Saratov
Saratov (1584), along with two other cities, Samara (1586) and Tsaritsyn (1589 - also known as Volgograd and Stalingrad) were founded as frontier garrisons on the Volga to protect merchant ships on this waterways from being robbed. The formal ruler at this time was Fyodor Ivannovich, the second son of Ivan IV, also known as "Ivan the Terrible." Fyodor was weak and incapable and the regent Boris Godunov was the actual ruler of Russia. Boris Godunov ordered General Konstantin Zasekin to found all three cities.
Over the next century, the settlement moved back and forth across the Volga in an effort to escape a series of natural disasters and the destruction that accompanied a peasant revolt led there by Stepan Razin in 1670.
In the 1760's, colonists primarily from the German speaking land in Western Europe settled in Saratov and the surrounding steppe near the Volga River. Saratov grew from a small provincial outpost to become one of the largest and most prosperous cities in Russia and served as the center of industry for the Volga German colonists.
Historic Saratov photos and maps (Russian site)
Description of the city of Saratov and Saratov Province from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica
Former house of R. Ehrt in Saratov, built in 1900. Photo from the book "German Architecture on the Volga".
Drawing of Saratov in 1711 - approximately 50 years before the arrival of the Volga German immigrants.
Saratov postcard from the early 1900s.