Kansas and Oregon Volga Germans

The Village Frank Newsletter
Volume 21, Number 3
Fall 1992
Sherrie Stahl, editor

Can Your Help Us Do Research In Your Geographical Area?

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COLORADO & KANSAS: …The beet industry developed swiftly and with it the expansion into the South Platte River Valley of northeastern Colorado. A sugar refinery in Loveland was built in 1901, another in Eaton and in 1902 one in Windsor. Others were erected later in Greely, Brighton, Longmont, Fort Collins, and in 1905, in Sterling, Colorado. Loveland in the South Platte Valley had the oldest settlement. In May, 1901 some twenty families, most of them originating in Frank, Russia, came here from McCook, Nebraska. Others arrived from Denver, Sutton and Hastings. Even in 1930 Volga Germans from Frank represented most of the population in Loveland and also in Greeley, Colorado….

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WASHINGTON, OREGON AND CALIFORNIA: The first Volga Germans reached the west coast as early as 1881. Several Frankers were part of the wagon train that left Sutton, and Culbertson and headed west to Ritzville, Washington. In 1888 to 1890 Portland, Oregon received an influx of immigrants from Frank and Brunnental. Another large migration took place in 1907, and another in 1912. (MY NOTES: David and Katherine Ehlenberger first arrived in 1907.)

(Excerpted from the 1923 poem, “A Mournful Song on Brunnental” by Elias Hergert, as translated by Marie Trupp Kreiger.)

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I believe I have listed all
I do not find anymore
Of our dear Brunnental
Only one more, JACOB LEHR.

Now I remember as I end this
That is my in-law, with
JOHN ELENBERGER for spite
Make no further complaint….

Immigration to the Pacific Northwest (3)

Journal of the AHSGR, Vol. 2, No. 2: Fall 1979

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.

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Some Volga Germans of the Nebraska colony had considered moving to Washington Territory as early as 1880. In that year the group at Culbertson had written to J.E. Shepherd, the immigration agent of the Oregon Railway and navigation Company in San Francisco and the letter was forwarded to Villard himself. In it the farmers indicated their discontent with conditions in the Midwest:

I am the Russian interpreter of our colony and am instructed by the Father of the colony to write inquiring about the country of Washington Territory. We are one hundred and sixty families strong, and our reason for leaving here is that the wheat crop has failed here for three years past, and the indications are strong for another drought, as we have had no rain since last September and the cattle here are in bad way for want of grass, which is very scarce; and the people here are all leaving. We live on the open prairies and the heavy winds that prevail here are unendurable. Our houses consist of “Dug Outs” and “Sod houses.” Our people are all discouraged and homesick, but too far to go back to Russia, and we want to see… the Territory we have heard so much of its great yielding wheat fields and wonderful Fruit Country. We understand the Navigation Company has Rail Road land for sale. There are 160 families here, and 70 families in Clay Co. this state, and 100 families coming from Russia this fall. I think we can locate 230 families there this fall and winter. We are desirous of seeing this country first, and our minister Mr. Kansler and myself wish to go out and see the country. And we wish to know whether you can furnish passes for two persons out and one to come back and head the colony. We are a good, honest, straightforward, hard working class of people, and the colony also instructs me to state that the two passes will be paid back to the Company after they are located, so as to be sure of our honesty of intention… (33)

…Without a pair or oxen to pull his wagon, Conrad Wolsborn, a shoemaker in his native Frank, fashioned a special harness uniting both horse and ox. Also in preparation for the trip, the women had sewn garden seeds into clothing to ensure good plantings in their new home.

The caravan encountered the usual hazards associated with pioneer travel, enduring intense heat on dusty trails which often led through areas infested with rattlesnakes. Marie Thiel, wife of John, went into confinement in Baker, giving birth on April 10, 1882, to twins, only one of whom, Jacob, survived. They entrusted their earnings from work on the railroad to a former Nebraska sheriff who accompanied them by near the end of the journey he absconded with the funds.

However, they remained steadfast in their faith, never traveling on Sundays but, rather, gathered their wagons into a large circle and held worship services with an elder reading the lessons in German. (36) Upon arrival in Pendelton some members of the party decided to go on to Portland although most continued north to Walla Walla, the first wagons rolling in late in the summer of 1882. They decided to winter in Walla Walla while investigating the various possibilities of settlement in the region…

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…Only days earlier the newspaper also reported on the progress of the Kansas colony from Portland:

Kansas Colony – Gen. Tannatt is in receipt of a letter today from Phillip Greene, the agent of the Kansas colony, stating that these people would be at Texas Ferry in a day or so, and asking for several four-horse teams to convey them to Plainville [a point between Colfax and Endicott]. Mr. Greene states that he wrote home setting forth the fact that the land, climate and general outlook of this country, was all that could be desired. He writes Gen. Tannatt that three other Kansas colonies have sent inspectors or agents with the present party, who are to locate land for other coming immigrants. There is to be an exodus from Kansas this fall. (39)

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…In 1988 the city (My Notes: Walla Walla) already had a population of 3,588 and a visitor that year reported:

The people were bright, intelligent and pleasant to meet, but not without the ambitious and progressive natures of other places we had visited. The feeling of self-satisfaction, possessing the thought that Walla Walla was the hub of the universe, was like the old feeling of the Bostonian for his beloved Boston. (47)


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…Between 1888 and 1890 Portland witnessed a considerable influx of Volga Germans from Balzer and Frank. This was followed by an even larger movement of those from Norka between 1890 and 1895.(53) Many joined the earlier arrivals living in Albina which was incorporated into Portland in 1891.


