Genealogy Bits

Finally located some good maps showing locations of the Volga German colony villages of Alt-Weimar and Neu-Weimar. Turns out they were at the very bottom, or southern tip, of all the German Volga settlements. Makes them easy to locate on maps, if they are actually identified.

Here are links to three maps, two showing Neu-Weimar and the last one showing the Volga German region in proximity to Moscow and the Black Sea (Schwarzes Meer).

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jeruslannachrichten/VGColMap.htm
- Neu-Weimar at very bottom of map

http://cvgs.cu-portland.edu/images/Volga_Map_english_large.jpg
- Neu-Weimar clear at bottom of map
- note Dobrinka Village location on Volga (early Dieterle settlers there)

http://cvgs.cu-portland.edu/images/Deutsche_Auswanderung_nach_Russland.jpg
- red spots are German settlements (mother colonies)
- Dieterle family came from far right Volga Samara
large red patch (east of Moscow)

It really helps to see where the Dieterle families were living.

We just finished a delightful week of research looking for our sister-in-law's grandparents' 1913 immigration from Russian Volga Valley German settlements to Idaho. We collected a few family newspaper obituaries, did some Ancestry.com searching, and put the results together in a 10 page PDF file for Dieterle family members.

Some of the best news was that we verified they came from the small Volga Valley province of Samara and their village was Neu-Weimar. They arrived at the Port of Baltimore on 31 Jan 1913 aboard the S.S. Brandenburg and took a train to Sugar City, Idaho. It was great to learn that their Dieterle surname was not changed at immigration and that there were three small families from the same village traveling together. Each of those families named a relative back in Russia - wonderful!

We posted our finished study along with the primary George Dieterle research files on our server for anyone interested:

Georg and Maria Dieterle 1913 Immigration Doc Study - PDF

1913 George Dieterle Baltimore Imm Pass List page5A - JPG
1913 George Dieterle Baltimore Imm Pass List page5B - JPG
1918 George Dieterle WWI Draft Registration - JPG
1920 George Dieterle U.S.Census - Prowers Co, CO - JPG
1930 George Dieterle U.S.Census page1 - Prowers Co, CO - JPG
1930 George Dieterle U.S.Census page2 - Prowers Co, CO - JPG

Hope you enjoy the report. We encourage you to check out the Germans from Russia web pages we listed on page 8 of the paper. Those web sites are packed with rich Russian Volga Valley German history.

Let us know what you think...