Good Reads Online 1

The Mennonite world is rich with various primary sources and secondary narratives that help us to reconstruct, understand, and appreciate the history of our forebears and the contexts in which they lived. An increasing number of these works are freely available online, which benefits not only Buller Time readers but anyone who would like to explore more widely in the field of Mennonite history. As I become aware of such works, I will post about them under the series title Good Reads Online; I will also link the online version in the sidebar to the right, under Online Resources, below the current link to GAMEO.

We begin this series with a massive and important work of Mennonite history, Peter M. Friesen’s The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 1789–1910. I discovered recently that the entire work of 1,000+ pages can be read online or downloaded from Archive.org here. Because the book has been scanned, the file is roughly 220 MB in size, so please be aware before you begin downloading it.

The book dustjacket offers as good an introduction to the work as one could want:

How do you write the history of a movement when you are still a part of that movement? Whom do you believe when leading participants in those historical events disagree strongly not only on why things happened, but also on what happen­ed? What imparts the ring of truth to a denominational history?

For P. M. Friesen the answer was a documentary history, letting the record speak for itself. Gathering historical docu­ments over a period of twenty-five years, constantly transferring the information to his growing history of the Mennonite Church in Russia, he became the premier historian not only of the Mennonite Brethren but of the whole Mennonite community. Constant­ly revising, he finally let his magnum opus go to press—and even while it was on the press he was enlarging it and revising the data.

What appeared in 1911 as the Alt­-Evangelische Mennonitische Bruederschaft in Russland (1789–1910) is clearly the most important single historical document to emerge from the Mennonite community in Russia. That is why this translation is so significant not only to scholars but any Mennonite interested in this important chapter in Mennonite history.

Historian Cornelius J. Dyck, director of the Institute of Mennonite Studies, Elkhart, Indiana, comments, “Thus it is that we have before us not only a history of the early years of the Mennonite Brethren Church in Russia, but a fascinating documentary and interpretive account of the entire Mennonite experience in Russia from the time of their first migration to the time of the publication of the volume in 1911.”

P. M. Friesen was truly a remarkable man. He knew both German and Russian well and taught in both languages. He had also done extensive work in history, giving the Lord a unique “vessel unto honor”. His irenic spirit, combined with a painstaking attention to detail, has provided succeeding generations of Mennonites with an out­standing example of the professional his­torian at his best. 

Without minimizing Friesen’s accomplishment, we should note that not everyone agrees completely with the glowing assessment offered by the publisher’s marketing department. In his foreword to James Urry’s None But Saints: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia 1789–1889, David G. Rempel offers a more critical view: 

[David H.] Epp, like his fellow Molochnaia writers on the Mennonite past includes [sic] Franz Isaak and Peter M. Friesen, can easily be faulted as an historian. Al­though Epp, like Friesen, had some academic training it was not in history. And while, unlike most Mennonites, they possessed experience of Russia beyond their little Mennonite world and both spoke and read Russian flu­ently, they lacked a proper perspective on the history and people of Russia.

I would place one of the great weaknesses of our historiography at the door of our ministry. Every Mennonite history writer of the prerevolutionary years was a minister in one of the established churches or in one of the more recently founded Mennonite churches. Sometimes such ministers wrote accounts of their congregation, village, or colony from their own predilection, but more often it was from a sense of duty that was driven by the expectations of their congregations. Overworked and beset by numerous trials and tribulations, they struggled to construct their accounts as best they could. But a minister was always severely handicapped in what he could write. It was almost axiomatic that the Mennonite past was dominated by religious issues, including the many migrations of our people. While this had on occasion been true, the emigration to Russia had hardly anything to do with religion. Economic necessity took our people to Russia. The entire period of migration from 1788 to about 1870 occurred on this basis. And later political struggles and religious movements in Russia were largely moti­vated by similar material concerns. The great problem was that the Mennon­ite church in Russia had become a state church within a Mennonite state and the village church was essentially a parochial church with all such a label implies. Our minister-historians were all too prone to view past events through the prism of the Bible and the tinted lenses of their minister’s spec­tacles. It was too easy to sweep difficult issues and those things considered to be derogatory to the congregation or to prominent people under the proverbial rug.

I could cite a number of examples based upon my own research in Rus­sian archives of attempts in the work of Epp, Isaak, and Friesen to suppress events or to alter accounts, but this would take too long. Of course, it could he argued that I had access to papers these minister historians did not, but this is not the issue.

There is no real evidence that the pre-revolutionary historians made use of the Russian archives, even in their local areas, or that they bothered to consult the many Russian sources on Mennonites published in the journals of Russian ministries, economic and agricultural societies, or in such “thick” journals as Vestnik Europy and Istoricheskii Vestnik. … Friesen lived in Odessa for many years and could have consulted the later papers of the [Guardians] Committee. Both Epp and Friesen visited St. Petersburg and Moscow on numerous occa­sions where there were other collections of papers relating to Mennonites. At other times Epp lived in Berdiansk and Friesen near Simferopol, both centres that also contained material of significance. But there is no evidence that they availed themselves of the opportunity of wider research. (Rempel in Urry 1989, 12–13)

What, then, are we to make of Friesen’s substantial and substantive work? On the one hand, it often proves valuable for offering us a insider’s view of Mennonite life in New Russia before 1911, when Friesen finished his work. So, for example, his description of farming practice around the turn of the century have an immediacy that engages the reader and draws him or her into Friesen’s account:

