Did I mention this is a work in progress?
There has been a lot of re-checking of maps and editing data going on behind the scenes lately that will continue for months to come. Dennis has gone through the village data against the paper maps, and I've been following behind validating, editing and making notes before updating the online maps. And in doing so, I discovered we had some information that was incorrectly categorized.
The Volga map had more villages that were actually in the official Volga region as defined by the governorate, so those have been pulled out into two new maps: the Samara Colonies and the Ural Colonies.
Samara was indeed the Volga region, so it remains there on the full GRSL map and the Volga Region map, but those who settled the colonies came much later and from different places than the original Volga colonists. They deserve their own colony group. The Ural colonies are east and northeast of the Volga colonies and west of the Ural Mountains. They include the Neu-Samara Mennonites, the Orenburg Mennonite and Protestants colonies, the Ufa colonies (Catholic, Mennonite, Protestant), the Aktyubinsk colonies founded on privately bought land by Black Sea and Volga colonists and the Arkadak Mennonite settlement.
There has been a lot of re-checking of maps and editing data going on behind the scenes lately that will continue for months to come. Dennis has gone through the village data against the paper maps, and I've been following behind validating, editing and making notes before updating the online maps. And in doing so, I discovered we had some information that was incorrectly categorized.
The Volga map had more villages that were actually in the official Volga region as defined by the governorate, so those have been pulled out into two new maps: the Samara Colonies and the Ural Colonies.
Samara was indeed the Volga region, so it remains there on the full GRSL map and the Volga Region map, but those who settled the colonies came much later and from different places than the original Volga colonists. They deserve their own colony group. The Ural colonies are east and northeast of the Volga colonies and west of the Ural Mountains. They include the Neu-Samara Mennonites, the Orenburg Mennonite and Protestants colonies, the Ufa colonies (Catholic, Mennonite, Protestant), the Aktyubinsk colonies founded on privately bought land by Black Sea and Volga colonists and the Arkadak Mennonite settlement.
The following online maps are now available:
Volga Colonies (data refresh)
Samara Colonies (new)
Volga Region (new)
Ural Colonies (new)
GRSL (Germans from Russia Settlement Locations) map (data refresh)
For the Volga region (Volga and Samara), the following paper maps were used for village locations:
- Karte der deutschen Siedlungen im Wolgagebiet (Map of the German settlements in the Volga Region). Karl Stumpp, AHSGR, Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russland, 1954. WorldCat link.
- Karte der deutschen Siedlungen im Raum Alt-Samara, Ufa-Dawlekanowo, Orenburg, Neu-Samara und Aktjubinsk (Map of German settlements in the area of Alt-Samara, Ufa-Dawlekanowo, Orenburg, New Samara and Aktjubinsk). Karl Stumpp and AHSGR, 1964. WorldCat link.
- Carte des colonies Allemandes etables sur le Volga dans le territoire de Saratov (Map of the German colonies on the Volga in the territory of Saratov). Pierre François Tardieu, 1788.
The paper maps used to find the villages are available for purchase from the American Heritage Society of Germans from Russia. Copyright prevents sharing them in full here. If you want a copy of a map for your family archive, note the map used in the Sources for your village. There are also many other maps of the Volga out on the internet. Finally, the OCLC WorldCat link is provided so you can find the nearest library with a copy of the two Stumpp maps, if you'd just like to look at them.
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