The German Russians Come to Sutton

A. T. Andreas's 1882 history of Clay County gives the colony's own outline. The settlers who came to Sutton and the surrounding country in the fall of 1873 were Germans from southern Russia, near Odessa on the Black Sea, and their leaders were John Grosshans, Henry Griess and Henry Hoffman. Andreas counted 55 families, who had bought about 16,120 acres at an average of $7 an acre. He described them as sober and temperate people and as members of the German Reformed Church.

What the plaque says

The German Russians Come to Sutton Twenty-two German families from the Russian villages of Worms and Rohrbach arrived in Sutton in September 1873, the first of many German Russians to settle in Nebraska. The immigrants were descendants of ethnic Germans who began colonizing the Volga River and Black Sea regions of Russia beginning in the 1760s at the invitation of Catherine the Great. She promised the Germans land, freedom of religion, exemption from military service, and political autonomy. When Czar Alexander II revoked these privileges in 1871 many Germans living in Russia began emigrating to the United States. The Burlington Railroad built an immigrant house near the Sutton depot to shelter the new arrivals until they could build homes and acquire land, much of which they purchased from the railroad. Throughout the 1870s Sutton remained a destination for German Russians coming to Nebraska. Those who settled here were excellent farmers with a strong work ethic and firmly held religious beliefs. Although German Russian colonies sprang up in other Nebraska communities and throughout the Great Plains, Sutton remains a center of German Russian history and culture. In Memory of James R. Griess Nebraska State Historical Society, 2015 Sutton Chapter American Historical Society of Germans from Russia

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Sutton — steps away
• The Soldiers' Monument — steps away
• Farmers' Valley Cemetery — 7.7 mi
• Clay Center — 12 mi