Alexanderwohl 19

With only eight Wirtschaften to go in the series, this post picks up the thread with Alexanderwohl 23.

Wirtschaft 23

The census lists only one family for this village plot:

Schroeder, Johann Peter (b. ca.1763)

Schroeder is not a name we associate with the Przechovka church, and GRANDMA confirms that the Johann (GM: 60432) and family lived elsewhere in West Prussia/Poland: in a village named Podwitz, which lay 5 or 6 miles east of the Przechovka church. According to Glenn Penner’s list of Prussian villages (see here), the Mennonites of Podwitz were typically associated with the Schönsee church. 

If this sounds somewhat familiar, recall that we have already encountered a Schroeder from Podwitz: Heinrich Isaak Schroeder of Alexanderwohl 11 (here). We do not know that the two Schroeders were closely related, although it is worth noticing that both not only emigrated in 1820 (as stated in the census itself) but actually were issued visas on the very same day: 12 September 1820 (Rempel 2007, 174).

The settlement report provides additional details:

Johann Schroeder (Иоган Шретер), whose family consists of 4 males and 2 females. Settled in Russia in the year 1820. They had no cash. They brought possessions valued at 308 rubles,  75 kopecks, 1 wagon, 2 horses and no cattle; wagon, horse or head of cattle cost 200 rubles. The local administration suggested providing financial aid for the purchase of 2 head of cattle at a sum of 110 rubles, and also for building a house and establishing the household, at a sum of 589 rubles. (Rempel 2007, 176)

Because Johann Schroeder emigrated to and established a household in Russia in 1820, and because he is not listed with any other Molotschna residence nor any other family located at Alexanderwohl 23, we can safely conclude that Johann Schroeder was a founding settler of the village.

Once again we discover a Mennonite from the general area of Przechovka who was not a member of the Przechovka church emigrating to Molotschna at the same time as a Przechovka group and settling alongside them in Alexanderwohl. It is hard to escape the impression that the community report of 1848 oversimplified the origins of the village in the early 1820s.

Wirtschaft 24

With the names listed for Alexanderwohl 24 we return to more familiar ground, in terms of family names from the Przechovka church:

Nachtigal, Andreas Jakob (b. ca.1771)
Nachtigal, Peter Andreas (b. ca. 1808)

The names and dates once again reflect a father–son relationship, and GRANDMA confirms both the relation and the identity of these two individuals. Andreas Nachtigal (GM: 42259) appears as number 661 in the Przechovka church book, which reports that he was born in Jeziorka. 

Andreas and family are also found in emigration and settlement records, first in a visa dated 17 August 1820, then in an 1821 register of new families settled:

Andreas Nachtigal from Przechowko, his wife Maria 34 (b. ca. 1786), sons Peter 11 (b. ca. 1809), Andreas 6 (b. ca. 1812), David 4 (b. ca. 1816), Jacob 1 (b. ca. 1819), daughters Catharina 17 (b. ca. 1803), Maria 2 (b. ca. 1818). Passport from Marienwerder issued on July 11, 1820. (Rempel 2007, 172)

Andreas Nachtigal (Андреас Нахтигаль), whose family consists of 5 males and 3 females. Settled in Russia in the year 1820. They had no cash. They brought possessions valued at 250 rubles, 10 kopeks, 1 wagon, 1 horse, 1 head of cattle; wagon, horse or head of cattle cost 150 rubles. The local administration suggested providing financial aid for the purchase of 1 horse and one head of cattle at a sum of 105 rubles, and also for building a house and establishing a household, at a sum of 589 rubles. (Rempel 2007, 175–76)

Since the Nachtigals emigrated to Molotschna in 1820, along with many other Przechovka residents, and settled in Alexanderwohl, we can consider them the founding settlers of Wirtschaft 24.

Wirtschaft 25

The information available for Alexanderwohl 25 is intriguing and ultimately unsatisfying for the task at hand. The primary person listed for this Wirtschaft is David Andreas Richert, who was born in 1806. Clearly, he would not have been old enough to establish a household in the early 1820s, when Alexanderwohl was founded. 