Today, the Mennonites of Chortitza, Molotschna and their daughter colonies, believe that every farmer must own a large number of good horses: five for the plow, two for the harrow and another one or two for driving back and forth. He must also have an open wagon, or oboianka, with steel springs, which, in case of necessity, can carry six not too “heavy” people while springing properly and running as easily as possible on its axles, and a covered buggy on springs with glass doors “in case of rain,” or for more distant trips to visit in the more remote colonies or landed estates, which one cannot yet reach by rail. Naturally, there must be several “Britschkas”—heavy wagons—which one has “shortened” to spread manure, transport grain to the railway, the city or the Pristani (river port), or has “extended” into huge hayracks according to the old West Prussian models and improved by the Americans. (Friesen 1980, 175)

Another highly beneficial aspect of Friesen’s work is his documentary approach, “letting the record speak for itself,” as the marketing copy explains. Friesen’s work not only provides an orderly account of Mennonite history in Russia but also includes records and reminiscences from other sources. He supplements his description of nineteenth-century Molotschna life, for example, with a first-person account by David Hiebert of the 1818 visit by Tsar Alexander I, two long extracts describing both the Chortitza and Molotschna colonies by 1820 travelers, several letters from the tsar to the Mennonites, and the like. Of course, anyone interested in the history of MB Church certainly will profit from and enjoy Friesen’s history, since it is, after all, about The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 1789–1910.

Still, we dare not ignore David Rempel’s cautionary remarks. Friesen is not an objective, professional historian; he is, rather, an interested party in the story he recounts. In the end, the best approach, I think, is to rely on Friesen for one part of the story, not for the whole truth. Perhaps a sports analogy is appropriate here: Friesen is a color commentator, not a play-by-play announcer. He is the person in the booth who tells the interesting story, not the one who reports the facts of the game. Taken on these terms, Friesen’s The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 1789–1910 is well worth downloading and reading as time permits and interest leads.

Works Cited

Friesen, Peter M. 1980. The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 1789–1910. 2nd ed. Translated by J. B. Toews, ABRAHAM Friesen, Peter J. Klassen, and Harry Loewen. Fresno, CA: Board of Christian Literature, General Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches. Available online here.

Urry, James. 1989. None But Saints: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia 1789–1889. Winnipeg: Hyperion Press.

Molotschna Livestock 2

In addition to the dairy cattle discussed in the prior post (here), Alexanderwohl landholders brought from Prussia or purchased horses to use in their farming operations. The cattle obviously produced milk, which was both consumed in liquid form and turned into butter and cheese, for consumption or sale. The horses were, of course, used as draft animals.

We cannot say as much about the horses as we did about the cattle. We do not know, for example, the exact breed(s) of the horses brought from Prussia; all we can say with certainty is that the twenty-six Alexanderwohl settlers for whom we have records brought thirty-three horses with them. In other words, horse ownership was slightly more common than cattle ownership, but only slightly.

Later in Molotschna’s history, during the second half of the nineteenth century, when grain cultivation became the central industry of the colony’s farms, horses played a crucial role. By 1900, Helmut Huebert writes, “the average 65 dessiatine farm [owned] eight to ten work horses” (Huebert 1986, 140). The situation was radically different in 1821, when Alexanderwohl was founded. At that time the settlers were only beginning to break prairie, and their initial fields were quite small. That explains in large part why the Russian government financed a maximum of two horses per farmstead (see here).

So where did the Molotschna settlers purchase the horses needed to sustain their farming operations? Two possibilities stand out as the most likely. The first is mentioned in several of Johann Cornies’s letters. In an August 1826 letter to a close friend Cornies reports:

In May, Builuk sold most of his livestock at the Tokmak yearly market for more than 300 rubles, and exchanged the white horse for a mare. This he now regrets. His grain is growing very well and he has mowed quite a lot of hay. But all of this has made him arrogant and hard to get along with, as you prophesied. Fourteen days ago, it was time for the horses to be taken to the yearly market, and matters reached a crisis, just as they had in Burkut about this time last year when you were here. (Cornies 2015,  73–74)

Apparently this yearly market, held in May, was the same one mentioned in the 1825 letter quoted in the previous post. Now we know the location of that annual livestock market: Tokmak, a large, non-Mennonite town adjoining Molotschna colony, roughly 8 miles northwest of Alexanderwohl (modern Svitle).

Cornies’s 5 October 1834 letter to the District Office reports:

In response to the District Office’s communication No. 3,149, dated 2 October 1834, I report that there are 120 old mares and twenty-one yearling mares for sale at the stud farm of my sheep farm in Iushanle. For several years I have sold my surplus mares and geldings at the annual market in Novo Vassilievka for an average price of 70 to 200 rubles per head. (Cornies 2015, 377)

I have not yet been able to locate Novo Vassilievka, but presumably it, too, was a Russian town not distant at which Mennonites and other farmers in the area bought and sold livestock. In all likelihood, this was an annual market in addition to the one at Tokmak; presumably farmers frequented the one closest to them. Regardless of the details, one thing is clear: the Alexanderwohl settlers had access to livestock markets where they could purchase horses.

