My copy of Igor Pleve's "Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766" arrived here yesterday, mailed from Russia 6 weeks ago (if I am reading the postmark correctly). For those of you who have not ordered the book yet because you were waiting to find out what it contained, here is a quick summary: There are two versions of the introduction, one in Russian and one in English. The body of the book - the lists - is entirely in English. The lists are lists that were made when the colonists arrived in Kronstadt Russia. The arrivals included in this book are those that occured from May 1766 to September 1766. There are 7,381 families or 22,711 invididuals on these lists. At the beginning of each list is the arrival date, the port of departure, the name of the ship, and the captain's name. The list itself contains the name of the head of household, religion, profession, place of birth, wife's name, names and ages of children and other family members. There are two indexes - one by surname and one by geographical location. Some additional comments about the data from the introduction: The places of birth are generally states or regions, not specific cities or towns. The spellings of the names are the common spellings of the names that were used in the villages. You will not find any indication here of what transport list these people ended up on or the village that these people ulimately settled in. What I am going to be looking for as I analyze this data for the Frank-Kolb database is whether I see any patterns. Do people from the same ship end up on the same transport list? We already know that people from the same transport list tended to end up in the same village, so do we see the same pattern starting with these arrival lists? I would be interested in hearing if anyone sees any patterns or finds something interesting in these lists. Maggie Hein Assistant VC for Frank

I took a look at the translated manuscript of the 1798 census at the AHSGR library and found a very interesting thing: there is a list from 1785 issued by the Saratov Accounting Office of their calculation of annual payment due and amount of Treasury debt for each household in the village. This can serve as an incomplete census of sorts for the early 1780s, perhaps earlier.   The page before this list gives the date and amount of payment, with the name of the Vorsteher (mayor) from 1787 through 1797; this is included within each village's manuscript. So it is possible find who the mayor of your village was from 1787 to 1797.   Bill Pickelhaupt