rented or purchased from Russian landowners.
There were approximately 350-400 named German settlement locations in the Volga
by 1920.
Generally a daughter colony was formed by the people of 1 or 2 original villages
or mother colonies. If your ancestors came from a village that was not one of the
original 104 mother colonies, it is important to determine the mother village.
That is one of the challenges of Volga German research. Often this is done by
finding your surnames in the 1798 census of the mother colonies.
Another challenge facing the Volga German researcher is the naming of the villages.
Most villages had multiple names, sometimes Russian, German, French, Tartaric
as well as nicknames. Many villages were named after their first community leaders
such as Bangert, Kukkus and Brabander.
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Additionally the names can have different
spellings depending on how it was translated. For example the village of
Shcherbakovka was also known as Deutsch Tscherbakowka and Muehlberg. The village
of Yagodnaya Polyana was also known as Jagodnaja Poljana, Alt-Yagodnaya, Jagoda,
Reinard and Baum.
To further complicate matters, multiple Volga villages could have the same name.
There were 3 different Stahls, usually differentiated by the name of the river
they were located by, Stahl am Karaman and Stahl am Tarlyk. There were 4 Rosefelds,
and 2 Hussenbachs. Sometimes daughter colonies have the same name as their mother
colonies although the daughter usually had a Neu-(village name) and the
original colony would sometimes be referred to as Alt-(village name) although the
Alt was not typically part of the village name. An example would be Norka and
Neu-Norka or Kraft and Neu-Kraft.
The Volga village name list compiled
by Ray Heinle lists the names of all Volga German
settlements mentioned primarily in 3 books:
- Russian-German Settlements in the United States by Richard Sallet,
- The German Colonies on the Lower Volga: Their Origin
and Early Development, by Gottlieb Beratz,
- From Catherine to Khrushchev, by Adam Giesinger.
This comprehensive list
is extremely useful when trying to identify a village name.
This list is provided courtesy of the
Odessa Digital Library.
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