Fort Abercrombie program explores how Germans from Russia built the prairie

ABERCROMBIE — Long before lumber yards, Germans from Russia built their North Dakota homes from the prairie itself — clay, stone, straw and even manure — and a strong turnout heard how July 12, at Fort Abercrombie State Historic Site’s latest ND250 commemoration program.

Wyatt Atchley, an education coordinator with NDSU Libraries’ Department of Special Collections, traced the group’s journey from German lands to the Black Sea region and finally to the Dakotas, where their descendants now make up an estimated 30% to 40% of North Dakota’s population.

Fleeing war, taxes and religious suppression, Germans first settled in Russia under Catherine the Great’s 1763 invitation, Atchley said. The Black Sea Germans who would later populated the Dakotas came under Alexander I’s 1803 invitation, which promised free land, religious freedom, cultural autonomy and exemption from military conscription — promises made “in perpetuity.”

Russia revoked those promises in the late 1800s, requiring military service beginning in 1874 and restricting the German language. Between 1873 and 1914, more than 100,000 Germans from Russia emigrated to the United States, settling heavily in the “German-Russian Triangle” of central and southern North Dakota. Those who stayed behind saw their communities destroyed by Soviet collectivization and World War II.

Arriving on a treeless prairie much like the steppe they had left, the settlers used vernacular architecture — homes built by nonprofessionals from local earthen materials using puddled clay, rammed earth, adobe brick, and stacked or cut stone, Atchley said. He emphasized they did not build sod houses, a method associated with Norwegian settlers, because Germans from Russia brought generations of earthen-building experience with them.

Many of the homesteads survive in the Father William Sherman collection at NDSU, roughly 13,000 photographs and documents gathered in the 1970s that form one of the largest homestead collections in the country.

Site supervisor Lenny Krueger said the free program drew visitors from as far as Fargo and Delaware.

“We’re always learning something new about North Dakota, even as the staff here,” Krueger said.

Manisha Reddy is a reporter for the Wahpeton Daily News and Richland County News Monitor. Manisha can be reached by calling (701) 291-3581 or emailing manisha.reddy@wahpetondailynews.com.