CHRISTMAS, 1996 A FAMILY MEMORY THAT WE SHOULD ALL PASS ON TO OUR CHILDRENDear Kuehn Relatives Who Are Descendants of Johann and Katherine (Katherina, Catherina, Katharina, Christina) Buechler (Büchler), parents of Grandmother Lydia Buechler Kuehn. This year's memory is a bit unusual since it is neither a memory nor an experience of our lives. It is, however, a fact of our family history with which most of us can identify nearly every day. I have hiked at the 10,000-foot elevation in the Organ Mountains of New Mexico and have seen the Russian thistle growing there. I have climbed down into the ancient kivas of the Anasazis at Chaco Canyon and have seen Russian thistles growing on the kiva floor. And I have seen hundreds of miles of Russian thistles (also called Tumbleweeds) trapped in the fence lines along the interstate highway system from Mexico to Canada and from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. Every time I see this plant, I smile because of what I have learned about its presence in America. This is a story about how the Russian thistle or tumbleweed was introduced into the North American continent for the first time in the spring of 1873 in Bon Homme County South Dakota and the likely role that our very own great-grandparents, Johann and Katherine Büchler probably had in this event. This story can be fully documented from written historical accounts. Much of it has come from a personal diary kept by a woman from the Gross family who was among the first group of Germans from Russia that came to the Dakota Territory in 1873. Our great-grandparents were among this group. So for each family member that reads this account, remember every time that you see one of those big rolling tumbleweeds snared in a fence or scooting across the roadway threatening to demolish the plastic airfoil under your car, that weed is intimately linked with our own personal family history. In the autumn of 1871, the Russian czar began conscripting into the Russian army, German-Russian farmers from the Black Sea colonists of southern Russia, now part of Ukraine. This was the first time that these people were drafted into the Russian military and it violated the promise of 1765 by then Czarina of Russia, Catherine the Great. One hundred years earlier when Empress Catherine initially invited German burgers to the Volga River region and Ukraine to develop its agricultural potential, she promised that they would never have the obligation of serving in the Russian military. However, in 1871 Russia found itself at war with Japan and would soon start a war with Turkey. The large pool of German-Russian youths in the Black Sea colonies, immediately north of the Turkish border, was too tempting to resist further exemption from military draft. Thus this first military draft in 1871 immediately sparked the emigration of Germans from Russia to the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Canada. Only a few months after the military draft began, concerned residents of the German-Russian village of Rohrbach in the district of Beresan, Odessa, Russia region, where our young great-grandparents lived, collectively financed a group of six men to travel to America in January 1872. Their mission was to scout out an area where residents of Rohrbach might obtain good cheap farmland in preparation for their immigration to America. The travels of these six men are well documented in a historical summary of the arrival of the first Black Sea Germans in the Dakotas (Rath, 1977). These scouts visited Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, and ultimately Yankton, SD. Yankton was the very eastern edge of the western frontier in 1872. In Yankton, the only city in the Dakota Territory, they learned about newly surveyed lands just west of the city in Bonn Homme County that were available for homesteading. Three hundred twenty acres (a half section) of free land per family was available only for the cost of registering (about $2)!! The six scouts returned to Russia in May 1872 and told the residents of Rohrbach that the land around Yankton was amazingly similar to their own farms in the Black Sea region. The region in the Dakota Territory was a vast prairie grassland of gentle rolling hills that were entirely treeless, just like the Russian steppes around Rohrbach. Immediately, about 80 families signed up to leave Russia from the village of Rohrbach. Most were very young people or families with young teenagers, 17-25 years old, who were most likely to be drafted into the Russian army if they stayed in Rohrbach. In those days, to be drafted into the czar’s Russian army was essentially a death sentence. The tour of duty during war-time was a mandatory 25 years. Few men survived the brutal conditions of army life. Most soldiers died before the age of 40 of malnutrition, exposure to cold, pneumonia, typhus, or tuberculosis. Thus the choice to come to America was easy for these people. They would either die in the army of Russia’s czar or die on the harsh unsettled prairies of America. The latter choice offered some chances of survival. To be