Oh, I'd guess over 600,000 or so Frank. The Russians made the same offer in '61, well the Tsar just decreed it. The State paid the landowners for the Serfs and the Serfs had to pay the State back in a certain number of payments. About that time my ancestor Nikolai Mikhailovich Turchinov came to these shores. Don't know Nikolai's feelings on serfs or slavery, but I do know he didn't like Southerners at all, thought of them as Englishmen for some reason...I think Sevastapol had wrapped the ole brain cells some, but he was one tough Russian Slav.