That's interesting - supposedly my mothers grandparents escaped ahead of the Jewish purge by the then czar (or whatever back then) My gf always said his dad was from Germany and his gm from Poland. But as far as I know both lines where Jewish. How did you trace thru Russia? And who is Dr Pleve? Skip Bieber -----Original Message----- From: NABretz@aol.com [mailto:NABretz@aol.com] Sent: Friday, July 19, 2002 12:27 PM To: BIEBER-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [BIEBER] Re: Question of Religous Lines My husband's maternal grandmother, Anna Bieber Lechmann, immigrated from Russia in 1912. Her brother, Jacob Bieber, arrived a bit earlier that year along with my grandpa, Joseph Lechmann. They were descendants of Johannes Bieber who arrived in Russia in 1767 from Baden, Sim(?) according to census records obtained from Dr. Igor Pleve at Saratov University. Johannes had answered the call of Catherine the Great to settle on the steppes of Russia, Johannes having lived in the Catholic village of Rothammel so we believe he was Catholic as were his descendants. We don't know the area of Germany from which they came. We are waiting for more information from Russia regarding this line of Biebers. The above was secured from census data kept in Russian archives. It was translated from old Russian to German and then to English so could have lost some of the content. We have seen other Biebers listed in the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia site. (ahsgr.org) Barbara Bretz