Johann Leonhard Sommerfeld

As promised, we are taking a brief detour to learn more about this mysterious fellow. As noted in the previous post (here), Heinrich Heinrich Somerfeld and Johann Johann Leonhard are listed in the 1835 census as residing at Alexanderwohl 7. The fact that Elisabeth Sommerfeld, wife of Peter Goerz (or Goertz), lived at Alexanderwohl 8 caught our attention.

According to GRANDMA, Elisabeth was the aunt of Heinrich Somerfeld (whose father died before the family emigrated to Russia) and the older sister of a boy named Johann Leonhardt Sommerfeld. As suggested in the previous post, it seems likely that Heinrich and Johann were listed at Wirtschaft 7 by accident and that they should have been listed for Wirtschaft 8. 

This explains why Heinrich and Johann were listed at Alexanderwohl at all, but it raises yet another question: Was Johann’s name Johann Johann Leonhard or Johann Leonhardt Sommerfeld—or both? This single person is the source of some confusion in the GRANDMA database, since he is listed twice: as Johann Johann Leonhard (60331) and as Johann Leonhardt Sommerfeld (600063). In the first case he is identified as the son of an otherwise-unknown man named Johann Leonhard, in the second as the last-born son of David Sommerfeld, eleven years after his closest sibling, the sister Elisabeth mentioned above.

Additional notes in GRANDMA for Elisabeth’s father David Summerfeld (269479), sourced from Unruh 1955 and Rempel 2007, suggest that Johann was either “an illegitimate child or foster child named Johann Leonhardt.” The listing of the boy on a 12 September 1820 visa hints toward the latter explanation, since it identifies him as a “nursing child” named Johann Leowhard (Rempel 2007, 173). One might then suggest that Johann was perhaps a foster child named Johann Leonhardt who later was adopted into David’s family (and thus became Elisabeth’s adopted brother) and then added his adoptive father’s last name to his birth name, producing Johann Leonhardt Sommerfeld.

This seems a reasonably accurate explanation of how this individual came to be known by both names, but that is not the reason we took this detour. Thanks to the wonder that is Google, I learned that we have crossed paths with Johann Leonhard(t) Sommerfeld before. In fact, he features several times in the Johann Cornies papers that we consulted last year. Sommerfeld was well known to Cornies, serving as the secretary for the Forestry Society for at least several years. Cornies mentions him in four letters to others, three of which are worth quoting partially or in full. We begin with a brief extract that informs the second letter.

357. Johann Cornies to Andrei M. Fadeev. 5 April 1833. SAOR 89-1-276/11.

I am concerned that this Society’s Office may be without a secretary after 15 April, because the current Society secretary, Sommerfeld, will be away in Prussia on pressing family business.

362. Johann Cornies to Heinrich van Steen. 24 April 1833. SAOR 89-1-276/16.

Esteemed Mr. van Steen,

I have succeeded in obtaining a death certificate for your late son, as you requested. I will today mail it to Odessa to have it certified by the Imperial Prussian consul. I will not neglect to forward it to you immediately upon its return. In accordance with your wishes, I have given the money received for your son’s clothing to Gerhard Reimer, Ohrloff, administrator for the support of the poor in our community.

I take the liberty, esteemed Mr. van Steen, of commending to you the messenger delivering this letter, Johann Leonhard Sommerfeld. While in my employ, he was, for some time, on good terms with your son and can provide you with greater detail about your son’s stay in our community than could any letters from me. Please do not view the liberty I have thus taken unkindly. I have permitted the young man, Sommerfeld, to make a visit to Prussia on family matters and thought you might find it profitable to question him about your son’s stay and behaviour. …

Here we learn that in April 1833 Johann Leonhard Sommerfeld was entrusted to carry a letter on behalf of Cornies all the way back to Prussia, to Danzig, to be specific, where Heinrich van Steen was a merchant. Sommerfeld was returning on account of “pressing family business.” What this business might have been, indeed, even which family it concerned, the Leonhardt family or the Sommerfeld family, is forever lost to us.

Two years later Cornies referenced Sommerfeld again. 

476. Forestry Society to village offices. 28 January 1835. SAOR 89-1-428/3.

To village offices in the new settlement,

The Society is dispatching its secretary, Mr. Sommerfeld, to inspect journals for forest-tree, orchard, silk, and wine cultivation in each village office to determine that each journal is in good order, as required by [directive] Nos. 215 to 217, dated 29 November. The inspection is intended to ensure that the entries for tree planting have been done. Specifically, on the Society’s orders, Secretary Sommerfeld should be shown the above-mentioned journal in each village office. He will have with him copies of all notices dealing with planting directions sent out previously. At his request, these notices must be copied into each journal in order that they are widely known in every village office. A further order regulating such notices will follow later.

Village offices are likewise ordered to provide Sommerfeld with a conveyance at each location without delay and in a way that enables him to travel through several villages, not just over short distances. This must be observed.

Ohrloff, 28 January 1835
Chairman Cornies

If this is the same individual as discussed above—a highly probable identification—then we should marvel at how quickly young Johann advanced in society. At age seventeen (in 1833) he was already serving at Cornies’s side as secretary of the Forestry Society and could be entrusted not only to return to Prussia on his own (apparently) but also to deliver an important letter to a grieving father. Two years later, still before his twentieth birthday, he represented the Society in all the villages of Molotschna and was responsible to inspect the village journals recording their compliance (or noncompliance) with the colony requirements for cultivating various types of trees. The foster child made the most of his opportunity, it seems. It is too bad that we do not know, as far as I can tell, whatever became of him.

Works Cited

Rempel. Peter. 2007. Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828. Edited by Alfred H. Redekopp and Richard D. Thiessen. Winnepeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Unruh, Benjamin H. 1955. Die niederlandisch-niederdeutschen Hintergründe der mennonitischen Ostwanderungen im 16., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Karlsruhe-Rüppurr: self-published.