VGI Updates

Pine Island was founded by Volga German colonists immigrating from Yagodanya Polyana and Pobochnaya.

Today, Pine Island is a hamlet just west of the town of Warwick, New York, not far from the New Jersey border.

Volga Germans from Schilling settled in Oswego on the shore of Lake Erie.

Volga German families settled in and around Union Township in Union County, New Jersey.

In 1887, about 50 families from Beideck and Schilling settled in Newark, New Jersey, where many of them worked in factories. The neighborhood was called "Ironbound" because it was between the railroad tracks of two major rail lines that came through the area.

9-11 Terrorist Attack:

Colonists from Balzer settled in York in the early 1880s.

In 1892 a small settlement of colonists from Dönhof and Huck settled in Valentine.

The first German from Russia to settle in Sutton were from the Black Sea villages of Worms and Rohrbach in September 1873.

Eight families from the Volga German colony of Balzer resettled to Sutton in 1875 from Red Oak, Iowa. They were followed by immigrants from Frank and Norka.

A large group from Norka arrived on 11 June 1878 by train. Included in the group were the families of:

Settlers from Brunnental arrived in Scottsbluff in 1909 and Sallet reports that by 1910 about 35% of Scottbluff's population of 7,000 were Volga Germans.

In 1910, a sugar refinery was constructed in Scottsbluff and sugarbeet companies sent agents into the neighboring large cities to hire Volga Germans as beet workers. In the spring of 1910, they began to arrive from Loveland (original colonists from Frank), Sterling, Denver, and Lincoln.

The Scottsbluff Sugar Company built a factory in Scottsbluff in 1910. It was acquired that same year by Great Western Sugar.

Many of the early Volga German settlers to Nebraska were poor and could not afford to buy farmland, so they resettled from places like Sutton to Omaha where they could find employment.

Following development of the sugar beet industry in the area, Volga Germans settled in and around Morrill.