pjost- No folks with my surname up around Eureka but a lot of the same names found around Menno (my dad's home town) are also found up in McPherson County. I don't remember when Eureka was founded but I think it was about 1o years after n. Yankton and s. Hutchinson Counties were settled. Those were some of the first Germans from Russia out the door. What happened was that the Russian nobility got the tsar to change the laws that were given to the Germans to come settle in Russia 50+ years earlier. The Germans had a good gig the first half of the 19th century; 1) freedom of religion, 2) no taxes, 3) no military service-read draft, and 4) the freedom to speak their own language. The tsar was forced to change these in 1872/73 and my ancestors' whole village took a vote and about 2/3rds of them said, "not happening" and started planning to leave for the U.S. soon after that. There were multiple waves of Germans leaving Russia (1870s, 1905, and WWII) and each one it became more difficult. The last wave came out with the retreating German army, not because they supported the Nazis but because the Russians had told them when they regained control of the Ukraine, they would kill or exile any Germans still living there because they were Germans. My people had it lucky...