In 1891, Volga Germans from Neu-Straub arrived in the United States headed towards Kansas, when they lost all their money and had to find work in New York. Some of them went north, up the Hudson River, and settled in the village of Stuyvesant Falls in Columbia County. By 1930 there were about 25 families working in and around Stuyvesant mostly in the cotton and paper factories.
Today Stuyvesant Falls is a hamlet in the southeast part of the town of Suyvesant at Kinderhook Creek.
The following Volga German families are known to have settled in Stuyvesant Falls:
Gelhorn from Neu-Straub
Heintz
Keil from Neu-Straub
Ohl from Neu-Straub
- Eisenstadt, Peter R. et al. The Encyclopedia of New York State (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse State University, 2005): 370.
- Koch, Fred C. The Volga Germans: In Russia and America, from 1763 to the Present (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977): 216.
- Sallet, Richard. Russian-German Settlement in the United States (Fargo, ND: North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 1974): 57.
- Stuyvesant (Wikipedia)
- Stuyvesant Falls (Wikipedia)