George Mueller and Margaret Siefert Story

Grandpa George Mueller and Grandma Margaret (Seifried) married  in Volhynia, Russia on Dec. 26, 1890 when grandma was 15. They left Russia  in Feb., 1899 and arrived in Dresdon, North Dakota in April, 1899. From there (1900) they moved to Libau, Manitoba and in 1910 to Birmingham (near Melville). 1911 found them on a farm 3 miles south of Lemberg where Grandpa died (Jan 10, 1933) at the age of 66. Grandma died in Melville in 1970 at the age of 96 .

Volhynia, located in the northwest of present-day Ukraine, borders Belarus in the north, the Carpathian Mountains in the south, and Poland in the west. It was ruled by Poland until the late 18th century, when Poland was partitioned by the Prussian, Austrian, and Russian Empires. After the partition, Volhynia was a gubernia, or province, of the Russian Empire until 1919, when the western part of Volhynia once again became part of Poland. In 1945 the entire area of the Volhynia Gubernia was absorbed into the Soviet Union, Most of what was the Volhynia is now in Ukraine, with a small part of northern Volhynia in Belarus. Its capital was Zhitomir.

In Volhynia, early German settlement was sporadic. The first permanent settlement by colonists, mostly from Pomerania, came in 1816 but significant migration into Volhynia did not occur until the 1830s.

The migration to Volhynia was initiated under vastly different circumstances than the migration to other parts of the Russian empire. Polish landlords who had retained land after the Russian occupation were looking for qualified farmers to develop and farm their land. No special privileges were extended to these immigrants except for those which could be provided by the local nobility. It was the shortage of land in their old homes that drove most of the Germans into this region, but some immigration was also motivated by religion.

 By 1860, there were only about 5,000 Volhynian Germans in 35 small villages. Then, with the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and the failed Polish Insurrection of 1863, Germans began to flood into this area. By 1871, there were over 28,000 and by the turn of the century, over 200,000 lived in Volhynia. Most of them had come from Poland, with a minority moving there from Wuerttemberg, Pomerania, East Prussia, Silesia, and Galicia.

In the late stages of the 19th century, conditions for the Volhynian Germans became progressively worse as they lost more and more of their freedoms and privileges that they had been granted. From 1870 on, thousands emigrated to North America.