Neumark Mennonites

Earlier we walked our way back in time by noting that before Lushton (or Henderson) there was Kleefeld, the village in Molotschna colony in which Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller lived prior to emigrating to Nebraska. Before Kleefeld was Waldheim (also in Molotschna), the village in which Peter D’s father David lived. Before Waldheim there was Volhynia, specifically the village Zofyovka in the Rovno district. Finally, we learned, before Volhynia there were the Neumark and Schwetz areas (see here), the earliest known (thus far) locations in which our ancestors may have lived.

Since that time we have encountered the Neumark area on several occasions, as the place at which Andreas Andreas Buller lived before he moved to Volhynia (here) and as the primary location where one of the George Buller and Dina Thoms lines lived during the latter part of the eighteenth century (here).

Given the possibility that our earliest known ancestor Benjamin came from the Neumark area (it is only a possibility; we have no positive evidence one way or another), it will be worth our while to learn more about the Mennonite villages located there.

First a word about terminology. Writers refer to this area by different terms. Some refer to the area as the Netzebruch, a term that describes the “boggy wetland along the lower course of the Netze/Noteć river” (Hege 1957; see the map below). Others designate the area by the name of its most prominent nearby town: Driesen (modern Drezdenko, roughly 2 miles to the east). Still others identify the settlements as the Neumark villages, which was the name of the province in which the villages were located. Finally, others refer to the villages in terms of an even larger geo-political entity, the Prussian state of which Neumark was a part: Brandenburg. Whichever of these designations is used, we need to understand that they are referring to the Mennonite villages of Brenkenhoffswalde (modern Błotnica) and Franztal (Głęboczek).

The area around the Netze (Noteć) River is the marshy Netzebruch. Of the two underlined
villages, Brenkenhoffswalde (Błotnica) is on the left and Franztal (Głęboczek) on the right.

The Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online article on Brenkenhoffswalde and Franztal (Mannhardt 1953) offers a wealth of information on the villages and deserves our careful attention. After locating the villages geographically and historically, Mannhardt writes:

In 1765 Frederick the Great, who had given Councilor Brenkenhoff charge of settling the marshy Netzebruch, permitted 35 Mennonite families expelled by Polish noblemen from the Culm lowlands to settle here; of these, 16 families with 95 persons were allocated in Brenkenhoffswalde and 19 families with 97 persons in the adjacent Franztal. They at once formed the Brenkenhoffswalde Mennonite congregation, which existed until 1834. The king gave them land and furnished lumber; until 1771 they were not taxed, and by a charter drawn up by the king himself they were “completely free from military service and conscription.” They belonged to the “Groninger Mennonites,” or Groninger Old Flemish. This explains why they had not joined the larger Frisian congregation in the Culm lowlands at Schönsee, but had formed a congregation of their own with some scattered members at Thorn and Schwetz. They maintained contact and communion with these after they had come to Brenkenhoffswalde. …

Culm lowlands/Schwetz area, with the Przechowka church location
marked on the left and Schönsee identified on the right.

Several points mentioned above deserve further commentary. (1) Frederick the Great ruled as king of Prusssia from 1740 until 1786, so the Mennonites who settled in these villages were leaving the Polish kingdom to settle in the Prussian kingdom. (2) The Culm lowlands referenced are the larger area that surrounds Schwetz, the general location of the Przechowka church. (3) The Mennonites who moved to Neumark were associated with the Przechowka church, not the larger Mennonite church at Schönsee, some 10 miles to the east. This is important to note not only for the sake of understanding the origin of the Neumark Mennonite families but also because it tells us: there was another large Mennonite church in the Schwetz area, which raises the question: Did all Bullers in that region attend the Przechowka church, or did some attend the Schönsee or some other Mennonite church? (4) Finally, Buller Time has already discussed this move of Schwetz-area Mennonites to the Neumark area when we focused our attention on the Bullers of Jeziorka (see especially here). There we learned that in 1765 members of the Hans 341 line (see Buller chart here) moved from Jeziorka to the Neumark area. What Mannhardt has narrated above is exactly the same move that we previously described.

The article continues:

The history of the church offers much that is of interest. A letter written by the church board to Harm Scholtens at Groningen … contains interesting particulars concerning the young congregation, which had already begun to build a meetinghouse. In 1788 the Lutheran teacher Wilhelm Lange of Brenkenhoffswalde, who had been appointed to the position by the government, asked permission of the authorities to transfer to the Mennonite faith, since he had grown up and been educated among Mennonites and was inwardly bound to them. On 24 October 1788 he received permission to do so, on condition that his obligations to the state and his duties as a citizen would not suffer. Wilhelm Lange became a respected and influential member; in 1802 he was chosen preacher, and in 1810 elder, which office he still held when the congregation emigrated to Russia in 1834. In 1833 Lange had sent a petition to the Tsar of Russia in the name of 40 families of Brenkenhoffswalde and Franztal to permit their immigration into Russia after permission to emigrate had been granted in 1828 to a certain Bengs of Brenkenhoffswalde by the government in Frankfurt an der Oder. It is probably to be assumed that the Mennonites in the Netzebruch did not see any possibility of acquiring more land, and therefore turned their attention to Russia, where most of the Groninger Mennonites from Culm and Schwetz had already gone. …

Aerial view of Brenkenhoffswalde (Błotnica) today.

Lange and his group received information on 10 January 1834 through the Russian consulate in Danzig, that the tsar would permit immigration on the following conditions: (1) presentation of a permit from the Prussian government to emigrate; (2) only families having at least five members would be admitted; (3) a sum of 800 rubles was to be deposited, which would be returned when they arrived. In that year the 40 families emigrated and found a hospitable reception in Alexanderwohl, but then founded the colony and church of Gnadenfeld. The Mennonite church at Brenkenhoffswalde was thereby dissolved.

Again, several statements invite comment. (1) Although it was unusual for outsiders to join the Mennonite church, it was possible to do so. However, Prussian citizens who joined the colonist (noncitizen) Mennonites were not thereby absolved from their legal responsibilities, including service in the military.

Aerial view of the east end of Brenkenhoffswalde.

(2) The emigration of forty families to Molotschna in 1834 is noteworthy. We read earlier that the original (1765) emigration to the Neumark villages had involved thirty-five families. Sixty-nine years later, in 1834, the entire community comprised slightly more than forty families (some families did remain behind after 1834). This small increase in the number of families (thirty-five to perhaps forty-five) seems inconsistent with what we know of Mennonite population growth. Why were there so few families in these villages sixty-nine years after they were founded?

The answer is simple: the 1834 emigration was not the first time that Mennonites left these villages; a significant number left earlier. For example, Andreas Andreas Buller (here) moved from Neumark to Volhynia sometime before 1816, and we know that he was not the only one to do so. Other Mennonites made the same trek eastward to settle throughout the Volhynian region.

Could these immigrants have included our ancestral line? Possibly, but we will have to await further concrete evidence before we consider this anything more than an intriguing hypothesis. Fortunately, there is more evidence for us to sift through in upcoming posts.

Work Cited

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