Sheila; The reason Johannes Kreutzer (b. 1752) is not found in the Kuhlberg Lists is that the earliest record in the Ivan Kuhlberg List is in May 1766. It would usually take a year of processing and travel from Oranienbaum to their Volga village. Johannes arrived in Herzog, Russia on 14 July 1766. Johannes may have travelled a different route or sailed from Lübeck before the Kuhlberg Lists were recorded. As for the German Village of Ruden, Kurbener, I think Dick Krause may be right about the phonetic misspelling of the names. I ran a check of Rhineland-Pfalz (Kurpfalz) and could not find any name similar to Rudin. I checked Bavaria and found Röding. It is located about 100 km E.S.E. of Nüenberg, 45 km N.E. of Regensburg and 85 km S.W. of Pilsen. The Kingdom of Bavaria is a large area in south east Germany so I narrowed the research area. Most of the German States were small enough to be covered in Kevan Hansen's German Parish books with one or two volumes. Bavaria requires 9 volumes plus another volume just for the master index. The village Röding is in Bavaria, book IV-RB Oberpflaz, which is Volume 17 in Hansen's series. The book will identify the church where the people of the village worshipped and the parish would have all the records of the village. I also found a village of Rüding in the same volume. Kevan Hansen's "German Map Guides" are a valuable resource for researching in Germany. In the 1760s when our ancestors left for Russia, Germany didn't exist. It was the Holy Roman Empire with its capitol in Trier. We visited Trier and it is almost like a Roman city with its Colosiem, Roman Baths and Triumptphal Gate. Rome finally relinquished control in 1806, but it wasn't until 1871 that the German Empire was formed. There were no civil records before that time. The church kept all the birth, marriage and death records. Most of the German church registers were microfilmed by the LDS Church but in Bavaria some churches refused to allow the filming. Hansen's Parish Books give the microfilm number of all the parishes that were filmed. For the ones not filmed he lists Genealogy sources and State archives in Germany that could help you. The books also give a history and timeline for that particular area. The index contains all the villages in the book and their parish is listed by religion. These German Map Guides are available from www.familyrootspublishing.com . Some of these Parish records go back to the 1500s. If you need more information, let me know. Also, I will check the Parish Guide the next time I'm in Fresno and see if it has the microfilm number. Jerry Goertzen