Origins
According to Normal E. Saul in an article titled The Migration of the Russian-Germans to Kansas, the Russian-Germans were not the only people of Germanic ancestry residing in the Russian Empire in the 19th century. Germans formed an important part of the merchant population of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and another large German ethnic group was absorbed as the result of territorial expansion, particularly in the 18th century. The "native" Germans consisted mostly of the "Baltic" Germans living in what are now the Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Catherine II Czarina of Russia
By contrast, the "Russian" Germans were those who migrated to Russia to farm, beginning in the reign of Catherine the Great (1762-1796) and continuing through the first third of the next century. The first territory to be settled by these Germans was on both sides of the middle Volga River near the cities of Samara and Saratov. Catherine the Great was interested in the agricultural development of this region and the pacification of an unruly frontier when she first issued the invitation for foreigners to colonize in 1762. A subsequent Manifesto of July 1763 promised free lands, expenses for the move, freedom from taxation for 30 years, and exemption from civil and military service for themselves and their descendants. The empress’s agents recruited settlers especially from the poorer German states devastated by the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763).
Tired from the long war that had just come to an end and devasted by the countryside which lay in ruins, thousands of colonists accepted the Russian invitation and made the long trek eastward across Russia to the Volga. Usually the colonists came from towns and villages. Many were farmers, but there were also craftsmen, teachers and professionals. Roman Catholics, Lutherans and Reformed faiths were all represented in the migration,
According to the 3rd Revision of the Russian Census List in 1767 (often called the "Original Settlers List"), most of the people who settled in Norka originated from towns and villages in the modern day state of Hessen, German. A very large percentage are listed as being from Isenburg, a former county that is located northeast of Frankfurt. The House of Isenburg was an old aristocratic family of medieval Germany. Occasionally referred to as the House of Rommersdorf before the 12th century, the house originated in the Hessian comitatus of the Niederlahngau in the 10th Century. It partitioned into the lines of Isenburg-Isenburg and Isenburg-Limburg-Covern in 1137, before partitioning again into smaller units, but by 1500 only the lines of Isenburg-Büdingen (in Upper Isenburg) and Lower Isenburg remained. In 1664 the Lower Isenburg branch died out.
The Counts of Isenburg-Büdingen had connections to the Russian government in the 1760s. They also had liberal emigration policies which allowed their subjects to leave under favorable terms. As a result, the town of Büdingen became a center for recruitment by Catherine II agents and embarkation for the journey to Russia. Since the Manifesto required adults to be married prior to entering Russia, many marriages occurred in Büdingen. Büdingen is in the south of the Wetterau below the Vogelsberg hills at an altitude of approximately 160 meters. The city is situated 15 km northwest of Gelnhausen and about 40 km east from Frankfurt am Main.
The map below shows the Comitat (county) of Isenburg (colored in blue) in the 1700s. The county is centered on the town of Büdingen. The city of Frankfurt am Main (shown as Franckfort) is shown at the lower left of the map. Many of the colonists that settled in Norka originated in this small area of Germany.
