Jeffrey Tankersley

An Adolf Legacy Jeffrey Tankersley

An Adolf Legacy is a genealogy book about a family whose perseverance, faith, and love for their children saw them through the many difficulties they faced. It tracks their perilous migratory journey in the early 1800s which took them from their homes in Poland and Prussia to the Black Sea region of South Russia (now Ukraine). Subsequent journeys led them to the plains of the United States, Canada, South America and elsewhere around the globe. Many of their friends and family who didn't leave or couldn't escape experienced a horrific fate. The Adolfs have been called everything from Slavic, German and Russian, and if the truth were to be told, they were all the above, yet for over a century this family and their descendants proudly consider themselves, "Germans from Russia." They are a resilient family who've helped create new frontiers in new lands and were agricultural pioneers. They survived the Seven Years' War and lived through the Eve of the Revolution of 1894. During World War I, anti-German sentiments ran high. These conflicts also led to greater assimilation pressures. The anti-Russian sentiment in the United States following the Bolshevik Revolution and the later Cold War era compelled the Adolfs and many other Germans from Russia to downplay their East European roots and connections. But, their deep-rooted faith, strong work ethics and Germanic customs are still alive today and can be seen in their descendants. This book follows the lineage of Heinrich "Georg" Adolphi and his descendants going from the late 1600s on up to the early 1900s. It is filled with photographs, memories, historical documents and more.