I had a fun time last weekend traveling back in time with the members of the North Texas Germans from Russia AHSGR/GRHS duel chapter over Zoom. Several members offered up their ancestral colonies prior to the presentation, so I was able to customize it a bit for the group using the colonies to which they are connected.
We divided our time between the Kherson and Saratov provinces. We wandered around some of the Glückstal colonies (Glückstal, Neudorf, Bergdorf, Hoffnungstal), then went down to the Kutschurgan enclave to visit the Mother colonies and a few of the Daughter colonies that were established by 1872 (Strassburg, Baden, Selz, Kandel, Elsass, Mannheim, Johannestal, Georgental, Nikolastal), and then on to a few of the Mothers and Daughters in the Beresan enclave (Rohrbach, Waterloo, Speyer, Johannestal, Worms, Neu Klatscha, Neu Kandel, Uljanowka, Neufeld, Friedenheim, Neu Rohrbach). We went back and found the elusive Chutor Balitsky, which appeared on maps as its Russian name, Saratow. We popped in on Dobrinka circa 1765 over in the Volga enclave. That was fun. Then we went up to Neu Messer and checked out the neighbors in 1910 (Walter, Frank, Kolb, Neu Blazer, Neu Dönhof, Norka, Huck). We found that map's purpose was to show phosphorite deposits. Amazing what you learn when you zoom out.
We covered a lot of area and a lot of time, roughly between 1765 and 1954. It was about hour and a half well spent.
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