The Deines side of the family are known as Volga Germans.

Catherine the Great of Russia (reigned 1762 - 1796) had a Prussian father and knew that European farmers, and Prussians in particular, were far ahead of her peasant subjects in agricultural knowledge and practices. She wanted to upgrade Russian agriculture and she didn't want to spend years trying to teach more efficient methods to her own illiterate countrymen. So she issued a manifesto throughout Europe, offering incentives and free land to any farmer families who would immigrate to the area around the Volga River and its tributaries.

Among the incentives were low taxation that would only increase modestly in 5 yr. increments, total freedom of religion plus the right to build their own churches, total freedom from military obligations for the immigrants and their sons in perpetuity, and the right to build their own schools.

The parents of Johann "George" Deines and Anna Wagner were probably second-generation in the Volga area, making George and Anna's generation Prussian in culture. When Catherine died in 1796 her son succeeded her and revoked their special protections, immediately impressing young men into his armies. By then there were at least 12 villages of Germans in the area and the decision to stay or leave Russia split the inhabitants. Those who left headed in large part for North and South American countries; in the U.S. the largest group of them chose to settle in Russell Co, Kansas. Those who stayed saw their numbers reduced by both World Wars, ethnic cleansing, and mostly by starvation under Stalin in the 1930s.

Having looked down their noses at the ethnic Russians around them for generations, there was no intermarriage. And this is where things get tricky for family history research, because their naming conventions and small original numbers mean they recycled the same given names among relatively few surnames for generations. Even worse, they did what people usually did back then; lots of young people from the same village, many related to one another, all immigrated together, both into and out of Russia.

The group that settled in Kansas farmed and hired out as migrant workers. It was the sugar beet harvest that brought them to Nebraska and Idaho each year, with others spreading out to Colorado and Wyoming, where my mother-in-law was born. But trying to tell all of these people apart is really hard. So many of them have the same names, and the first couple generations in America continued to live in groups with other Volga Germans nearby. Add in the large family sizes and you literally get boys and girls with the same names whose parents have the same names, born in the same year in the same county.

It's got a lot of subscribers on Ancestry.com pretty confused. There's a whole department of study on them at Concordia College in Portland, OR under the auspices of Dr. Brent Mai, who interviewed Anna Elizabeth (Wagner) Deines mother for his first book back in the 1960s and 1970s.

(***Information and history provided by Diane Goodboe #46840651 with help from her relatives***)

Johann Georg Deines was born in Kratzke, Russia Adam Deines (1855-1931) and Kathryn Magdalena Mai (1851-1930)

Spouse: Anna Elizabeth Wagner

They had 17 known children:

Solomon Deines 1902-1983 #48100122

Ismael "Ike" Deines 1906-1974 (Wife of Ismael is Clara Bender)

Freida Deines Meyer 1909-1984 (Husband of Freida is Jake Meyer)

Martha Deines Abt 1910-?

Tabea Deines 1911-1913

Rosa Deines 1912-1913

George P. Deines 1915-1996 #23014802

Helen Deines Korell 1916-1989 (Husband of Helen is John Korell) #66608362

Rose Deines Schamber 1918-2000

Julius Deines 1919-1929

Palmer G Deines 1919-2008 #36783937

Elsie Rophena Deines Karell 1921-1992

Clarence E. Deines 1922-2001 (Born as Clarence E. Yount, adopted, unknown circumstances) #40986700

Robert Deines 1924-1924 (possibly 1925-1925) #48100228

Unknown Male

Unknown Male

Unknown Female