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Glendale Century of Diversity An illustrated history by Dean Smith Celebrating the Glendale Centennial: Chapter 2: The Convergence of Cultures -- Pages 34-36 -- [Among stories of Glendale's diverse founding nationalities (Chinese, Basque, Japanese, Hispanic, German, etc) and religions (Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, etc.) is this page about the Russian Molokans.] |
| One of the unique hallmarks of Glendale is its
Russian community, first lured to Arizona with the promise of land and
the freedom to practice their Molokan religion. The Molokans ("Milk
Drinkers" in Russian) were a dissident group which broke from the
Russian Orthodox Church and were much influenced by the Quakers.
The first members of the Russian colony arrived from California by train in 1911 and settled on farms some two miles west of the Glendale townsite. There were Tolmachoffs and Popoffs; Treguboffs, Kulikoffs and Conovoloffs*; the men wearing long beards and the women shrouded in ankle-length dresses. They were brought to Glendale by the Greene and Griffin real estate firm, which had arranged for the Russians to pay for their land partly in cash and partly in the sugar beets they grew for processing in Glendale's Beet Sugar Factory. |
 As a part of the Russian migration in 1911, the Treguboffs played a valued part in the Russian community as well as in Glendale's agricultural community. Courtesy, Treguboff Collection
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| [*Note
spelling of Conovaloff. Not mentioned are
the Uraine, Papin-Veronin, Prohoroff and Gozdiff
families which remain in 1990. The original 200 families include
Shubin, Valov, Pivovaroff, Galitzen, Rudometkin, Kotoff, Mendrin,
Slevkoff, Bogdanoff, Susoeff, ...]
One of the largest parties of settlers ever brought into the Salt River valley started from Los Angeles at 2 o'clock this afternoon over the Santa Fe, bound for Glendale. In the party are about 170 adult Russians, together with the members of their families, all eager to reach the land of promise and of health. Numbered amoung the men of the party are farmers, carpenters, painters, blacksmiths, and common laborers ... they will find ready employment when not engaged in tilling their own soil. Arizona Gazette |
The Russian immigrants did not mix
readily at first with Glendale residents, and their unfamiliar customs
and religion made assimilation difficult. But their ways were
eventually accepted, and soon they became an integral part of the
community. Approximately 20 families remain in Glendale today.
Alex Popoff and Jim Treguboff were famed athletes at Glendale Union High School, and many others made their marks. Mary Tolmachoff married noted developer John F. Long, who named his planned community of Maryvale (now a part of both Glendale and Phoenix) after his wife. |
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Chapter 3: From Farmlands to Smokestacks --
Page
38
The Beet Sugar Factory is seen here from the south, ca. 1910. Its opening in 1906* was greeted with great excitement through our the area, but the plant experienced only limited success during the decade it operated. ... The smokestack was removed in 1951 after it was hit by lightning. Courtesy, Glendale Arizona Historical Society. |
| *After arriving in America, Molokan and Jumper sectarians were invited by sugar cane growers to move to Hawaii in 1905 where elders planned to form a large communal farm, promising that 5,000 would soon come. The native Hawaiians objected to the plan while the first group of sectarians (about 30) were on a free no-obligation ship ride. Upon arrival, the sectarians were not given the land promised and only offered jobs of cutting cane on the island of Kauai, near Kapaa. Disappointed, the entire group returned to America in 6 months, many to San Francisco soon after the earthquake where they founded 2 congregations, Maolokan and Jumper. In 1903 this Beet Sugar Factory was failing in Glendale. It seems reasonable to assume that so many sectarians were lured to Arizona because they were known by the sugar industry; and, the fact that within a few weeks of arriving to Arizona, the elders signed an option to buy all the land planned to grow all the sugar beets needed by the factory. I hope that we might find a link between the owners of the Glendale Beet Sugar Factory and the Hawaiian sugar cane grower. A possible link is the Russian-Jewish man in Los Angles who owned the large lumber yard which employed more than half of all Molokan and Jumper immigrant men. He recommended that the sectarians would provide good cheap labor to his friend, another Russian-Jew, who paid for shipping the them to and from Hawaii. By the time the sectarians arrived in Arizona, it was too late to save the Beet Sugar Factory, but many continued to farm sugar beets for seed for decades. | |
More on the history of Glendale by Jeffrey Scott