A second possibility is that the settlers purchased horses directly from the Nogai, the seminomadic Muslim tribes that lived primarily to the south of Molotschna. Cornies knew more about the Nogai than anyone else of his day, and he described the various aspects of their life and culture in detail, including several sections on their dealings with horses:

The predominant occupation of the Nogais is livestock breeding, and horse breeding is most favoured though it is not very profitable. It was the predominant pursuit until last winter [1824–5], during which three-quarters of the horses were lost to starvation and snowstorms. They are passionate lovers of horses, knowledgeable about them, and they ride well. The Nogais are very skilled in handling horses, and especially in taming them, including also the wild horses that join their herds. Their saddles are very good, with upholstered leather cushions. Their Kalmyk-Kirghiz horse breed is only moderately handsome on the whole, but strong, enduring, and fast. The horse is very useful because of the great distances on the steppe, but on average the value of a horse is not more than thirty to forty rubles, and of a hide, one and a half rubles. At the same time, the horse requires a larger grazing area than other livestock. Large herds of horses, or tabuns, stay out on the steppe for the winter where they must seek their sustenance under the snow. Since the Nogais’ allotted land is not increasing anymore, as it did in the past, it could be much more advantageously used for field cultivation and sheep breeding. (Cornies 2015, 475–76)

Horse breeding leads thousands into a wild, wandering life, nurturing a delight in indolence and disinclination towards field cultivation. They pay little or no attention to the improvement of the breed. Horses of any value require large pastures, and this land itself could be used much more advantageously for increased and improved sheep breeding and field cultivation. (Cornies 2015, 488)

Although Cornies does not, to my knowledge, state directly that the Molotschna colonists purchased horses from the Nogai, it would be surprising if they did not. Granted, the Nogai did raise horses for food, as Cornies explains:

The Nogais much prefer animal foods to vegetables. They like horsemeat better than anything else and it is very warming in winter because of the heat it contains. The meat tastes slightly sweet and they eat the intestines as well. Usually they slaughter sick, old, emaciated horses, or those marked with some fault. Often, newly dead or fallen horses are beheaded and passed off as slaughtered ones. The men prepare a national dish known as Turama with sliced horsemeat, and it is consumed communally as a special sign of brotherhood and friendship. (Cornies 2015, 473)

According to Cornies, the Nogai ate primarily damaged horses, not the strong and the healthy. Thus it seems more likely than not that they sold some of the latter group to area residents, whether German colonists outside of Molotschna or the Mennonite settlers themselves. 

Alexanderwohl settlers did not purchase horses only in the year of their settlement; they also had to replace horses lost to disease or deadly weather, as Cornies recounted in November 1826:

Over the last four years, our region, and especially our community, has been afflicted by the almighty hand of our Heavenly Father. … Since 1822, swarms of grasshoppers have caused great devastation in our area. This has resulted in a serious shortage of food and fodder for man and beast. In 1823 and 1824, virtually nothing remained: no crops on the fields, no pastures for livestock, and very little hay. When I returned home from St. Petersburg in 1824, the livestock was so thin and wasted that I could not comprehend how it could still be alive. Swarms of grasshoppers darkened the sun, there arose dust clouds as dark as the darkest rain, and fierce winds kept anyone from walking along the street. … In February 1825, we had such a devastating snowstorm that all communications were cut and thousands of livestock died. The fodder shortage was so severe that many a villager removed the straw from his roof and fed it to his cattle. Because of the clouds of snow and dust, nothing could be bought at any price, even if it had been available at some distance from here. Such storms that varied in strength and duration continued from mid-February until late March. The temperature, at two to five degrees Reamur [36–43º F], was mild enough for the snow to stick so firmly to anything that it could be removed only with the greatest effort. The eyes of people and animals were glued shut almost immediately upon exposure to the storm. Horses in the yard on my sheep farm were covered with such a layer of snow that one needed to look closely to distinguish the front of a horse from its rear. I too felt the rod and judgment of our loving Father, losing more than 200 horses of my breeding herd, about 1,000 Spanish sheep, and several head of cattle. The damage came to no less than 30,000 rubles. (Cornies 2015, 93)

Of course, in the wake of such a significant loss of livestock, demand would have far oustripped the available supply, leading to higher prices for the scarcer-than-normal livestock.

Over time, Cornelius Krahn reports, the Molotschna colonists crossbred the horses they brought along from Prussia with local breeds, then increased the horse population substantially in order to meet the demands of their intensive grain-based farm economy. 

The horses that the immigrants had brought from West Prussia degenerated during the first decades in Russia. Efforts at improving them were made through the use of stallions of local breeds, which were obtained from the Don Cossacks and later from government studs. The product obtained through this crossing was a combination of farm and carriage horse. It was strongly built, of medium height and usually black or roan in color. With the increase of grain farming, the demand for draft power also increased. In 1836 the number of horses per farm in the Molotschna settlement amounted to 6.2; by 1841 it had increased to 8.4, by 1855 to 10.6. (Krahn 1955)

When Alexanderwohl was founded, each Wirtschaft owner presumably could survive with only two milk cows and two horses at his disposal. That would soon change, as both the farmers and their government supervisors sought to make maximum use of the formerly virgin land at their disposal.

Works Cited

Cornies, Johann. 2015. Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies. Volume 1: 1812–1835. Translated by Ingrid I. Epp. Edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Huebert, Helmut T. 1986. Hierschau: An Example of Russian Mennonite Life. Winnipeg: Springfield.

