Steppes to Neu-Odessa:
Germans from Russia Who Settled in
Odessa Township, Dakota Territory 1872-1876
--2nd Edition--
Cynthia Anne Frank Stupnik

In the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, the Russian government encouraged hard-working people from western Europe to settle near St. Petersburg and along the banks of the Volga. Along with inhabitants from other countries, thousands of German citizens answered the call. In return for the immigrants’ exemplary lifestyles, the colonists enjoyed a privileged status and were promised freedom of religion and freedom from taxes and military service.

Predictably, the native population began to resent the Germans. The government then began a program of Russianization, revoking the Germans’ privileges and requiring them to serve in the military, worship in the Greek Orthodox church and become Russian.

Determined to maintain their own culture and nationality, the Germans decided to relocate. The first four groups of German-Russians from the Black Sea area arrived in the United States in 1872. In the spring of 1873, they sent scouts to search for land on which they could settle as a group.
 

The scouts found homestead land north of Yankton, Dakota Territory, with rich black soil similar to the farmlands near Odessa on the coast of the Black Sea. They corresponded with friends and family in Russia, resulting in a flood of German-Russians to America. The homesteaders named the first settlement, about twenty miles northwest of Yankton, “Odessa,” in remembrance of the great port on the Black Sea.