The study describes a new method of integrating field and archival sources relevant to the migration of peasant families from the Ryazan Governorate to the Altai in the 1880s. Late 19th to early 20th century documents from the archives of the Ryazan and Tomsk regions were used. A new comparative method was applied to analyze the findings of ethnographic surveys in places of the original (Ryazan) and subsequent (Shubinka Volost, Biysk Uyezd, Altai) residence of migrants. Based on interviews with their descendants, adaptation to the new areas of residence was explored. Both before and after the 1917 Revolution, the migrants retained their two basiс distinctions—Orthodoxy and the Southern Russian dialect. Adaptation processes included development of the new habitat and marriages not only with members of their group but also with Siberian old residents. These adaptive strategies opposed migrants from Ryazan to those from other Southern Russian Governorates such as Kursk, Voronezh, etc., who maintained ties mostly with migrants from Poltava, Chernigov, and other southern regions.