Krahn, Cornelius. 1955. Agriculture among the Mennonites of Russia. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.

Molotschna Livestock 1

The previous post in the Alexanderwohl series (here) prompted a question: What do we know about the cattle and horses that the early settlers brought from Prussia/Poland and purchased in Molotschna? This post is a first step toward an answer. We begin with the cattle.

As noted earlier, Alexanderwohl’s original settlers brought twenty-nine head of cattle on their journey from Przechovka to Molotschna. Two settlers had four cattle each, four had three each, four more had two each, and one settler had one cow. So what kind of cattle did the Mennonite settlers likely bring?

The papers of Johann Cornies offer us the earliest answer to the question. In a letter addressed to the provincial governor Andrei M. Fadeev, dated 10 January 1826 (so six years after the establishment of Alexanderwohl), Cornies refers to the “Dutch cows” in the Molotschna villages (Cornies 2015, 53). In a later letter written to Major Mark, who is otherwise unknown, Cornies refers to the colonists’ “Frisian cattle” (Cornies 2015, 364).

Both of Cornies’s references are to the same breed, which we can more precisely identify as the East Frisian, or East Friesian. Locating East Frisia on a map (see here) helps one to understand Cornies’s use of the term Dutch as equivalent to East Friesian: the area of East Frisia, although technically part of Germany, was immediately to the east of the Netherlands. The entire Holland–Frisian area was known for its dairy cattle, and the East Friesian was a subtype of the broader Hollander type. (For a full-length history of Holstein-Friesian cattle, see Houghton 1897, which is freely available online.)

Cornies provides the most extensive contemporary description of the East Friesian breed in his letter to Andrei M. Fadeev:

There are several good, authentic Dutch cows in our villages, and each produces no fewer than nine to ten puds [1 pud = 36 pounds] of good butter, or fifteen to sixteen puds of cheese in one year, under conditions of correct, efficient milking, and clean, tidy management of the milk itself. This assumes the cow has a good, regular build, is healthy, is at the best and strongest age, and has ample pasture and healthy, nutritious winter fodder. Naturally, such an average cannot be counted on from ten or more cows, because among ten cows, there will also be some that are younger or older and organically varied to some degree. These would give less butter on average. It is obvious that illness produces great changes in the flow of milk. Variations can be expected from the cows in question, when they may give insufficient milk for days or weeks, even with the best attention and handling. (Cornies 2015, 53)

The Mennonite dairy cows were clearly productive, but, being nonnative, they were also susceptible to the livestock diseases that periodically plagued the region. Cornies’s 1834 letter to Major Mark reflects this reality:

At your request, my friend Tobias Voth has asked me to purchase two good milk cows for you. Much as I would like to oblige, I regret to say that horned cattle have suffered greatly over the past year. Good cattle are difficult to find because cattle plague and fodder shortages have resulted in the loss of many of our best animals. Few genuine Frisian cows remain, and any still alive after these disasters are mostly in the hands of wealthy persons who would not part with them at any price. Middling and poor cows are available occasionally, especially where the money crisis has not been so acute, but these would hardly meet with your approval. I would prefer not to make authorized purchases of such cattle. As you can see, esteemed Major, good cows cannot be bought here this year. (Cornies 2015, 364)

To compensate for this susceptibility to disease, the Molotschna farmers crossbred their East Friesian cattle with local varieties. Cornelius Krahn explains:

The crossing was made with carefully selected specimens of the East Frisian cattle which they had brought along and the Ukrainian gray cattle as well as Kalmuk cattle. The product of this crossing became known as a Molotschna cow or the German Red cow. The average annual milk production per cow was upward of 580 gallons and the fat content was 3.8 to 4 percent. The breeding of the pure East Frisian cow was also continued. (Krahn 1955)

Helmut Huebert adds:

The German Red Cow (Russian: Krasnaya Nyemka) was developed by the Mennonites by crossing the strongest breeds of their East Frisian type with local cattle such as the grey Ukrainian and the Nogaier herds. This produced a new breed which gave a little less milk but was hardier. (Huebert 1986, 140–41)

Huebert goes on to note that in Hierschau of the latter nineteenth century “Each farm had perhaps half a dozen cows, used mostly for milk and butter production. Hierschau had a bull, on occasion perhaps a number of them, used by all farmers for breeding purposes. The Schulzenbott [village assembly] supervised the management of the village bulls (Huebert 1986, 141).

The situation in Alexanderwohl of the 1820s no doubt differed significantly. Most families in the first years after the village was founded had only two cows, not half a dozen. Over time, of course, the herds of some presumably grew, although harsh winter storms and lack of winter forage sometimes led to severe losses (see Cornies 2015, 29). 

In addition, it seems most likely that the Przechovka immigrants who did not previously own cattle purchased local breeds from the Ukrainian or Nogai herds. Although it is conceivable that earlier Molotschna Mennonites had East Friesian cattle to sell, it is far more reasonable to imagine that the cattle purchased with government loans were Ukrainian or Nogai. Still another letter from Cornies offers an enticing look at the Molotschna cattle market in 1825, just four years after Alexanderwohl’s founding:

The shortage of money remains dire, however. It seems that livestock still surviving after last winter cannot be sold at any price. The price for the best Ukrainian cows was twenty rubles at the annual markets in May, but there were still not enough buyers. Thousands of head were left unsold and their poor owners were forced to return to their children, who were waiting painfully for the bread their father was going to buy when he sold his livestock. (Cornies 2015, 29)

At this point in time, Ukrainian cattle were regularly sold at an annual market in May. If this practice was in place in 1821, one might well imagine that Alexanderwohl’s founders began their own small herds by purchasing Ukrainian cattle at the annual market in May. Where this market was located we cannot yet say.

