So Jill and I did a bit of research today on Russia. We watched a PBS documentary about Catherine the Great so that we could see a bit of what she achieved in her lifetime and how she affected Russia. It looks like a lot of outsiders were invited into what she called "New Russia," in the southern portion of the country, which she reclaimed during her lifetime.This made us want to figure out exactly where the village called Dietel was/is located since that's where so many people from the Koehn side of the family seem to have come from. I finally found a few sites that seem to point to it being on the Volga River in Russia, and this website, The Volga Germans, which gives the Russian names for this village. It appears that its now known by the Russian name "Aleshniki." Coordinates for Google Earth are about 50°53, 45°10. So that's useful to know.
I also came across one other useful website that is called the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia. They have a "village inventory" section on the website where they list files related to the Dietel village. It looks like you can send off for the files and they will send them to you. Possibly for free? I'll have to take a closer look at this list tomorrow and see if I think any of them might prove useful.
