For this one, I decided to only review the past five generations of my family tree to see who had the closest birthday. And that ancestor turned out to be Katherine Hoffman Knoll.
Katherine came from the village of Graf (or Krutoyarovka) on the steppes near the Volga River in Russia but she herself, like the other residents of Graf were not Russian. Katherine's ancestors came from Germany, including Saarland, Baden-Wuerttemburg, and Rhineland Palatinate, as well as probably Lorraine, France. They lived at a time when the rulers of what is now Germany could require the residents of their lands to fight for them, even if it meant being sent to fight as a mercenary in other lands (such as the Hessians who fought in the American Revolution). When Catherine the Great, daughter of a German prince and tzarina of Russia, invited Germans to settle in Russia, she also granted the settlers certain freedoms, including that of religion and exemption from military service. Katherine's family were probably eager for these rights and they were among the first settlers of Graf in 1766.
One hundred years later, Katherine was born on 26 March 1866.
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| Katherine Hoffman and her husband, John Peter Knoll |
The Germans of Graf and the other German-Russian villages had preserved their customs, including their language and clothing, and for the most part, stayed separate from the Russians and others around them. But Russia was changing and so too were the relations between the Russian government and the German settlers. The Germans were under scrutiny and eventually the rights granted to them by Catherine were threatened. The settlers began to look to other countries, including the United States for a better life. America was especially promising--there was great interest in attracting people to settle along the newly-built railroad lines and land could be gained for little to no money.
Katherine was just a teenager when she came to America by herself. She naturally chose to live in Victoria, Ellis, Kansas where other German Russians had settled. There, in 1887, she married another German Russian, John Peter Knoll of Herzog (Susly), Russia. They moved to St. Peter, Graham, Kansas ten years later with his parents. Originally, they lived in a sod house just outside town but John Peter became a prosperous and prominent farmer. So, in 1903, they replaced the old sod house with a frame home.
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| Katherine with her husband, John Peter Knoll, and son Michael (who died young) |
Katherine died 8 October 1924 in Hays, St. Peter, Graham, Kansas and was buried 11 Oct at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in St. Peter. She had had eight children with John Peter: Michael (died young), John Peter, Anna Barbra, Michael J., Anna Katherine, Andrew (died young), Adam J. P., and Rose Catherine (my great-grandmother).
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| Site of the Knoll farm (this and the following photos were taken in the 1980s) |
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| Grandma (Florence Mahler Boyd) at the Knoll farm |
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| Details of the remains of the cellar at the Knoll farm |
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| Grandma looking into the cellar |
I have not yet added the page on my website for Katherine and John Peter but click here for information I've posted on Katherine's ancestors.
Next week's challenge from No Story Too Small: "Week 5, Plowing through — We will likely be plowing through a lot of snow by this time. What ancestor had a lot of struggles to plow through? Or take it more literally… It’s up to you"