looked upon as a "Russian" was an offense for these Germans from Russia. They called themselves German Russians. Legally they were Russians by birth and citizenship. Although they were born and their families had lived in Russia for 70-100 years, they had staunchly retained their German ancestry, language, and customs. They refused to assimilate into Russian society. They were of Russian citizenship, but they were defiantly proud of their German descent and heritage. They were not Russian blood and that was decisive for them. For them, there was no reason to fight for the czar’s Russian army in a war initiated by the Russian czar. Thus, in June 1872 with knowledge from the scouting trip made earlier, our great-grandfather Johann Buechler (age 23) and his young wife, Katherine (age 22), joined 79 other couples in a journey to the Russian port city of Odessa on the Black Sea, two-days journey south of Rohrbach, in order to obtain passports to leave Russia. Already, the Russian czar had suspended issuance of passports to German men of draft age. However, with kind words and by bribing the officers in Odessa, it was possible to obtain passports to leave Russia. In Odessa, they boarded trains and traveled to Berlin, Germany. This was the first time that these people had ever seen their original homeland since their ancestors began migrating eastward, first into Poland in 1742, and then into south Russia in about 1812. In Berlin, the group stayed for several days for negotiations with travel officials of the Hamburg-America shipping lines to get passenger tickets. They then traveled to the northern port city of Hamburg, Germany, where they had to wait three weeks at a place called the Barmen Mission House, before their ship finally arrived. The ship's name was the U.S.S. Thuringia. The Barmen Mission House retains records that confirm that Johann and Katherine Buechler (Büchler) were processed through this port for immigration to America. I have a copy of a document that confirms this fact. All of these people had some money from the sale of their small farms or other belongings in Rohrbach. Men carried half of their money in leather girdles around their body and women carried the other half under their dresses. On July 15, 1872, the U.S.S. Thuringia departed from Hamburg, Germany, harbor carrying the 80 families, all together numbering 447 people. I have a copy of the original passenger list, obtained from the Hamburg Historical Emigration Office. Johann and Katherine (they were newly-weds and had no children) occupied cabin number 253 in the second-class section of the ship. This suggests that they had considerable money with them since these ships also had a cheaper third class accommodation and a section called the steerage down in the lower hold of the ship, which was the cheapest way to travel. The ocean voyage lasted 15 days. The Thuringia arrived in New York harbor on the 30th of July, 1872. Most of the group was seasick during the trip. The immigrants disembarked at Ellis Island and were processed through the usual legal inspection that took two days. All had to sleep on the floor of the Ellis Island station for two nights. Can you imagine the incredible sights that these people saw for the first time in their lives--the business of a thriving shipping port, Black men who worked at the docks and who only seven years earlier might have been slaves, and the bustle of the city of New York? Within two days, the group had acquired train tickets to Burlington, Iowa, then to Lincoln, Nebraska. The transcontinental railroad had just been completed three years earlier. In Lincoln, all of them purchased guns and ammunition, for they were told that in the western frontier there were plenty of wild animals, game, and Indians. They were especially fearful of Indians, since many stories of encounters with indigenous people had made their way to Europe over the centuries. In Lincoln, Nebraska, the group rented little houses and began to organize themselves to search for suitable land for farming. They took excursions in all directions, trying to find a region where they could settle as a group. In fact, they had even tried to find land in Iowa where they would have settled, but the country was already too heavily populated. The land in Iowa and Nebraska was also considered to be too hilly and too expensive. Their stay in Lincoln lasted for eight weeks. By now it was mid-November and winter would soon come. Decisions had to be made. Unable to find land around Lincoln for all 80 families, the group finally decided to split. About thirty families wanted to go to the free land available for homesteading west of Yankton, South Dakota, in the newly opened Dakota Territory. The remainder of the group numbering fifty families eventually settled around Sutton, Nebraska. Our great-grandparents joined the group who set out for Yankton. On the way, they encountered their first Indians, a peaceful group passing over the region in search of game. In Yankton, the group was able to find several vacated store buildings where they set up a cooperative winter