Now that we have identified what appears to be a significant factor in the Waldheim group’s decision to leave, we should learn more about the person who stood at the center of the controversy: Elder Peter H. Schmidt.
Once again, John A. Boese offers us a clue that we can pursue: “He and his wife joined the group that went back to Volhynia in 1848 and his wife was the first one to be buried on the new cemetery plot in Heinrichsdorf” (see here for Boese’s full statement).
If Boese is correct and Schmidt and his wife joined the group moving to Volhynia, we should find this recorded on the 1845 “List of Mennonites Moving from Waldheim back to Volhynia” that we have consulted in the past (see Steve Fast’s translation here). Indeed, on the very first page of that list we see a Peter Schmidt listed under (and numbered with) Cornelius Funk. Schmidt’s family is reported to have comprised four males and one female, the latter presumably Schmidt’s unnamed wife.
Since no other Peter Schmidt appears on the list, this one is likely to have been the Waldheim elder. That he was, in fact, the elder, is confirmed by his entry on the 1850 Heinrichsdorf census and Glenn Penner’s identification of that Peter Schmidt within the GRANDMA database (see here). The census entries for the males and females are given below.
Peter Schmidt (GM 81992) was listed under Cornelius Funk because he was Funk’s stepson. This explains the earlier listing under Funk on the emigration list. At the time of the census, Schmidt was fifty-six years old and had two grown sons and two young sons (his firstborn had died in 1840).
The right side of the census lists the females of the family: the only one of interest here is the first Helena listed, who was Peter Schmidt’s wife. The fact that she was twenty-two at the time, the same age as Schmidt’s second living song, clearly indicates that she was his second wife. The GRANDMA database confirms this, as seen below in the entry for Peter Schmidt 81992 (the number provided by Glenn Penner).
There are many details we might explore (GM seems to have some dates incorrect), but our primary focus should remain on Peter Schmidt himself and what we can trace of his life. First, we note that he was born in Jeziorka, a small village in the Schwetz area where a number of Bullers lived in the later eighteenth century (see the Jeziorka series of posts in November–December 2015). Checking the Przechovka church book, we see that Peter Schmidt was a member of that church, as were our own ancestors.
A second thing to notice is that Peter Schmidt’s father was named Hans, which corresponds to several references to him as Peter H. (for Hans) Schmidt. Interestingly, the GRANDMA entry for Hans indicates that he was an elder of the Przechovka church, although I have not yet been able to confirm that. If the report is accurate, then the son apparently followed in the father’s footsteps.
The place of birth of Schmidt’s first three children is also of interest. According to GRANDMA, they were born in Volhynia, which means that Schmidt was among the Przechovka members who moved to Volhynia in the first two decades of the 1800s and then to Molotschna, just as Benjamin Buller and family did.
Confirmation of Schmidt’s Volhynian presence may be offered by John Boese, who notes in his account (see the full context here) that “Schmidt was the leader at Zabara-Waldheim.” It is important to point out that this Waldheim was not the one in Molotschna but the original Waldheim in Volhynia, the one after which the Molotschna village was named. As Martin H. Schrag explains, during the first quarter of the nineteenth century a group of Mennonites “settled in two villages 20 miles southwest of Novograd Volynski, named Waldheim (Waltajem) and Zabara (Dossidorf).” The villages can be seen in the center right of the map below.
What can we draw from all this, and why should we care about any of it? Peter Schmidt was already a leader (possibly an elder) of one group, or congregation, of Mennonites in Volhynia. Beginning in the late 1830s, these same Mennonites joined several other groups of Volhynian Mennonites to form the Molotschna village of Waldheim, a new village named after the one that some of them had left behind in Volhynia.
At some point—whether in Volhynia or in Molotschna, we cannot say where and when (although I suspect it was the former)—Peter H. Schmidt became elder of his congregation. As their spiritual leader, he baptized many of the church young adults and offered spiritual guidance to the flock as a whole. Schmidt had history with the congregation, beginning in Volhynia and then continuing into Molotschna.
When Deputy von Hahn of the Guardianship Committee removed Schmidt from being elder, he was attacking not just some replaceable religious official but a long-time member of the community whom the others members loved and on whom they depended. The bonds between elder and church had been forged over several decades of living, working, and worshiping together. Such bonds could not easily be broken.
One imagines that those who left did so, not merely to escape an intolerable situation, but also out of a sense of loyalty to Schmidt. Others, of course, chose to stay. We will never know why either group chose what they did, and we should not pretend that one choice was morally superior to the other. All we really can say is that the removal of Elder Schmidt apparently served as the primary cause for a large portion of the village—that is, the congregation—to leave their Molotschna village within the first decade of its existence.
Many of the group eventually returned, but not as soon as others of the 1848 exodus did (according to Staples’s account). Why they delayed may be hinted at in the circumstances of Schmidt’s departure, but that is a subject for another post.
Work Cited
Schrag, Martin H. 1959. Volhynia (Ukraine). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.
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