GermanAmericanPioneers.org
Preserving the history of German Pioneers in Silicon Valley, USA.
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The web site GermanAmericanPioneers.org has been developed by Maria and Walter Brand. Maria has gathered an extensive history of the activities of German American Pioneers in the region now known as Silicon Valley (the City of San Jose, CA and the surrounding Santa Clara Valley). Saturdays at 8:30pm,on channel 32 you can watch a progam of interest to Germans in theEnglish language. My husband of 45 years passed away on Oct. 21, 2005. He suffered a cardiac arrest.
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There is a Law in Life:When one door closes to us, another one opens. In August I featured the state of Kansas. Since then I have learned that 4 states share a common German American Heritage, namely: Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. The Germans from Russia left a big imprint on these four states and to a lesser degree on some other states as well. I have talked to a few descendents of this immigration group and learned that they nurse an extreme love for their homeland. Their homeland is not Germany but Russia. Because of this love and longing for the land of their birth I will add songs and some poetry at the conclusion of this report. Maria Brand
Among the millions of mid- to late-nineteenth century immigrants arriving in the United States from Europe were ethnic Germans who had immigrated to Russia in the 1765-1824 period. Poland's rulers had encouraged Germans to settle in the province of Volhynia (between the Dnieper and Dniester rivers) which was part of Russia by 1797. The Russian rulers, including Catherine the Great, had promoted settlement along the Volga River (north of the Caspian Sea) and on the coast of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov beginning in 1750. As a result, in the 1760s groups began leaving various German principalities where wars, invasions, high taxes, and military conscription made life unbearable. Colonists arrived in the steppes (plains), where the Russian czars offered them free land, exemption from military service and taxation, and, to an extent, religious liberty. A second wave immigrated between 1789 and 1862, including in the 1850s thousands of Mennonites, who were originally of Dutch ancestry. Between 1763 and 1862 an estimated one hundred thousand Germans moved to Russia. How and why did they come to the United States 100 years later?
I was told that the Germans from Russia still long for their homesteads in Russia.I added some poetry dealing with Homeland & Home sickness
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