camp for 172 people, while the men went looking for land on which to settle. Cholera broke out in the city in the winter of 1872-73 and the immigrants lost six children in one week. The entire group was able to obtain homesteads near one another in the Emmanuel Creek area of Bon Homme County in the fall and early winter of 1872. However, since it was too late to begin any building, the group remained in Yankton during the winter of 1872-1873. The men took menial jobs in delivery stables or shoveling coal from train cars, while the women took on jobs doing laundry and cooking. On April 13, 1873, General George Custer and the 7th Cavalry bivouacked on the outskirts of Yankton, on his way to the final Indian Wars in Wyoming and Montana. Our ancestors most certainly saw this cavalry during their stay in Yankton and may have washed their uniforms. Three years later, on June 24, 1876, General Custer and 224 of his men lost the Battle of the Little Bighorn near Custer, Montana. In late April 1873, these Germans from Russia started their homesteads. They had all obtained homesteads along the Emmanuel Creek region near the present towns of Tripp, Scotland, and Tyndall, South Dakota. Our grandmother, Lydia Buechler Kuehn was born in or near Tyndall, South Dakota, sixteen years later in 1889. They built sod houses and plowed their first fields. The original homestead documents for Johann and Katherine Buechler that were filed five years later in 1877 when they took full ownership of their 320-acre homestead, show that they plowed eleven acres the first year and that they raised flax. All of these homesteaders anticipated the need for seeds of grains that they would grow in America so they brought with them sacks of flax and wheat seeds from their former farms in Rohrbach, Russia. The first crop planted by these Germans from Russia was flax because the price of flax was good in 1873. In those sacks of flax seeds from Russia were also the seeds of the Russian thistle or tumbleweed. Every textbook studied in agricultural colleges related to the subject of weed science, documents the fact that the Russian thistle was introduced into the North American continent in Bonn Homme County South Dakota in the spring of 1873 by immigrants from Russia. Thus, in all likelihood, our ancestral great-grandparents, were among those first thirty homesteaders from Russia in the Dakota Territory who broadcast those flax and tumbleweed seeds from their sacks and thus introduced this weed into America. The American prairies and the arid mountain west proved to bear ideal conditions for the propagation of this weed. Within the incredibly short time of seven years, the Russian thistle could be found in every county in the U.S.A. west of the Mississippi River. So, next time you see a Russian thistle, or tumbleweed, blowing across the road or the prairie, don't curse the weed. Smile and think of the closeness you are experiencing with your ancestors. It just might be that the ancestral seed of that weed passed through the hands of young Johann or Katherine Buechler in the spring of 1873 as they innocently sowed their first field with flax, never comprehending the legacy that this simple act would leave on the American continent. And, perhaps it would be best not to tell this story to too many people! This may be a skeleton in our ancestral closet that should not be let out!!! P.S. I would never have been able to put this story together if some highly unusual coincidences had not occurred. University professors sometimes study the most whacky subjects, and it just so happened that my whacky “academic brother” here at New Mexico State, Dr. James Hageman, a biochemist, was conducting some research in 1988 on the nutritional value of the Russian thistle as a foraging source for livestock. In a discussion or two with him about his surprising results that the tumbleweed contains more protein and complex carbohydrate than does alfalfa, I learned that this weed was introduced into America in 1873 in Bon Homme County South Dakota. At that time in 1988, I just happened to be reading Rath’s book on the Immigration of the Black Sea Germans to the Dakotas. I had learned from this book that the first thirty homesteads in the Dakota Territory were given out in Bon Homme county in the spring of 1873 to a group of Germans from Russia. Hence, I put the pieces and evidences together from there knowing some of our family history. I have told this story many times to my university colleagues in the agricultural college here at New Mexico State University. It is always good for a laugh or two. “Here, shake the hand of a man whose great-grandparents introduced the tumbleweed into America.” Glenn Kuehn FAMILY TREE OF OUR GRANDMOTHER, LYDIA BUECHLER KUEHN Lydia Buechler Kuehn (our grandmother) her parents Johann Buechler and Catherine (Katherina) Schuh Johann’s parents George Buechler and Johanna Straub (second wife) George’s parents Sebastian Buechler and Katherina ----- Glenn D. Kuehn Revised: Dec. 2, 2010; May 11, 2011, Jan. 30, 2012 |
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