2 Hattie Plum Williams 
German brethren in particular, by lack of facilities for com- 
munication and transportation. 
After the freeing of the serfs in Russia in 1861, the various 
reforms which followed affected the status of the German 
“colonists.” They had gone to Russia under promise that they 
should have. local self-government, retain their own schools and 
churches, and be free from military service. Now their local 
self-government was gradually being interfered with, universal 
military service forced them into the army, and the fear arose 
that they would in time be denied their German schools and 
freedom of worship. 
Emigration began in the seventies, some going to South 
America, others to Canada, and large numbers coming to the 
United States. The latter settled mainly in Kansas, Nebraska, 
and the Dakotas, all of which at that time were bidding for 
immigrants. Lincoln was then the distributing center for Ne- 
braska settlers, and has since remained the clearing house for this 
particular immigrant group. Several thousand Russian Germans 
now live in Lincoln, forming the largest group of these people to 
be found in any one city in the United States. 
The writer will later make acknowledgment of aid rendered her 
by many persons, both in the community studied and outside 
its ranks. She wishes to make grateful recognition at this time 
of the assistance of Mrs. Henry Heft and family, of Mr. J. J. 
Stroh in connection with the census of the Lincoln community in 
1914, and of Dr. H. P. Wekesser, who read the manuscript of the 
following pages and gave the benefit of his criticism. Thanks 
are due to Professor George Elliott Howard under whose direc- 
tion this study has been pursued, and to the writer’s husband, 
Thomas F. A. Williams, without whose encouragement, sugges- 
tion, and criticism the work would not have been possible. 
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