Hello and welcome to my website. This site is all about the Feist family. Actually, it contains more than just Feists. The four lines of my ancestors include two Feist lines, a Kambeitz line and a Lauinger line. My name is David Feist, and I am the son of Valentine and Stephina (Feist) Feist. My Father's family immigrated to the US from Strassburg, Kutschurgan District, South Russia. Today it would be in present day Ukraine. His family settled in the Hague, North Dakota area where I was born. My Mother's family immigrated from the same place and settled in the Strasburg, North Dakota area. Thru my family history research, I have discovered that my mother and father are related and are distant cousins. Two brothers left Alsace, France for South Russia and settled in Strassburg, Kutschurgan, Russia in 1809. These are the two lines of Feists that resulted in my parents being related. It seems strange to find out that our ancestors came from France but that part of France was part of Germany at various times in it's history. All my ancestors are what is called Germans From Russia. I have been researching my family tree for over 30 years and this website is the result of labor. It has been a lot of work but also a lot of fun. And of course, the search continues. 

WHO ARE THE GERMANS FROM RUSSIA?

The Germans from Russian are descendants of Germans who settled in Russia during a period of approximately one hundred years from 1763-1862.  In 1763 Tsarina Catherine the Great issued a manifesto enticing Western Europeans to Russia. Their lifestyle had been devastated by the Seven Year’s War, and they had little opportunity to own land of their own, so these pioneers made the difficult trip to the Saratov Region of Russia and established colonies along the Volga River. 
Extensive German settlements of the Black Sea Region began in 1803, when Czar Alexander 1, a grandson of Catherine the Great, issued a similar decree inviting Germans to settle there. Many of these people were war weary after Napoleon’s exploits of their country. 
In Russia, the Germans prospered. They lived in closed colonies and retained their language, religion, food and culture. The settlers were to find, however, that the generous provisions made in the manifestos of Catherine the Great and Alexander 1 would not be honored forever. 
Beginning in the 1870’s their special rights were gradually taken away. The colonists became subject to the military draft, lost their right to local self-government and the right to keep their own German-language schools. As the conditions in Russia became less and less favorable, the Germans looked to the new world for resettlement. They began immigrating to the United States, to the prairie provinces of Canada and to South America. Many, however, remained in Russia to face the bitter consequences of the Russian Revolution. 
Today some 6,000,000 in North America trace their ancestry to Germans who were born in Russia.