Moving to Molotschna 1

Our goal with the Alexanderwohl series is not merely to create a list of names, including Bullers, that we can associate with this Molotschna village, important though that may be. Rather, in addition to identifying the individuals who founded and settled in Alexanderwohl, we want to learn about their lives, including the various challenges they faced before leaving their Prussian/Polish home, while on their lengthy journey, and even after they started their new lives on the steppes.

The series in which we pursue these matters (if, in fact, this idea successfully evolves into a series) will not proceed systematically but rather will hop around from topic to topic, drawing from whatever resource provides material for an informative look at a discrete issue. 

This post, for example, is concerned with a narrowly defined subject: the journey from the Schwetz area in Prussia (formerly Poland), where the Przechovka church was located, to Alexanderwohl in Molotschna colony. The questions we will consider are simple: How far did the Mennonites of Przechovka (which included our ancestor Benjamin Heinrich Buller) travel? What means of transportation did they have at their disposal? How long did their journey take?

GoogleMaps allows us to calculate the distance at around 900 miles, which would be comparable to a road trip from central Nebraska to western Pennsylvania. So much for the distance traveled. What about their means of transportation? According to Heinrich Goerz, this depended on the wealth of the family making the trek. The first wave of Molotschna immigrants, of 1803 and 1804,

generally were more pros­perous than the first Chortitza group. Approximately 63 families did not accept any assistance from the Russian government. In fact, 89 families among them had managed to sell their lovely farms in Prussia advantageously and among them brought along 10,000 to 20,000 gold ducats. Their large canvas-upholstered wagons drawn by four or six horses were loaded down with fine furniture, chests, wardrobes, chairs, tables and bedsteads made of walnut wood. Later followed a large number of rather poor families who needed the support of their wealthier co-religionists. (1993, 4)

We have periodically noted the same financial disparity between various of Alexanderwohl’s original settlers: some arrived in Molotschna with one or two horses as well as cattle; others were reported as having only a wagon but no animals to pull it. Goerz is well aware of people in the latter situation, since he reports:

According to P. M. Friesen, some among the later immigrants were so poor that they had no horse-drawn means of transportation and had to pull or push their own small wagons. (1993, 4, citing Friesen’s The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia [1789–1910])

During the migration of a larger caravan such as one or another of the Przechovka groups, it is likely that even those who could travel faster because they had horses pulling the wagons would have been held to a slow pace by those who relied on their own strength to propel their wagons forward. Consequently, one would expect that their journey was closer to the long end than the short end of the average travel time.

With our highly developed system of transportation today we can hardly imagine the difficulties presented by such a wagon trip from Prussia. The roads were very primitive and, on average, the journey lasted from five to seven weeks. Those who could cover the distance in 35 days, as the ministers Warkentin and Regehr had in 1794, considered they made it in record time. (Goerz 1993, 4)

For the sake of argument, we will assume that Benjamin Buller’s journey to Alexanderwohl took seven weeks. If Benjamin and party traveled every one of those forty-nine days (they did not), then they averaged a little more than 18 miles a day. It seems likely that they took at least one day off every week (the Alexanderwohl Gemeindebericht reports, for example, that the party rested two days south of Warsaw), so their average daily distance was probably closer to 24 or 25 miles, or nearly the distance from the I-80 Henderson exit to the Beaver Crossing exit. 

A human’s average walking speed is, according to Wikipedia, 3.1 miles per hour. Leaving aside the fact that the average speed for a human pulling a wagon would certainly be less, we can calculate that a 25-mile daily trek would require slightly more than eight hours of walking. Add in mealtimes and periodic rests, and one begins to appreciate how significant an undertaking the journey from Prussia to Molotschna really was. 

The journey itself was not the only challenge that our forebears faced. They also had to overcome the bureaucratic demands of both Prussia and Russia before they could even begin their journey, as well as additional complications once they arrived. We will turn our attention to some of those topics in the next posts in the series (at least that is the plan).

Work Cited

Goerz, Heinrich. 1993. The Molotschna Settlement. Translated by Al Reimer and John B. Toews. Echo Historical Series. Winnipeg, MB: CMBC Publications and Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.