by Mike Cochran
At Blue Mound community there was a small group of German speaking residents
who had immigrated from Russia. Unlike their neighbors who had come from
central Germany, many of the ancestors of these immigrants had left Germany
as early as 1764. At that time the German born Czarina Catherine II initiated
a program to settle the sparsely populated regions of the Ukraine near the
Black Sea. Lured by the promise of free land, exemptions from taxes and
of being drafted, more than 100,000 Germans made the long trek eastward.
They were allowed complete religious freedom, and just as important,
they were permitted to operate their communities as separate German-speaking
entities. Indeed, Russians were not even allowed into these communities
without special permission of the leader. Life was hard on the Russian steppe,
and even into the nineteenth century the colonist had to endure the frequent
raids of nomadic Kirghiz tribesmen. These communities prospered for a hundred years, but beginning in 1860,
their privileges began to be withdrawn. After 1871 they were no longer exempted
from the draft, and in 1881 the Russians took control of their schools.
In 1897 Russian was made the official language of the entire country. Unhappy
with the situation, many of these families began to immigrate to the Americas.
Between 1873 and 1920 approximately 120,000 of these Germans immigrated
to the United States. A large group of these Black Sea Germans settled at
Hurnville in Clay County about 10 miles north of Henrietta. Several families
settled near Denton at the Blue Mound Community. Among these were the Zeretske
family, the Maaschs, the Falkenburgs and the Kenas family. Denton resident
Ben Kenas was born in Russia and immigrated to Texas with his family in
1901 as part of this movement.Back