Oregon

HISTORY

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 farmland was more plentiful. Many of those that remained from this first group settled in the village of Blooming, Oregon, a few miles south of the town of Cornelius.

 

The intersection of Vancouver Avenue and Russell Street in the Albina area of Portland, Oregon (1909). Source: Oregon Historical Society.
The intersection of Vancouver Avenue and Russell Street in the Albina area of Portland, Oregon (1909). Source: Oregon Historical Society.

 

Another group of Volga German families arrived in Portland in 1882. These families had been part of a wagon train headed from Nebraska to Eastern Washington, but when the convoy reached Pendleton, several families decided to continue on to Portland. This group settled in Albina, which at the time was an independent city from Portland. Richard Sallet states that over 500 families lived in this settlement by 1920. In 1891, a group of Volga Germans settled on former forestland near Canby. To this point, the immigrants had been from Protestant colonies along the Volga. However, in 1892, a group of Catholic colonists arrived in Portland from Topeka, Kansas.

 

PRIMARY SETTLEMENT AREAS

Blooming (Cornelius)

Canby

Eugene

Portland

Sublimity

Resources

Sallet, Richard. Russian-German Settlement in the United States (Fargo, ND: North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 1974): 112.

Scheuerman, Richard D. and Trafzer, Clifford E. The Volga Germans: Pioneers of the Northwest. Moscow, ID: University of Idaho Press, 1985.

Scheuerman, Richard D. and Trafzer, Clifford E. Hardship to Homeland Pacific Northwest Volga Germans. Pullman, WA: Washington State UP, 2018. Print.

Sources

Haynes, Emma Schwabenland. My Mother's People. Unpublished manuscript, 1959. Print.

Sallet, Richard. Russian-German Settlement in the United States (Fargo, ND: North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 1974).

Scheuerman, Richard D. and Trafzer, Clifford E. The Volga Germans: Pioneers of the Northwest. Moscow, ID: University of Idaho Press, 1985.

Scheuerman, Richard D. and Trafzer, Clifford E. Hardship to Homeland Pacific Northwest Volga Germans. Pullman, WA: Washington State UP, 2018. Print.

Viets, Heather Ann. Little Russia: Patterns in Migration, Settlement, and the Articulation of Ethnic Identity Among Portland's Volga Germans (Master of Arts Thesis - 2018 - Portland State University).