THE BERRY MEADOW ARCHIVE - Mountain Light School

to Portland via railroad to San Francisco and steamer up the Pacific Coast,
some like the George Henry Greens remained in Oregon. Others, however,
still sought a drier climate with fertile rolling hills so they could live in a
setting more like they had known in Russia. Tannatt soon introduced them to
lands in the Palouse Country and these “Palouse Colony” families began
relocating there by wagon from Oregon in the fall of 1881. (A parallel
movement of Volga Germans from Nebraska took place in the same year which
led to their settlement in the Ritzville-Odessa area. The Green-Rothe letters
indicate that the two groups were aware of each other‟s movements, likely
through their German Congregational Church connections.)
In 1973 I read that centenarian Jacob Adler was still living in a rest
home in Tekoa and had worked with other Volga Germans for the railroad in
the late 1800s. I went to visit him and learned that he had actually known
General Tannatt as a boy. The developer had become prominent in regional
business and political affairs and had hired young Jacob to do odd jobs
around his ranch near Farmington. Jacob remembered the general—who
called Tann-ott´, as a firm taskmaster but who showed kindness to toward
the immigrants who had come so far to find homes on the Palouse frontier.
The Johannes and Elizabeth Schierman (Scheuerman) Family
Johannes Scheuermann (1814-1858?) was the son of Georg Scheuermann (1787-1825), whose
father, Johann Heinrich Scheuermann (1752-1838), immigrated with his parents, the Hartmann
Scheuermanns, from Ober Lais, Hessen to Russia where they established the Volga German village of
Yagodnaya Polyana in 1767. Johannes and Elizabeth had seven children and four of the sons—John,
George, Henry, and Conrad were among the first Germans from Russia to immigrate to the United States.
(Their brother Phillip apparently remained in Russia.) The four Schierman brothers first settled in Rush
County, Kansas in the 1870s but decided to move West in the early 1880s and established a colony on the
Palouse River five miles north of Endicott, Washington in 1881. The brothers were probably third cousins
to Henry B. Scheuerman, who immigrated from Yagodnaya Polyana in 1888 and settled in the Endicott
area three years later. Henry B. lived for several weeks with his cousin, Conrad, in the immigrant colony
until finding a place of his own nearby.
Sources: William L. Scheirman Files, Evelyn Reich Files, Ruth DeLuca Files, Ethel Lock-Sarah Bafus
Correspondence, Trinity Lutheran and Zion Lutheran Church Records (Endicott, Washington), Igor
Plehve Family Charts (in Russian). Compiled by Richard Scheuerman (2009).
I. Anna Elizabetha Scheuerman (Anna Marie Schierman), b. 1834 m. Heinrich (Henry) Kleweno,
1833-1909
A. Anna m. Litzenberger (remained in Russia)
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