Olędrzy (Holender) life along the Vistula

Before we tackle the third register from the Deutsch Wymysle church records, we will take a brief detour to learn more about the daily life of the Olędrzy (see further here) during that time. This label designates the larger group of emigrants who colonized and developed parts of Poland, including the Mennonites and thus the Bullers who are part of our larger family.

The Catalogue of Monuments of Dutch Colonization in Poland website offers a fascinating account of Olędrzy life: Wojciech Marchlewski, “Different Neighbours: Everyday Life of Hollander Colonists in Powisle in the Nineteenth Century" (here). The rest of this post will quote it liberally, but Buller Time readers are also strongly encouraged to visit the site for themselves, since this is but one of a number of enlightening pieces available to read.

We begin with a survey of the two primary tasks that the Vistula-located Olędrzy faced: grubbing and draining.

The colonists settled at the end of the 18th century occupied terrains located in the Vistula flood zone, covered by oak and pine forests. The parcels they obtained had to be grubbed. The contract granted them seven years to carry out this work. For this entire period, settlers were exempted from all taxes and labour for the benefit of the owner of the land they leased. It is probable that, having carried out grubbing of the parcels indicated in the contract, the colonists continued the works on other terrains, thus enlarging the area of the exploited land. Inventories indicate that almost every farm had numerous tools serving to dig up trees. Each household had axes, hatchets and saws. Snags were hauled away with chains, hooks and specially adapted grub hoes.

After grubbing, colonists carried out drainage works—ditches and canals draining off the excess of water from the cleared lands. Each spring, the farming terrains were flooded by the river. Quick drainage of the flooded fields required construction of a dense network of ditches and canals. In the vicinity of Wiaczemin and Kepa Karolinska we can still find traces of this draining system. In farms, we find tools they used: shovels and spades. Each farmer had also a boat, used for transport during flood periods.

Contrary to what many might imagine, the Olędrzy along the Vistula River were not so focused on draining swampy land or holding back the river as they were on ensuring that the periodic floods that were a part of life were drained from their fields as quickly as possible.

Deutsch Wymysle is located in the lower left of this photograph (the yellow dot just south of the dark green area).
The village ran east and west across the ridge of the glacial embankment. The north–south fields thus began on the
higher ground but then dipped down into the low area along the Vistula River to the north. 

This is not to say that dikes and floodbanks were never constructed; they were, but in at least in one instance against the objections of the Olędrzy farmers. According to Marchlewski, when the Polish government built an embankment between the river and the fields in 1848, the residents of Wymysle Nowe (Deutsch Wymysle) complained, “We did not construct the embankment in Swiniary because the flooding does not harm our crops; it fertilizes our fields by accumulation of silt. Otherwise such meadow will not be flooded and will give no pasture; … the embankments are to our detriment, not advantage.”

House in Deutsch Wymysle from the mid-nineteenth century

One has the impression that the colonists saw the river flooding as a force to be managed, not a problem to be overcome. We recognize this also in the orientation of the typical Mennonite house of this time and place. As we have seen elsewhere, the house contained both family living quarters on one end and a barn for storing feed and housing animals on the other end. Although the colonists built their house barns on hillocks in order to minimize any damage during the inevitable floods, they also placed the barn end of the home downstream. These farmers knew that sooner or later the floods would stream through their houses, and they preferred to have animal manure flushed away from their living quarters rather than through them. In other words, these farmers recognized that life along the Vistula was a matter of managing the environment, not overcoming it.

Of course, this was also reflected in their farming choices and practices. Marchlewski explains:

The specificity of farming lands caused the economy to be dependent on the natural environment conditions. The Hollanders grew only such plants the vegetation period of which fell between the spring and autumn flood or that were not affected by water raises, for example fruit trees and grass. To protect fields against sand transported by flood waters, their borders were secured by wicker fences, fortified by willows planted between them. They stopped the sand and let the humus through. …

The Hollander economy was dominated by cow breeding, completed by cultivation of cereals, potatoes, flax and by fruit growing. They grew: millet, oat, wheat, barley, potatoes and other vegetables, including: pea, cabbage and onion. There are no data on other plants growing in the Hollander gardens. Potatoes were a garden crop, as confirmed by an inscription dating from 1836: “promises to prepare soil for potatoes, which has to be well farmed and planted with potatoes”. The Hollander farms cultivated also flax. It was favoured by the vicinity of [the] river, providing a sufficient amount of water for its treatment. In all the farms part of the farming land was destined for fruit growing. Orchards were dominated by plum and apple trees. …

The Hollander farms specialised mainly in breeding and for draught they used horses. A farmer usually kept from 2 to 6 animals. … It is interesting that the Hollanders did not breed oxen as beasts of draught, what was popular at that time in peasant farms and in manors. … The basic source of the Hollanders' income was cow breeding. Contracts and inventories indicate that the majority of farms had from 5 to 14 milch cows and, together with heifers and calves, the inventory counted up to 30 heads.

The Hollanders bred red cows, and grey, the so-called bald or bialograniaste cows. Cattle grazed on pastures located between Vistula and its holms, overgrown with grass, emerging from the river in the periods when the water was low. Sometimes cows were transported to those small islands, but more often the grass was cut and dried for hay, stocked as the winter forage for the cattle.

Such quantity of the breeding stock was related to the fact that the Hollander farms specialised in production of cheese and diary products for sale. Inventories contain tools and machines for production of the Dutch cheese: bowls, different kinds of sieves, presses and forms for shaping the final product. …

Cow breeding was completed by swine, chicken and goose husbandry. Pigs were bred for the farm's own needs. Usually it was one sow, one hog and several barrows—between 5 and 12. Some farms raised pedigree “comely” swine and wild swine, the so-called “field plain” ones. The “comely” swine were bred in pigsties and the plain grazed in the forest. They fed on acorns and sprouts. … Also chickens were raised for the farm's own needs. A farm had between 5 and 11 chickens and 3 to 6 geese. … It is interesting that the Hollander farms kept neither sheep nor goats. 

Daily life also included school, church, and social gatherings, but this is enough for now. The life that Wojciech Marchlewski describes for the Olędrzy of this area was largely the same as that experienced by the earliest Bullers in the Schwetz area. Thus by learning about the Deutsch Wymysle Mennonites, we discover more about our own ancestors.

Work Cited

Marchlewski, Wojciech. Different Neighbours: Everyday Life of Hollander Colonists in Powisle in the Nineteenth Century. Catalogue of Monuments of Dutch Colonization in Poland. Available online here.