The Center for Ethnic Studies - Fort Hays State University

INTRODUCTION
The arrival of the Volga Germans in Ellis and Rush counties in Kansas in the spring of 1876
signaled a new direction for the two counties. A few Midwestern settlers and the British colonists
associated with the settlement efforts of the Scotsman George Grant began the early task of
establishing agriculture in Ellis County. Midwesterners were the primary early settlers immediately
to the south in Rush County. These settlers used the federal land laws to acquire homesteads,
timber claims, or preemptions, and in Ellis County they purchased land from the Kansas Pacific
Railroad, later the Union Pacific, or, if British, purchased land from George Grant.
It was the Volga Germans who established winter wheat rather than corn as the primary
grain crop on the harsh Kansas prairie in Ellis County. The British raised sheep and cattle, but the
Volga Germans, who settled on federal lands within the British colony or to the south and north of
the lands of George Grant, brought their own traditional agricultural habits and patterns to the
windswept prairies of western Kansas and retained them.
The Volga Germans initially established three villages ~ Katherinenstadt, Herzog, and
Obermunjour. The villages served as communities of interest, centralized religious worship, and
provided sources of support for the women who tended the farms and cared for the children alone.
The support in the village was extremely important when the men were absent collecting buffalo
bones from the vast prairies or working during the winter in the mines and on the railroads in
Colorado to supplement their farm income.
The interest in these early settlers from the Volga River region of Russia who were of
German origin began the day the first ones arrived as their mannerisms, clothing, and customs were
in contrast to those of the settlers from Ohio and Indiana and the few Englishman and Scotsman.
That early interest has never waned and has even grown in the past two decades.
Interest has also developed in the history of immigrants from the lands of the former
Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Bukowina, formed from western Ukraine and northeast Romania,
and Bohemia. Hispanics, African Americans, and Native Americans were active on the Plains and
in Ellis County, and researchers are interested in their contributions. Hispanics worked on the
railroad, drove the bull wagons on the Santa Fe Trail and the Hays-Dodge City Road, and worked
on ranches. African Americans settled Nicodemus, served at Fort Hays as Buffalo Soldiers, and
worked as laborers. The Native American role in the central region of the Kansas is still being
researched.
This bibliography represents the latest effort by the Center for Ethnic Studies in Forsyth
Library on the campus of Fort Hays State University to serve the public as well as meet research
interest and needs by providing direction to the materials available in the collection. The
bibliography is current for the local collection as of June 1997. As more materials are added, the
collection will become an even greater resource for individuals researching the Volga Germans in
Ellis and Rush counties as well as Bukowinians, Bohemians, Germans, Hispanics, African
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