There were a church and a school located in the colony by 1859. The Fresental parish became an independent Lutheran parish in 1862 with a resident pastor.
There were also Mennonites living in the colony.
Fresental was founded as a Lutheran colony in 1849 63 kilometers southeast of Engels on the left bank of the Bolshoye Karaman River by colonists resettling from Reinhard. It was named after the Office Manager in the Office of Immigrant Oversight.
Pastor Adolph Hermann Asmus was a native of Fresental.
|
Year
|
Households
|
Population
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Total
|
Male
|
Female
|
||
| 1850 |
40
|
375
|
190
|
185
|
| 1857 |
42
|
443
|
232
|
211
|
| 1859 |
42
|
462
|
242
|
220
|
| 1883 |
|
733
|
|
|
| 1889 |
|
859
|
|
|
| 1894 |
|
|
|
|
| 1897 |
|
888*
|
461
|
427
|
| 1905 |
|
1,239
|
|
|
| 1910 |
192
|
1,580
|
782
|
798
|
| 1912 |
|
1,300
|
|
|
| 1920 |
195
|
1,236
|
|
|
| 1922 |
|
781
|
|
|
| 1926 |
157
|
888**
|
433
|
455
|
| 1931 |
|
1,041
|
|
|
*Of whom 876 were German.
**Of whom 887 were German (156 househods: 432 male & 455 female).
Diesendorf, V.F. Die Deutschen Russlands : Siedlungen und Siedlungsgebiete : Lexicon . Moscow, 2006.
Herdt, Karl. Die Namengebung zweier Woldadeutscher Dörfer, Alexanderdorf und Höh (Alexander-Höh): am Nachoistrom gelegen sowie Episoden aus dem damaligen Bauernleben und Skizzen aus der Steppentierwelt (Espelkamp: K. Herdt, 1983): 16.
Koch, Fred C. The Volga Germans: In Russia and the Americas, from 1763 to the Present (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977): 312.
Preliminary Results of the Soviet Census of 1926 on the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Pokrovsk, 1927): 28-83.
Schnurr, Joseph. Die Kirchen und das religiöse Leben der Russlanddeutschen Evangelischer Teil (Stuttgart: AER Verlag Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Rußland, 1978): 197.
"Settlements in the 1897 Census." Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (Winter, 1990): 17.
Fresental (wolgadeutsche.net) - in Russian