To complicate matters further, we find an apparent contradiction between the census, which dates Richert’s arrival in Molotschna to 1832, and a visa dated 17 August 1820, which lists Andreas Richert and family—including fourteen-year-old David—among other Przechovka emigrants. To add an additional complication, another standard source of immigration records agrees that David moved to Molotschna, specifically Alexanderwohl, in 1832 (Unruh 1955, 375). 

Other evidence points in the same direction. According to GRANDMA, David’s first child was born in 1831 in Deutsch Konopath, a village near the Przechovka church in West Prussia. Further, the 1835 census also reports that David’s father Andreas also emigrated in 1832 and settled in Friedensdorf. The weight of the evidence seems to leave no other conclusion but that the Andreas Richert family had prepared to emigrate in 1820 but ultimately decided not to. It was only twelve years later that Andreas and his wife and David and his family moved to Molotschna, where the father settled as a cottager in Friedensdorf and the son acquired his own property, Alexanderwohl 25.*

It is not surprising that David Richert moved to Alexanderwohl, since he was part of the Przechovka church (PCB: 1501; GM: 48282). Unfortunately, this does not help us to identify who lived in this Wirtschaft before he did. The census does list one other person—Martin Martin Dueckmann (spelled Dikman in the census)—but he had been “accepted into the household” of Richert and thus certainly was not the first settler of this Wirtschaft.

In the end, therefore, we cannot say who first settled Alexanderwohl 25. For the third time in twenty-five Wirtschaften, we must leave the question undecided.

*Interestingly, we have previously brushed against the Richert family, in the person of Peter Richert, who was Andreas’s oldest son and David’s older brother. He emigrated to Molotschna in 1819 and settled in Franztal 5, the same Wirtschaft where Jacob Jacob Buller of Alexanderwohl 15 first resided, presumably as a guest of Richert’s (see here). If you recall, Peter Richert died in 1821, which led Jacob Buller to relocate to Alexanderwohl. Eleven years later the younger brother moved into the same small village, no doubt to live among people whom he had long known.

Wirtschaft	Settler	GM	Notes
1	Martin Jacob Kornelsen	33801	PCB: 1250; emigrated 1820
	Anna Unrau	32780	first husband: David Buller
2	Heinrich Peter Block	29475	settlement year: 1823
3	?????
4	Peter Jacob Voth	268847	PCB ???; emigrated 1820
5	Heinrich David Schmidt	32966	PCB 1345; emigrated 1819
	Maricke Buller	32967	PCB 1355
6	Peter Johann Unrau	60318	PCB 1229; emigrated 1819
7	David Bernhard Voth	60325	Przechovka; emigrated 1820
8	?? Peter Franz Goerz	819683	to Alexanderwohl in 1826
9	Jacob Peter Buller	318737	PCB 377; emigrated 1820
10	David Johann Unrau	87011	PCB 987; emigrated 1820
11	Heinrich Isaak Schroeder	14829	Schönsee church; emigrated 1820
12	Jacob Jacob Pankratz	43123	PCB 727; emigrated 1820
13	?????
14	Heinrich Peter Unrau	86839	PCB 1149; emigrated 1819
15	Jacob Jacob Buller	5587	PCB 1139; emigrated 1819; settled 1822
16	Johann Peter Ratzlaff	60394	Przechovka; Benjamin Heinrich Buller son-in-law
17	Heinrich Jacob Schmidt	50991	Przechovka; emigrated 1822
18	Jacob David Schmidt	32895	PCB 1302; emigrated 1819
19	Peter Johann Reimer	46418	emigrated in 1804; settled 1822
20	Andreas David Schmidt	43155	PCB 1272; emigrated 1819
21	Peter Christian Dalke	3506	Konopath but not PCB; emigrated 1821
22	Peter Benjamin Frey	35807	PCB 1351; emigrated 1819
23	Johann Peter Schroeder	60432	Schönsee church; emigrated 1820
24	Andreas Jakob Nachtigal	42259	PCB 661; emigrated 1820
25	?????

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.