What we can say is that some of Alexanderwohl’s original settlers began their Molotschna lives with the highly productive East Friesian dairy cows, while other villagers probably had to settle for less productive but hardier local breeds. Over time, one would assume, cross breeding took place with most herds, so that most Alexanderwohl farmers ended up with larger herds comprising most the German Red cow. Eventually, to jump far ahead in the story, transportation within the region improved to the extent that “the Mennonites found a good market for butter and cheese in the cities of Berdyansk, Sevastopol, Yevpatoria, Kerch, Taganrog and Ekaterinoslav” (Krahn 1955). So it was that the small herds that originally met the needs of the individual families grew into a large enterprise that both nourished many and enriched the farmers who owned them.

Works Cited

Cornies, Johann. 2015. Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies. Volume 1: 1812–1835. Translated by Ingrid I. Epp. Edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Houghton, Frederick Lowell. 1897. Holstein-Friesian Cattle: A History of the Breed and Its Development in America. Brattleboro, VT: Press of the Holstein-Friesian Register. Available online here.

Huebert, Helmut T. 1986. Hierschau: An Example of Russian Mennonite Life. Winnipeg: Springfield.

Krahn, Cornelius. 1955. Agriculture among the Mennonites of Russia. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.

Alexanderwohl 32

The previous post in the series ended by observing the wide disparity in cattle ownership among Alexanderwohl’s original settlers: fewer than half of the settlers owned any cattle, and 23 percent of the settlers owned 69 percent of all cattle when they settled. As noted, the government loans were apparently designed to correct this imbalance.

The table below reveals this by listing the original farm capital with which each individual arrived, the capital purchased with the government loan, and the total amount of farm capital that the settler owned after combining the original with the new purchase. As before, W stands for wagon, H for horse, and C for cattle.

	Original	Loan	Final
1820 Settlers
Heinrich Jakob Buller	1W + 1H	1H + 2C	1W + 2H + 2C
Jacob Peter Buller	2W + 3H  + 2C	———	2W + 3H + 2C
Martin Jacob Kornelsen	1W	2H + 2C	1W + 2H + 2C
Andreas Jakob Nachtigal	1W + 1H  + 1C	1H  + 1C	1W + 2H + 2C
Jacob Jacob Pankratz	2W + 4H  + 4C	no loan	2W + 4H + 4C
Jacob Heinrich Ratzlaff	1W + 2H  + 3C	———	1W + 2H + 3C
Johann Peter Ratzlaff	1W + 1H  + 2C	1H	1W + 2H + 2C
Andreas David Schmidt	1H?	???	???
Andreas Peter Schmidt	1W	2H + 2C	1W + 2H + 2C
Heinrich David Schmidt	———	1W + 2H  + 2C	1W + 2H + 2C
Jacob David Schmidt	3H?	???	???
David Peter Schroeder	2W + 1H  + 2C	1H	2W + 2H + 2C
Heinrich Isaak Schroeder	1W + 1H	1H  + 2C	1W + 2H + 2C
Johann Peter Schroeder	1W + 2H	2C	1W + 2H + 2C
David David Unrau	1W	2H + 2C	1W + 2H + 2C
David Johann Unrau	1W + 2H + 2C	no loan	1W + 2H + 2C
Heinrich Peter Unrau	1H?	???	1H?
Peter Johann Unrau	1W + 2H + 3C	no loan	1W + 2H + 3C
David Bernhard Voth	1W + 2H + 3C	no loan	1W + 2H + 3C
Jacob David Voth	———	1W + 2H + 3C	1W + 2H + 3C
Peter Heinrich Voth	2W + 2H + 4C	no loan	2W + 2H + 4C
Peter Jacob Voth	1W + 1H	1H + 2C	1W + 2H + 2C
Peter Benjamin Wedel	1W + 3H + 3C	no loan	1W + 3H + 3C
1821 Settlers
Peter Christian Dalke	1W	2H + 2C	1W + 2H + 2C
Peter Benjamin Frey	2C	1W + 2H + 1C	1W + 2H + 3C
1822 Settlers
Jacob Jacob Buller	no record
Peter Johann Reimer	no record
Heinrich Jacob Schmidt	1W	2H + 2C	1W + 2H + 2C
1823 Settler
Heinrich Peter Block	no record
1826 Settler
Peter Franz Goerz	no record

As before, four settlers have no record, and two more (Jacob Schmidt, Heinrich Unrau) lack details. However, the twenty-four remaining records show a remarkable regularity in the farm capital owned at the end of the process, with each settler owning a minimum of one wagon, two horses, and two head of cattle.

For example, Heinrich David Schmidt arrived in Molotschna with no farm capital whatsoever; he received a loan to purchase a wagon, two horses, and two head of cattle; so also Jacob David Voth. Martin Jacob Kornelsen, David David Unrau, and Peter Christian Dalke each owned only a wagon; the loan enabled them each to buy two horses and two head of cattle. The only deviation from this norm is with Peter Benjamin Frey, who owned two head of cattle but was provided a loan to purchase a wagon, two horses, and a third cow. Apparently the particulars of his situation led the local authorities to determine that he needed the extra cow.

