FROM WAGON TRAILS TO IRON RAILS:
RUSSIAN GERMAN IMMIGRATION TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
By Richard D. Scheuerman
MY NOTES: I have included excerpts that pertain to Kansas because I remember a conversation with my grandmother in which she had mentioned that on their travel west from the east coast to Oregon, they had stopped to visit relatives in Kansas. Unfortunately, I am the only one who seems to remember this, so it is possible I could be in error. However, my grandmother arrived in the United States in late December, 1913, and her mother had given birth to a baby boy on the ship. His birthplace is given as Portland, Maine, January 1, 1914. He was not christened, however, until October of that year, in Portland, Oregon. Where were they for those ten months in between?
I have also included information on the Albina district in Portland, where my grandmother was raised.
(Excerpts)
(Page 40)
…Large gardens provided a variety of vegetables and melons while wild fruits grew abundantly along the river. Unfortunately their contentment was again short-lived as much to their dismay it was soon learned that they had located near the Western Cattle Trail, a major thoroughfare for the Texas longhorn herds which were annually driven up to the northern markets. Their fields and gardens were overrun by the animals and a disastrous drought cycle began on the Great Plains in the early 1880’s. This led many to consider yet another region which would become their ultimate destination, a move being contemplated simultaneously by a group of Russian Germans in Kansas. The place was America’s Pacific Northwest.
The other group of Volga Germas who journeyed to Washington in 1881 were people from the Jeruslan River on the Wiesenseite who had settled in central Kansas in the 1870’s. This “Kansas Conolony” had located on lands along the border of Barton and Rush Counties. The first of this group settled near Great Bend in 1875, having arrived in November on the S.S. Ohio. Thise included the families of Henry Scheuermann, two Conrad Scheuermanns, George Brach, and Peter Ochs. The were soon joined by Henry and Phillip Green and the Henry Rothes, all of whom had arrived on a transport of the S.S. City of Montreal in Janaury, 1876. (23) The Greens were originally from Norka but had relocated to her daughter colony of Rosenfeld; likewise the others were from daughter colonies along the Jeruslan River – Schönfeld, Schöntal, and Neu Jagodnaja. Prior to moving to these villages, the Rothes had lived in Frank, the Scheuermanns in Jagodnaja Poljana and the Ochs and Brachs in Pobotschnaja. (24) In the fall of 1876 the Kansas Colony was joined by others from the Wiesenseite who had arrived in October aboard the S.S. Mosel. These included the families of Johannes, Heinrich, and Phillip Brach; Christian, Johannes, and Phillip Keweno; Henry Litzeberger; Henry Repp; Phillip, Johannes, Johann Phillip, and Peter Ochs and Johannes, Heinrich, Peter, George, and Adam Scheiermann. (25) Intermarriage solidified relationships between the pioneer families who often lived in isolated areas of the Kansas plains to form a close-knit group that would soon migrate to the Pacific Northwest.
The Kansas colony suffered considerably from the effects of the grasshopper plagues in the late 1870’s. Particularly from 1875 to 1877, massive hordes of these insects so infested the fields and air that the Germans were left with little seed to replant. They also noted frightening electrical storms (to which they had not been accustomed in Russia) which were often accompanied by devastating tornadoes. (26) One informant seriously related an Oz-like fantasy in which a cyclone was said to have taken a small lake and team of horses from a Rush County homestead which his father, after he came out of his root cellar, attempted to find. Enroute to town he found the road leading into a new lake an nearby the two horses stood – still harnessed and unharmed. (27)
Interestingly becoming a subject of discussion among disgruntled immigrant groups in the Midwest was the possibility of settlement in the Pacific Northwest. Americans who had worked in the Oregon Country on the Pacific coast railways surveys had returned east and related to some the fertility and beauty of the region. Furthermore, the blossoming transportation companies of that area soon began an intensive advertising campaign to promote the development of what was being termed the “Great Columbia Plain.” As had been the case earlier in American railroad history, a vast source of unskilled labor was needed in construction, and officials again turned to immigrants. Various railroad companies formed associations offering reduced rates to those who would travel westward to settle while guaranteeing employment until such arrangements were possible. The Union Pacific, Northern Pacific, Oregon Steamship Company, and others were particularly interested in encouraging the development of Northwest resources in order to profit not only form passenger service but the anticipated shipment of industrial and agricultural commodities.
The program launched by Henry Villard, President of the NPRR, to induce settlement in the Pacific Northwest east of the Cascades bore fruit among many immigrants in the Midwest, including the Volga Germans. In the case of the Kansas colony in Rush and Barton Counties and the Nebraska colony in Hitchcock County, frustration was particularly evident for reasons enumerated previously. In both places a segment of these groups elected to emigrate, the former in 1881 and the latter in 1882. The Kansas party (28) took advantage of reduced fares over the Union Pacific line and traveled to San Francisco where steamers of Villard’s Oregon Steamship Company transported them to Portland. The group included the families of George and his son Phillip Green, Peter and Henry Ochs and the four Schierman brothers—John, Conrad, Henry, and George. (29) In Portland some labored on the construction of the huge Albina fill while others worked at a local lumber mill…
NOTES:
(22) S.S. Ohio Manifest (to Baltimore, November 23, 1875).
(23) S.S. City of Montreal Manifest (to New York, January 6, 1876).
(24) Leta Ochs, private interview, Endicott Washington, April 23, 1971 and Autobiography of Peter Brach, typescript copy from Laurin Wilhelm, Lawrence, Kansas.
(25) S.S. Mosel Manifest (to New York, October 24, 1786).
(26) Endicott Index, November 29, 1935.
(27) Dave Schierman, private interview, Walla Walla, Washingotn, July 9, 1972.
(28) Grace Lillian Ochs, Up from the Volga: The Story of the Ochs Family (Nashville: Southern Publishing Association, 1969), p. 26; Mrs. Karl L. Scheuerman, private interview, Endicott, Washington, June 8, 1975; and Mrs. Letz Ochs, private interview, Endicott, Washingotn, April 23, 1973.
(29) Ochs, p. 36 – 38.
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