Mark Blasdale, born 21 June 1976, was elected to the Montana State Legislature from the 10th District. He served in the House of Representatives during the 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2013 legislative sessions. From 2013-2015, Mark served as the Speaker of the Montana House of Representatives.
For the 2015 session, Mark was elected to the Montana State Senate, representating the 4th District. He was re-elected for the 2017 session, and he serves as a Majority Whip.
Johann Caspar Schmidt, son of Heinrich Schmidt & Barbara Scheid of Queckborn, was born 17 February 1724. He married 10 October 1748 in Steinbach (Fernwald) to Anna Dorothea Haas, daughter of Johannes Haas & Anna Catharina Arnold. She had been baptized on 15 October 1719 in Steinbach.
The Volga Germans began arriving in Nebraska in 1874 and by the summer of 1876 there were large numbers in the state.
Over the years, the promises made by Catherine the Great began to erode. A significant blow was the Universal Conscription Act of 1874, which mandated military service by all Russians, including the Volga Germans.
In the spring of 1874, representatives from the Wiesenseite colonies met in Herzog to discuss the possibility of emigration and five delegates were elected to investigate possible sites for relocation:
An large group of Volga Germans arrived in Topeka on 28 November 1875. They were from the colonies of Herzog, Katharinenstadt, Liebental, Beauregard, Ober-Monjou, Neu-Obermonjou, Mariental, Louis, Marienberg, and Graf. Within a few months, hundreds of Volga German families arrived in Kansas, and today there are Volga German descendants in most towns and cities across the state.
A group of about 50 families from Beideck and Schilling arrived in New York City in 1887. They had been in route to Kansas, but settled across the Hudson River in Newark, New Jersey.
Within a few years of founding the German colonies along the Volga, the colonists began moving to other locations in Russia. In the documents of the 1798 Census, there are many references to colonists being or having been in other areas, primarily the Caucasus. The colonists also moved into neighboring Russian villages, towns, and cities.
As new lands opened up in Siberia at the end of the Nineteenth Century, many Volga German families moved there in search of additional farmland.