Franztal in Neumark 1

With this post we start a series that will parallel the one just completed on Brenkenhoffswalde. The new series will consult the same Praestations-Tabellen (land tax lists) that we looked at earlier, from the years 1767, 1793, 1805, 1806, and 1826. This time, however, we will focus on the Mennonite village of Franztal.

As mentioned previously, Franztal was only 2 miles east of Brenkenhoffswalde, so the residents of the two villages no doubt knew each other relatively well. How well will become clearer shortly.

Brenkenhoffswalde on the left, Franztal just to the east, and Neu Dessau farther east.

As before, we begin with the 1767 tax register, which lists all families who held leases to plots in Franztal, along with a delineation of the number of members in each family. Once again, Adalbert Goertz has supplied the data (Goertz 2001, 48; see also here).

		M	F	S	D	Total
1	Andres Vood	1	1	2	5	9
2	George Buller	1	1	1	1	4
3	Salomon Schmidt	1	1	2	2	6
4	Tobias Sperling	1	1	2	4	8
5	Hans Ratzlaff	1	1	2	1	5
6	William Vood	1	1	2	1	5
7	Peter Ratzlaff I	1	1	1	1	4
8	Tens Vood	1	1	2	1	5
9	George Ratzlaff	1	1	—	—	2
10	Hans Türcks	1	1	3	2	7
11	Lieb Schmidt	1	1	3	2	7
12	Gerd Türcks	1	1	—	1	3
13	Hans Becker	1	1	3	2	7
	Total	13	13	23	23	72

Interestingly, H. G. Mannhardt reports that, of the 1765 group of Mennonites who emigrated to the Neumark area, “16 families with 95 persons were allocated in Brenkenhoffswalde and 19 families with 97 persons in the adjacent Franztal.” In other words, Franztal had three more families and two more persons than Brenkenhoffswalde.

According to the 1767 register for both villages, however, Franztal had thirteen lease-holding families and seventy-two members of those families. The difference in numbers given by Mannhardt and the 1767 register are striking: nineteen families with ninety-seven people (Mannhardt) versus thirteen families with seventy-two people (1767 register).

How do we explain this? The key is in recognizing the difference between the number of families and residents in the village of Franztal and the number of the families and members of those families who held a lease to one of the village’s thirteen plots. To state it directly, from the very beginning about a third (6/19) of Franztal’s families were landless, earning their living through a specialized trade or as a day/seasonal laborer.

Before we focus our attention on the one Buller family in the village, it is also worth noting that there were three Vood (Voth) families and three Ratzlaff families in Franztal; if you recall, Voth was the most common family name in Brenkenhoffswalde as well. Franztal also included two Schmidt and two Türcks families, as well as one each of the following: Buller, Sperling, and Becker.

We do not know (yet) how closely related the Brenkenhoffswalde Voths were to the Franztal ones, or if the Schmidt from Franztal was related to the Schmidt from Brenkenhoffswalde, but the presence of some of the same family names in both villages raises the possibility of close association between the two villages—in addition to their proximity and their union in a single congregation (see Mannhardt).

The George Buller family (plot 2) offers further evidence for a close relation, for George was none other than the brother of Peter Buller of Brenkenhoffswalde, as the Buller chart makes clear.

Generation 4, column B, lists the two brothers together: George 350 and Peter 351. The former was a resident of Franztal, the latter of Brenkenhoffswalde.

Before this we knew nothing about George 350 other than that, according to the Przechowka church book, he had been married in Franztal (see here). Now we know that, in 1767, George had a wife, a son, and a daughter—apparently the early years of the family.

In fact, it is worth our while to think chronologically for a moment. As we have noted several times (see here again), Jeziorka and Schwetz-area Mennonites moved to the Neumark area (which includes Franztal and Brenkenhoffswalde) in 1765.

In the 1767 register, George and his wife have two children. So either George and his wife married before they emigrated to Neumark or they planned to be married the moment they arrived. In either case, the move to Neumark seems to have been motivated by a desire to have a farm plot adequate to support a family. In my view, the former hypothesis (they married before leaving) is the most likely. The Przechowka book also states that George’s brother Peter was married in Brenkenhoffswalde, but we know that in 1767 he already had four children, so he clearly was married and raising a family before he left. The same seems the most reasonable assumption for George as well.

In other words, the PCB records what it knew for these two brothers: they ended up in the villages of the Neumark area. In terms of details, however, it cannot be made to say more than that. The brothers probably were married before they left the Schwetz area, but by the time the Przechowka book was recorded some three decades later, no one remembered those minor details.

There is little more that can be gleaned from the 1767 tax list. George and family are stable residents of Franztal, and we can only look forward to seeing how the family changed by the time of the next register, dated to 1793.

Works Cited

Goertz, Adalbert. 2001. Mennonites in Amt Driesen of the Neumark, Brandenburg, Prussia. Mennonite Family History 20:47–51.

Mannhardt, H. G. 1953. Brenkenhoffswalde and Franztal (Lubusz Voivodeship, Poland). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.