Settling In

AHSGR, Work Paper No. 6, May 1971

The Pacific Northwesterner
Volume 8
Fall, 1964
Number 4

Inland Empire Russia Germans
By Harm H. Schlomer

(Excerpts)
(Page 56)
One hundred years after Catherine had called the Germans to the Volga, they had progressed to a level of farming leadership in Russia. Their villages were clean. The Germans had introduced water systems into their villages. Their farms were models of productivity to all the native Russians. They were prosperous….

(Page 57)
Jakob Ils, born July 8, 1878 (MY NOTES: Two years after David Ehlenberger.), on the (Bergseite) hilly side of the Volga, came to Ritzville (MY NOTES: Washington State)at the age of 35 with his wife Katherina, nee Schoessler, in the year 1912. Jakob Ils came on money that his father gave him before he left the Volga colony. In 1899 he was drafted into the Russian army and he served four years on the Turkish border. In 1904, he was released from the army to return home for a short time. In the fall of 1904, he was drafted again to serve two years in the Russo-Japanese war. He fought in the battle of “Lyonski Boye” about fifty miles from the Mukden. He was transferred all along the front to near Vladivostock as an infantry soldier…. (MY NOTES: I included this because this is very similar to the story that Grandma Behie told us about her father. She said that one of the reasons he left Russia in 1907 was because they had drafted him again, and he didn’t want to fight anymore.).

Heinrich Boos… related how his family had farmed with camels and horses. Farming with camels was quite common in the southern Russia German settlements. He had left for the greater opportunities in America. To get the money to make the trip he had sold all of his personal possessions….

(Page 58)
Adam P. and Johann Morasch referred to their village on the Volga as a “paradise in which everything grew.” In fact, there were so many native delicious wild strawberries everywhere when the colonists arrived from Germany that the village was called Jagodnaja, Russian for strawberry. On the (Bergseite) hilly side of the Volga River colony strips of land were alternately covered by woods and farmland. The woods were deciduous, mostly oak, birch and a very useful tree called “Lenne.” From the Lenne a tea was made and the bark was sliced to make shoes. Adam P., Johann, and Elizabeth recalled how in their childhood in the Volga colony they would suck the sweet sap from the Lenne tree through straws each spring of the year. What a treat this was! The lumber from the Lenne tree was used for flooring.