Bird CIty | Jaqua
| St. Francis
Homesteading in Cheyenne County
Prentice, Noble Lovely. "History of Kansas". Winfield,
KS: E. P. Greer, 1899.
Cheyenne County was organized in 1886, but homesteaders
had settled here in the years before then. The earliest German-Russians
appeared on the 1885 census, which was taken when the area was
still a part of Rawlins County.
Most of the settlers came from settlements
in the Black Sea area of Russia. These settlements included Neudorf,
Rohrbach and Hoffnungstal. Descendants of those early settlers
still reside in Cheyenne County today.
The settlers were of the Protestant
faith and were members of the Lutheran and Evangelical Churches.
German church services were discontinued around the time of the
Second World War. Today there are still a few people who speak
the German language which is quite removed from the German spoken
when the people left Germany for Russia.
There was one citizen who made the
trek from Germany to Russia, and lived to also come to Cheyenne
County. Katharina (Hahn) Hahn (1820-1917) went to Russia at age
thirteen and came to the United States with her daughter Paulina
Wagner.
One German-Russian homestead is located
next to Highway 27, but several buildings have disappeared, and
the rock house and other outbuildings are rapidly falling apart.
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Contact Us:
Cheyenne County Historical Society
Box 611
St. Francis, KS 67756
Sources
Information from Marilyn Holzwarth,
Cheyenne County Historical Society
