Born into the family of a shoemaker in Kamenka, Saratov province, in 1886. He had a high school education and worked as a school teacher in southern Russia; in 1908 he became an associate of a private firm and an official of the Russian-East Asian Mission in Saratov. From 1914 he served at the Front; after demobilization in 1918 he returned to Saratov and was a member of the Collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Food from the Volga German Republic.
Eugene (Evgeniĭ) Gross lived in Saratov; from 1918 he was an active member of the German Catholic Youth Association on the Volga. At the end of the 1920s he was a student at Saratov University. In 1930 he was arrested in a case against German Catholic clergy and laity. Convicted (?). Fate thereafter unknown.
Born in Saratov in 1901. Had a high school education; lived in Saratov, worked as a cashier and was a parishioner of the local church [St. Klemens]. In 1930 – arrested in the case against German Catholic clergy and laity and convicted. Fate thereafter unknown.
Samara, located on the left bank of the Volga River, is the capital of the Samara Province. It was founded in 1586 to protect Russia's southern border from the nomadic tribes in the area.
From 1935 to 1991, Samara was known by the name of Kuybyshev.
Emma Schwabenland was born in Portland, Oregon, on 2 February 1907, to the Rev. Johann Conrad and Dora (Miller) Schwabenland. Pastor Schwabenland was born in Straub and came to the U.S. in 1891. He served German Congregational Churches in North Dakota, Washington, Oregon, California, and Colorado between the years 1898 and 1939. Dora Miller had come to America from Norka with her parents and their family in 1887.
When the Volga German colonies were founded, Engels was known as Pokrovsk. It was a commercial center located on the left bank of the Volga River across from Saratov.
Pokrovsk was founded in 1747 by ethnic Ukranians, and it is referred to as the Pokrovsk Ukranian Quarter in the 1798 Census of the Volga German colonies.
Over the years, Pokrovsk became the center of much of the German culture on the Volga and was known by the German name of Kasakenstadt. It had a population of 22,000 in 1897.
There were three frontier garrisons founded to protect merchant ships traveling on the Volga River: Saratov (1584), Samara (1586), and Tsaritsyn (1589). Over the next century, the settlements were rebuilt on first one side of the Volga and then the other following a series of natural disasters. The 1670 peasant revolt led by Stepan Razin also thwarted development of these cities.
A group of German immigrants who had only a few years earlier settled in what is today Denmark answered the call of Catherine the Great's 1763 Manifesto. Most of these settlers ended up in the main group of Volga German colonies near Saratov. One group of 60 families, however, settled in an area considerably west of Saratov, arriving in February 1766 in Ostrogoshsk. Because of the familial and religious connections to those who settled along the Volga, those in this group are often included as Volga German settlers.
Father Meis served St. Joseph Catholic Church in Hays, Kansas.
Father Meyer served St. Joseph Catholic Church in Hays, Kansas, from 1983-1987.