1806 — Count Nikolai Rezanov, Imperial Ambassador to Japan and director of the Russian American Company, visits the Presidio of San Francisco.
1806–1813: American ships bring Russians and Alaska Natives on 12 California fur hunts.
1808–1811 — Ivan Kuskov lands in Bodega Bay (Port Rumiantsev), builds structures and hunts in the region.
1812 — March 15, Ivan Kuskov with 25 Russians and 80 Native Alaskans arrives at Port Rumiantsev and proceeds north to establish Fortress Ross.
1812 — September 11, The Fortress is dedicated on the name-day of Emperor Alexander I
1815 — First Russian migrant to California, José Antonio Bolcoff, arrives.
1816 — Russian exploring expedition led by Captain Otto von Kotzebue visits California with naturalists Adelbert von Chamisso, Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz, and artist Louis Choris.
1817 — Chief Administrator Captain Leonty Gagemeister conducts treaty with local tribal chiefs for possession of property near Fortress Ross. First such treaty conducted with native peoples in California.
1818 — The Rumiantsev, first of four ships built at Fortress Ross. The Buldakov, Volga and Kiahtha follow, as well as several longboats.
1821 — Russian Imperial decree gives Native Alaskans and Creoles civil rights protected by law
1836 — Fr. Veniaminov (St. Innocent) visits Fort Ross, conducts services, and carries out census.
1841 — Rotchev sells Fort Ross and accompanying land to John Sutter.
After the anti-Jewish pogroms of 1881, Mexico frequently came under consideration as a possible refuge for Russian Jews seeking to emigrate.[3] In June 1891, Jacob Schiff, an American Jewish businessman with railroad interests in Mexico, wrote to Ernest Cassel to enquire about the possibility for settlement of Russian Jews there.[4] However, Russian Jews would not begin to arrive in significant quantities until the 1920s.[5]
From 1905 to 1906, about 50 families of Spiritual Christian Pryguny (colloquially known as Molokans), who arrived in Los Angeles from Russia, sought a rural location, and relocated to 13,000 acres (53 km2) of land they had purchased in Guadalupe, Baja California in Mexico.[6] Theirs would become the most successful Prygun colony cluster in North America. There, they build houses largely in the Russian style, but of adobe rather than wood, and grew a variety of cash crops including mostly wheat, alfalfa, grapes, and tomatoes.[7] Their village was originally quite isolated, reflecting their desire to withdraw from society, but in 1958, road construction in the area resulted in an influx of Mexican and other settlers; some chose to flee encroaching urbanization, and returned to the United States. By the 1990s, only one family remained in the area.[8]
Krauze, Corinne Azen; Katz de Gugenheim, Ariela (1987). Los judíos en México: una historia con énfasis especial en el período de 1857 a 1930/The Jews in Mexico: a history with special emphasis on the period 1857 to 1930. Universidad Iberoamericana. ISBN9789688590225.
Hardwick, Susan Wiley (1993). Russian refuge: religion, migration, and settlement on the North American Pacific rim. Geography Research Paper Series. University of Chicago Press. ISBN9780226316116.
Story, Sydney Rochelle (1960). Spiritual Christians in Mexico: profile of a Russian village (Ph.D. dissertation). University of California, Los Angeles. OCLC17406191.
Muranaka, Therese Adams (1988). Spirit jumpers: the Russian Molokans of Baja California. Ethnic technology notes. Vol. 21. San Diego: Museum of Man. ISBN9780937808467. OCLC18928066.
