My great, great grandfather, Longinus Bitz and his wife, Aloisia Bigler Bitz, sent their oldest son, Adam Bitz, to the United States from Russia in February of 1898.  They had saved money for many years to be able to send Adam by ship to Ellis Island in New York. When Adam got to the United States, he traveled by train across country to Eureka, South Dakota. He homesteaded (got free land for promising to improve it) near Eureka and sent money back to Russia so his parents and brothers could come to the United States.
     Great, great grandfather, Longinus Bitz and his wife had known there would be a revolution of some sort. After Alexander the Great was killed, they saved money to come to America. They had farmed a small plot of  land in the Catholic Black Sea German village of Kandel in the Kutschurgan District of Russia. They had gone to Russia when Alexander the Great had offered free land in Russia to Germans who would work and improve the land. Times were very hard for great, great grandfather and his parents because of the government.
     When they got money from their son Adam in America, they traveled up the Black Sea to Breman, a seaport in northern Germany. There they took a ship, the Wilhelm Kaiser, to the United States. My great grandfather, Mathias Bitz, was serving in the Russian Army when his parents and brothers, John, Joseph and Valentine, left for the United States of America.
     When great grandpa, Mathias Bitz, got out of the Russian Army, he married Magdalina Frison in Russia because his relatives in the United States had told him that there were no women to marry here so if he wanted to be married he would need to find a wife in Russia. Mathias and his wife, Magdalena, sailed into Baltimore Harbor. They took the train to Eureka, South Dakota to where his parents and brothers were. He then left with his parents and wife to go to North Dakota. They had bought a horse, wagon, and basic supplies. They homesteaded land in Logan County, North Dakota and raised their family there. That is where my grandfather, Mathias, was born. He married my grandmother, Rose Schwartzenberger. They lived in Logan County, North Dakota and raised sixteen children on a farm.
      My mom, Marian Bitz Gates, was born and raised in Logan County, North Dakota. She came to Rapid City, South Dakota to go to college.  She met and married my dad, David Gates. They had my brother, Paul, and me here in Rapid City, South Dakota. This is how my family got to America.