The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan Page B

Russian Germans came to Kansas; within fifty years, 303,000 would populate the Great Plains. Often the new towns were given the name of the villages they had left behind. In Kansas, Germans established Lieben-thal, Herzog, Catherine, Munjor, Pfeifer, and Schoenchen, which meant "a little something lovely."
    "No one thinks of drouth and grasshoppers—everyone is happy and energetic," the
Chicago Tribune
reported in a typical dispatch on the kinetic Germans in 1876. They plowed the grass and planted turkey red on land that others had not dared to farm. What struck some of the American yeomen about these Russian Germans was that they liked to sing, and they kept the floors of their simple houses clean enough to dine on. Dust inside the house was something they would not tolerate.

    George Ehrlich turned eighteen on his journey across the Atlantic in 1890. As he continued with his story at the wedding, he told about his emotions on the immigrant boat: scared, yes—a week into the sailing, he regretted leaving home. His money was strapped to a lower leg, and all his possessions fit into one bag. Part of his family had gone one way to Ellis County in an earlier migration, while others stayed behind, hoping they could hide from the czar's conscription police. George received his draft notice at the same time that a terrible
drought hit the Volga region, another nudge to go to America. When the wind of the hurricane got ahold of the ship's mast and dragged it into the water, he thought he would never see American soil. The mast was broken about ten inches from the bottom. The longer it dragged in the water, the more the ship listed. The typhoon raged, seas engorged, wind and heavy rain clawing at the ship. Another SOS went out. Nothing in response. They were all going to drown in the mid-Atlantic. Another German—George knew him only as a Catholic boy—offered to crawl out on the mast and try to saw it off. The Captain said it would kill him, but if the boy wanted to give it a try—Godspeed. They tethered the boy to a rope, handed him a saw, and sent him on his way. He shimmied out, the sea heaving, salt spray sweeping over him, inching along the downed mast. When he was far enough along the beam, he started sawing. He cut through rope cables and oak until his hands were numb. At last, the mast broke away. As the beam fell to the sea, the boat righted itself. Now the Captain ordered all the immigrants to bail. The ship had only one working propeller; the other was broken by a cable that had snapped in the storm. The boat limped on, steadily west, away from the grip of the typhoon. In New York, it was announced as lost at sea.
    Almost two months after leaving Hamburg, the immigrants arrived in New York Harbor, their food gone, many of them desperately ill. George Ehrlich landed in America on New Year's Day, 1891.

    Back at the wedding, it was time for toasts. To Catherine the Great, of course. And to America. They raised glasses of schnapps and the spritzy white wine made by the Germans in Oklahoma and thanked God for their good fortune. The accordions and dulcimers came out. They danced the Hochzeit, which was like the fox trot, only faster. The wheat harvest was going to be the biggest ever. In Shattuck and just across the border in the Texas towns of Follett and Darrouzett, the Volga Germans were shedding some of the thrift their forebears had practiced, buying new tractors, Fordsons and Titans, taking out loans from banks to get still more land. Plant more wheat. Fast!
    After arriving in the plains, George Ehrlich had stayed with relatives in LeHigh, looking for work. While there, he missed the rush of
1893 in Oklahoma, when the Cherokee Strip was opened and more than 100,000 people dashed to claim a piece of six million acres of formerly Indian ground. Six years later, Ehrlich heard there were still a few sections left in the old Indian Territory, well west of the good land. For many Germans in Kansas, this