On the other end of the spectrum, the settlers who already owned a wagon and at least two horses and two head of cattle received no government loan to purchase farm capital, even if they received a loan to establish a household (Jacob Buller, Jacob Ratzlaff). Everyone else had access to a loan amount that enabled him to fill out the minimum requirement to establish a farm household: one wagon, two horses, and two cattle

The insight we gain from this brief review is not shocking, but it does offer an interesting perspective on the conditions under which the Przechovka settlers built their new village. All those who owned land started with roughly the same resources and opportunity. Of course, this by no means guaranteed that they would all enjoy the same outcome.

Alexanderwohl 31

As we have seen in the various settlement reports included in the Alexanderwohl series, the Russian government recorded the name of the settler, the number of persons in his family, the settlement year, the cash and goods that the settler brought into Molotschna, and the amount of loan, if any, that was given to the settler to establish a household. The previous post in the Alexanderwohl series examined which founding settlers received government loans to set up their households and how much each settler borrowed. This post investigates the other side of the equation: how much cash and goods each settler brought from Prussia to Molotschna.

Before we tabulate the amounts, we must determine how to read one recurring line in the settlement report. The statement in question is underlined in the extracts from settlement reports below (Rempel 2007, 175–76):

Heinrich Jakob Buller: They had no cash. They brought possessions valued at 330 rubles, 1 wagon, 1 horse and no cattle; wagon, horse or head of cattle cost 113 rubles. The local administration suggested providing financial aid for the purchase of 1 horse, 2 head of cattle, at a sum of 160 rubles.…

Jacob Peter Buller: They had with them 2520 rubles cash, possessions valued at 208 rubles, 2 wagon, 3 horses and 2 head of cattle; wagon, horse or head of cattle cost 350 rubles.

Martin Jacob Kornelsen: They had no cash. They brought possessions valued at 405 rubles, 50 kopeks, 1 wagon, no horses and no cattle; wagon, horse or head of cattle cost 110 rubles. The local administration suggested providing financial aid for the purchase of 2 horses, 2 head of cattle at a sum of 210 rubles.…

Andreas Jakob Nachtigal: 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.…

The use of the word cost is confusing, since nothing in sentence implies a purchase being made, and, in fact, any anticipated purchase is dealt with later in the report. It seems that what is actually in view in these sentences is the valuation of the wagon and/or livestock in the immediately preceding clause. Thus, the value of Heinrich Buller’s wagon and horse was 113 rubles, and the value of Jacob Buller’s two wagons, three horses, and two cattle was 350 rubles. Martin Kornelsen’s wagon was valued at 110 rubles (apparently of greater value than Heinrich Buller’s wagon + horse); Andreas Nachtigal’s wagon, horse, and cow were valued at 150 rubles. Although we lack definitive proof that this is the meaning of the recurring statement, it is at present the only way to make sense of all the details of the settlement reports.

Building upon this interpretation, we can arrange the listed assets into three distinct categories: cash, household goods, and farm capital. Each category was valued separately, since the first and the last apparently had great significance for the amount of the loan that a settler would receive, if any. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we should list the assets for each Alexanderwohl settler. In the table below, only rubles are included; kopeks (a kopek is 1/100 of a ruble) are ignored. The following abbreviations are used to save space: W = wagon, H = horse, C = cow.

	Cash	Household Goods	Farm Capital
1820 Settlers
Heinrich Jakob Buller	0 rubles	330 rubles	1W + 1H = 113 rubles
Jacob Peter Buller	2,520 rubles	208 rubles	2W + 3H  + 2C = 350 rubles
Martin Jacob Kornelsen	0 rubles	405 rubles	1W = 110 rubles
Andreas Jakob Nachtigal	0 rubles	250 rubles	1W + 1H  + 1C = 150 rubles
Jacob Jacob Pankratz	2,300 rubles	610 rubles	2W + 4H  + 4C = 730 rubles
Jacob Heinrich Ratzlaff	0 rubles	408 rubles	1W + 2H  + 3C = 420 rubles
Johann Peter Ratzlaff	0 rubles	401 rubles	1W + 1H  + 2C = 264 rubles
Andreas David Schmidt	included —>	400 rubles	1H? = 15 rubles
Andreas Peter Schmidt	0 rubles	304 rubles	1W = 70 rubles
Heinrich David Schmidt	0 rubles	308 rubles	0̸ = 0 rubles
Jacob David Schmidt	0 rubles	500 rubles	3H? = 44 rubles
David Peter Schroeder	0 rubles	303 rubles	2W + 1H  + 2C = 505 rubles
Heinrich Isaak Schroeder	100 rubles	206 rubles	1W + 1H  = 260 rubles
Johann Peter Schroeder	0 rubles	308 rubles	1W + 2H  = 200 rubles
David David Unrau	0 rubles	250 rubles	1W = 50 rubles
David Johann Unrau	800 rubles	406 rubles	1W + 2H  + 2C = 316 rubles
Heinrich Peter Unrau	included —>	300 rubles	1H? = 12 rubles
Peter Johann Unrau	800 rubles	410 rubles	1W + 2H  + 3C = 433 rubles
David Bernhard Voth	685 rubles	503 rubles	1W + 2H  + 3C = 465 rubles
Jacob David Voth	0 rubles	200 rubles	0̸ = 0 rubles
Peter Heinrich Voth	2,150 rubles	335 rubles	2W + 2H  + 4C = 590 rubles
Peter Jacob Voth	75 rubles	302 rubles	1W + 1H  = 170 rubles
Peter Benjamin Wedel	1,200 rubles	500 rubles	1W + 3H  + 3C = 600 rubles
1821 Settlers
Peter Christian Dalke	0 rubles	400 rubles	1W  = 110 rubles
Peter Benjamin Frey	0 rubles	400 rubles	2C  = 110 rubles
1822 Settlers
Jacob Jacob Buller	no record
Peter Johann Reimer	no record
Heinrich Jacob Schmidt	70 rubles	500 rubles	1W  = 110 rubles
1823 Settler
Heinrich Peter Block	no record
1826 Settler
Peter Franz Goerz	no record

