Life in the Russian Bottoms: Community Building and Identity Transformation among Germans from Russia in Lincoln, Nebraska, 1876 to 1926

KURT E. KINBACHER

HENRY J. AMEN WAS BORN in 1876 in Frank, Russia, an ethnically German agricultural colony on the Volga River. He immigrated to Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1888 where he apprenticed with an uncle before opening his "main street" grocery in the heart of the South Russian Bottoms in 1902. At this "hustling and bustling store," German-speaking customers were "treated right," and their money bought "the full value of the best wares." Amen also served his community as a steamship ticket agent, a mortgage and personal banker, a home insurance agent, a landlord who provided reasonable rents, and the bookkeeper for the Ebenezer Congregational Church. He lived several doors up the street from his business until he built his dream house eight blocks away in 1918, where he and Barbara Amen raised their seven children.