VGI Updates

Sallet reports that by 1920, there were 1,900 Evangelical (Lutheran) Volga German immigrants of the first and second generation settled in Wyoming.

The Volga Germans in Wisconsin live primarily in urban areas.

In the spring of 1882, a group of Volga German families from Hitchcock County, Nebraska, boarded a Union Pacific train in North Platte enroute to Ogden, Utah, which was at that time the end of the rail line. In Ogden, they formed a convoy of 40 wagons with Frederick Rosenoff as the wagon master. From Ogden, they headed north along the California Trail until they reached the Oregon Trail near the headwaters of the Snake River. They continued on from American Falls (Idaho) through Boise (Idaho) and Baker City (Oregon) to Pendleton (Oregon).

Volga Germans resettled in Texas from the settlements in Kansas. Sallet reports that by 1920, there were 500 Volga German Protestant immigrants of the first and second generation settled in Texas.

Sallet reports that by 1920, there were 600 Evangelical and 37 Catholic Volga German immigrants of the first and second generation settled in South Dakota.

The first Volga Germans arrived in Oregon in 1881. They had earlier settled in Barton and Rush Counties in Kansas and arrived in Portland via steamship from San Francisco. In the fall of 1882, most of this group moved on to Eastern Washington where the farmland was better. Those that remained from this first group settled in the village of Blooming, Oregon, a few miles south of the town of Cornelius.

The first Volga Germans settled in Oklahoma in 1891 from Kansas. A larger wave of migration came in 1892 with the opening of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe reservations to settlement. The 1893 opening of the Cherokee Strip also brought resettling Volga German families. By 1920, Sallet reports that there were more than 4,000 Evangelical and 30 Catholic Volga Germans of the first and second generation settled in Oklahoma.

Father Francis Laing reports that the family of Martin Basgall from Rothammel settled in Canal Fulton, Ohio, in October 1875.

Sallet reports that by 1920, there were 1,000 Evangelical and 700 Catholic Volga German immigrants of the first and second generation settled in Ohio.

Colonists immigrating from Yagodnaya Polyana to Kansas ran out of money when they reached New York City in 1888. They managed to find employment in Orange County, New York, and founded the town of Pine Island there.

A group of colonists from Neu-Straub arrived in New York City in 1891 and was swindled out of its money. They had been en route to Kansas, but went instead to work for some German farmers in Stuyvesant Falls, New York. Later, many of them found jobs in cotton mills and paper factories.

Sallet reports that by 1920, there were 500 Evangelical and 85 Catholic Volga German immigrants of the first and second generation settled in North Dakota.