As before, several patterns related to the twenty-six settlers for whom there is data merit mention.

1. Fewer than half (twelve of twenty-six) entered Molotschna with cash in hand; fourteen had no cash at all. The amounts of cash varied widely, with amounts ranging from 70 to 2,520 rubles. Only four had more than 1,000 rubles, which was roughly double the amount the Russian government loaned (589 rubles) for building a household and establishing a house.

2. Not surprisingly, three of the four settlers with more than 1,000 rubles in cash settled at their own expense; only Jacob Buller, who had the most cash of all, accepted a government loan, although it was for less than the usual household amount of 589 rubles. The other three people who settled at their own expense were David Johann Unrau (800 rubles), Peter Johann Unrau (800 rubles), and David Bernhard Voth (685 rubles). Clearly, those who had the cash to establish a household typically did so at their own expense.

3. As we would expect, every one of the settlers arrived with household goods, with values ranging from 206 rubles to 610 rubles. This seems a rather narrow range that may reflect that, inequities in cash notwithstanding, these Mennonite families had households roughly equivalent to each other. Of course, a more mundane but equally reasonable explanation is that there were limits to the amount of goods the families could transport 900 miles by wagon, which meant that both rich and poor probably packed and hauled similar amounts.

4. Most of the settlers had one wagon, but six reportedly had none at all, and four had two wagons. One of the settlers with two wagons (Jacob Pankratz) had the highest value of household goods, but another with two wagons (Jacob Buller) had almost the least amount of household goods. The other two owners of two wagons had modest amounts of household goods. Thus there does not seem to be any clear correlation between the hauling capacity of the wagons owned and the value of the household goods transported.

This may actually help to explain how six families made the 900-mile trek with household goods to haul but no wagons to haul them. Since at least three of the two-wagon families seemingly did not need all the space available to them, they may have hauled—for free or at a cost—the possessions of families without a wagon. We should recall that the 1820 group, where five of the no-wagon families appear, did not emigrate as individual families but in a group. Thus it would not be surprising if a fair amount of mutual aid and neighborly assistance took place.

5. Three settlers in the 1820 group (two others in later groups) had a wagon but no animal to pull it. Conveniently, perhaps, three of the families with no wagon owned at least one horse. One wonders if these families, or even those with more horses than they needed (e.g., Peter Wedel’s three horses for one wagon), joined forces to ensure that everyone had horsepower to pull the wagons the 900 miles from Przechovka to Alexanderwohl. If not, then it is likely that a few families had to rely on their own sweat and determination to power the wagons on this long journey.

6. Although some families had more horses than wagons, it appears that one horse pulling a wagon was perfectly acceptable. The cattle were presumably mostly dairy cows, so although they could have been used to pull wagons, it seems doubtful that they were commonly used for draft.

7. Only eleven out of the twenty-six settlers entered Molotschna with cattle in tow. Of these, one had a single cow, while four settlers had two, four other settlers had three, and two settlers had four. This gives the impression (it is no more than that) that cattle were a significant source and sign of wealth: most of the settlers had no cows at all, while six settlers, who were among the richest, accounted for 69 percent (twenty out of twenty-nine) of the village’s initial cumulative herd. Fortunately for the rest, the government loans went a long way to addressing this imbalance, which is where we will pick up the story in the following post. 

Work Cited

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

Svitle: Alexanderwohl Today

We live in a noisy, unrelenting world in which the ring of smart phones, the ding of email alerts, and the other sounds and sights of social media and networking apps keep us all connected and on our toes. Amid this cacophony, it is good for the soul to lose itself for a moment, even if only visually, within a pastoral context. Dmitriy Prokopovich’s photograph of Svitle, the village we know as Alexanderwohl, provides just such a setting and scene.

According to the map posted here, the photo was taken to the southwest of the village, roughly even with the end of wooded area. The photo looks to the north, and one can see the street that traverses the village in the right background. The Behim-Chokrak stream is beyond that, after which the terrain rises noticeably. Alexanderwohl, of course, stretched across the lowland along the stream; the pastures and fields were mostly on higher ground to the south and the north.

Visually and mentally entering this pastoral scene brings a certain degree of peace and quiet, without requiring us to suffer the attendant hardships that characterized life in Alexanderwohl during its early years. The residents of Svitle similarly share the best of both worlds, it seems, living as they do in such a tranquil setting even as they enjoy the connectedness hinted at via the white satellite dishes on the corner of the house in the center left of the photo. 

