The Vistula flows south to north in a broad easterly loop that extends from the Carpathian Mountains to its mouth on the Baltic Sea near Gdańsk.
[3] Large numbers of these Germans chose to leave the area during the Napoleonic occupation, heading further south and east to the Black Sea and Bessarabian regions of Russia.
Significant numbers of Vistula Germans (including many who had spent a generation or more in the Black Sea, Bessarabia, and Volhynia regions) migrated to North America in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Since most were farmers, they tended to head for opportunities of inexpensive or virtually free homestead land in the Midwestern and Plains States, and Canadian prairies.
Those who remained in the Vistula area through World War II were expelled to German territory in accordance with the post-war agreements between the Allied Powers of Britain, Russia, and the United States.
[5] Some Mennonite adherents lived in nearby villages where a substantial majority of the inhabitants were Lutheran Germans, such as Sady or Świniary, and there was some intermarriage between the two faith groups.
Records for Lutheran Churches (as well as some Baptist and Moravian Brethren), many of them dating back to the late 18th century, can be found in Warsaw Archives and were microfilmed by the LDS Family History Library.