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…Meanwhile immigration, which had continued unabated to other points in the greater Northwest until 1914 when war broke out in Europe, decreased to an insignificant rate after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War in Russia, the victorious Bolsheviks later restricting travel over the borders. By 1920 Russian German immigration had reached throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and southern British Columbia and Alberta. Clearly, the Russian Germans had made a major impact in the region during the dynamic era of pioneer settlement, and continue today to play an integral role in the development of business and agriculture in the Pacific Northwest.


NOTES:
(33) Letter, Carl Brobst, interpreter at Culbertson, Hitchcock County, Nebraska to J.E. Shephered O.R.&N. Co., San Fransciso, California, May 10, 1880; quoted in James Blaine Hedges, Henry Villard and the Railrays of the Northwest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930), p. 124.

(36) Ritzville Journal Times, “Adams County Pioneer Edition,” September 15, 1949, pp. 1 – 3.

(47) Carrie Adell Strahor, Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage (New York. 1911), pp. 304-5.

(53) Sallet, pp. 48, 61.

ADDITIONAL FOOTNOTE:
(35) Ritzville Journal-Times, “Adams County Pioneer Edition,” September 15, 1949; Ruth J. Thiel, “Memories of my Father,” unpublished typescript and Roy Oestrich file.
The following listing includes the family heads in the wagon train and their native Volga colonies. Many had married sons who also brought their families. See Oestreich file for family members (MY NOTES: The following represents a complete list from the reading.).

Johann G. Adler, Kolb
Henry Amen, Sr., Frank
Jacob Bastrom, Frank
Mrs. Holfrich Bauer, Sr., Kolb
George Jacob Dewald, Hussenbach
Conrad Heimbigner, Frank
Henry Kanzler, Sr., Kolb
John F. Kembel, Kolb
Conrad Kiehn, Frank
Henry F. Michel, Alt Messer
Henry Miller, Kolb
Johann C. Oestreich, Neu Messer
Frederick Rosenoff, Kolb
Jacob Schaefer, Frank
Jacob Schloessler, Walter
Jacob Thiel, Sr., Kolb
Jacob Wagner, Frank
Conrad Wolsborn, Frank

Additional participants in the journey may have included Schnells (Kolb), Hoffs (Frank), and other Volga Germans.

Immigration to the Pacific Northwest (2)

Journal of the AHSGR, Vol. 2, No. 2: Fall 1979

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.

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…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.

Immigration to the Pacific Northwest (1)

Journal of the AHSGR, Vol. 2, No. 2: Fall 1979

FROM WAGON TRAILS TO IRON RAILS:
RUSSIAN GERMAN IMMIGRATION TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
By Richard D. Scheuerman



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(Page 37)
It was in 1881 that eight weary families from the Volga’s Wiesenseite set forth from Kansas to San Francisco by rail, then to Portland by steamship and finally, the following year, by covered wagon to eastern Washington. Simultaneously a group from the Bergseite crossed trails with them in 1882 at Walla Walla after having gone form Nebraska to Utah by rail and then over the Oregon Trail in a wagon train to Oregon and Washington. The epic journeys undertaken by these and subsequent Russian-German groups have all the elements of a frontier western—complete with Indian horse-raiding parties, hazardous trail drives, near fatal mountain crossings and the unsavory business practices by land speculators to which our people sometimes fell victim…

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?

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Russian German immigration to the Pacific Northwest was first undertaken by Volga Germans. It is the exploits of these pioneer families which we will celebrate in 1981 on the centennial of Russian German settlement in the American West. In the often repeated story of the original trek to the broad Volga steppes, thousands of Germans, from Hesse and the Rhineland responded between 1764 and 1767 by establishing 104 villages near Saratov on the middle Volga river. (MY NOTES: Brunnentahl is located just southeast of Saratov.) After a difficult period of adjustment these too generally prospered on both the hilly west bank (Bergseite) and the eastern plains side (Wiesenseite). As their countrymen did so later in the Black Sea region, the Volga Germans maintained their German identity in the sea of Slavs and Mongol tribesmen. Although the colonies generally remained aloof from the political affairs of the Russian state, they too became alarmed at the 1871 repeal of the settlement terms originally granted by Catherine the Great for “eternal time.” Many responded by immigrating to the Americas as early as 1874 when the grace period for universal military conscription was annulled by the Russian government.

Of the fourteen Volga German scouts selected to explore potential areas of settlement in the United States, one was Franz Scheibel, a schoolteacher in Kolb who was originally from Messer. Other Protestant delegates were from Norka, Balzer, and Messer. Prairie grass and a soil sample were retrieved to confirm their optimistic report upon their return to the Volga as was technical information regarding the various modes of transportation and land purchase. Franz Scheibel returned to America in August, 1876 aboard the S.S. Donau along with the families of Heinrich Bauer, Heinrich Kanzler, and Heinrich Rehn.19 This group eventually settled in Franklin county in southeast Nebraska and founded the village of Campbell. The settlement expanded in 1878 when a number of famlies who had crossed the Atlantic on the S.S. Wieland in May arrived from villages on the Bergseite. Passengers on this voyage would form the other major segment granted to the Pacific Northwest. Families aboard the S.S. Wieland transport included, from Kolb, those of Frederick Rosenoff, Jacob Thiel, and his sons George and Johannes, and from Frank, the Conrad Kiehns and Heinrich Amen. Additional families on the same trip include Heimbigners (Norka and Frank), Schösslers (Walter), Hoffs (Frank), Müllers (Kolb), Dewalds (Hussenbach) and others. 20

NOTES:
19 S.S. Donau Manifest (to New York, August 5, 1876).
20 S.S. Wieland Manifest (to New York, May 22, 1878).