The Erdmans: deport the illegals, except for Mom!
Jacob Siegfried and his wife Eva, and a family of one boy, also named Jacob, and several girls, emigrated to the US through Texas, from Saratov, on the Volga River, in 1908. Though they came from Russia, they spoke German. They settled in Logan Township, just outside Enid, Oklahoma. Volga Germans had been encouraged to immigrate to Russia by Catherine the Great, in the hopes of civilizing her still mostly barbarous country, and remained until Tsar Nicholas started to revoke their privileges. Then many of them came here. During WWI, they were driven out. Germans were not welcome in much of the United States. So they made the long trek up to Saskatchewan, where there was a community of Volga Germans. We have record of Jacob and family crossing the border legally in August 1918. Since there was wartime internment of German immigrants in Canada, it's a little unclear why Saskatoon was a safe haven for them. Possibly it was just remote from the nonsense happening in Ontario. Or possibl