Ironically, the final resting place of our ancestor Benjamin Heinrich Buller, a long-forgotten grave in an abandoned, farmed-over cemetery, lies not many yards to the southwest of where photographer Dmitriy Prokopovich stood to take this photo. May Benjamin and all the other early residents of Alexanderwohl continue their rest in this peaceful setting.

Birthday Remembrance

Buller Time is, as the blog masthead has stated from the very first post, “an occasional blog for the family of Cornelius (Chris) Buller and Malinda Franz.” Today, 17 April 2018, we take a moment to observe the birthday of the first member of this pair, Grandpa Chris, born 112 years ago this day.

Chris Buller was an amazing person in many ways, some of which have been the subject of Buller Time posts. He was, for example, one of York County’s earliest irrigators (here), an award-winner in the Nebraska State Poultry Show (here), a builder of houses (here) and even of a clock (here and here). It is that last aspect of his life that has left the deepest impression upon me, so much so that I still refer to Grandpa Chris in my own work, as an example of someone who crafted objects with remarkable care and the highest of quality. 

Most of us do not have the skills to equal Grandpa as a master woodworker, but we can emulate his character in using whatever gifts God has given us with care and commitment to excellence. Doing so will be the best remembrance of Chris Buller on every day, not just the anniversary of his birth.

Alexanderwohl 30

Having arranged the settlement list by year and comparing it to the Gemeindebericht’s account in the previous post, we now look at the settlement list from a different angle, again with the dual purpose of both learning more about Alexanderwohl’s origins and assessing how accurately the community report recounts the early history of the village. 

For this exercise we retain the arrangement by year but add information in two columns: the page number in Rempel on which the settlement is recorded and the amount of the government loan, if any, that was extended to the settler. The results are shown in the table below.

	Rempel Page	Loan Amount
1820 Settlers
Heinrich Jakob Buller	175	160 + 589 rubles
Jacob Peter Buller	175	0 + 339 rubles
Martin Jacob Kornelsen	175	210 + 589 rubles
Andreas Jakob Nachtigal	175	105 + 589 rubles
Jacob Jacob Pankratz	176	settled at own expense
Jacob Heinrich Ratzlaff	176	0 + 589 rubles
Johann Peter Ratzlaff	176	50 + 589 rubles
Andreas David Schmidt	178	???
Andreas Peter Schmidt	176	210 + 589 rubles
Heinrich David Schmidt	176	270 + 589 rubles
Jacob David Schmidt	178	???
David Peter Schroeder	176	50 + 589 rubles
Heinrich Isaak Schroeder	176	160 + 489 rubles
Johann Peter Schroeder	176	110 + 589 rubles
David David Unrau	177	210 + 589 rubles
David Johann Unrau	177	settled at own expense
Heinrich Peter Unrau	178	???
Peter Johann Unrau	177	settled at own expense
David Bernhard Voth	177	settled at own expense
Jacob David Voth	177	0 + 586 rubles
Peter Heinrich Voth	177	settled at own expense
Peter Jacob Voth	177	160 + 514 rubles
Peter Benjamin Wedel	177	settled at own expense
1821 Settlers
Peter Christian Dalke	181	210 + 589 rubles
Peter Benjamin Frey	145	160 + 589 rubles
1822 Settlers
Jacob Jacob Buller	not listed	———
Peter Johann Reimer	not listed	———
Heinrich Jacob Schmidt	186?	210 + 589 rubles?
1823 Settler
Heinrich Peter Block	not listed	———
1826 Settler
Peter Franz Goerz	not listed	———

The table contains a good deal of information that requires explanation or merits consideration.

1. The two numbers listed in the right-hand column for most settlers is the amount of financial aid that the settler received for purchasing necessary livestock + the financial aid given for establishing a household. For example, in the first row, Heinrich Buller, the 160 represents the cost of purchasing one horse and two head of cattle, to add to the one horse that he brought with him from Prussia. The 589 is what was granted for “building a house and establishing a household.” Both amounts are given in rubles, presumably silver rubles, not the paper currency.

2. Three settlers have ??? in the Loan Amount column. In each case the settlement report states, “Began receiving financial aid in the year 1820.” There is no indication of the amount or purpose of the financial aid, although one might guess that it was to purchase livestock, if needed, and to build a house. That is only a guess, however. Because these three settlement reports differ in form from all the other 1820 settlement reports, we should probably avoid drawing too many conclusions from the  lack of detail in these three reports.

3. Some settlers were wealthy enough that they did not need financial aid. These individuals are said to have settled at their own expense. Roughly a quarter of the 1820 settlers (six out of twenty-three) self-funded the establishment of their households.

4. Most striking of all is the lack of any records in Rempel for four of the last five Alexanderwohl settlers, those who built houses between 1822 and 1826. We know that each of these four established a household, so why is there neither a record of a loan or to do so nor a statement that the individual settled at his own cost? The circumstances of these settlers give us a clue.

Jacob Jacob Buller, for example, emigrated to Molotschna in 1819, lived with Peter Andreas Richert in Franztal until the latter died in 1821, then settled Alexanderwohl 15 in 1822. Peter Johann Reimer emigrated in 1804, lived in but did not own land in Lichtenau for the first eighteen years, and gained possession of Alexanderwohl 19 in 1822. The third person of this group, Heinrich Peter Block came to Molotschna with his birth family in 1819, lived with them in Franztal, then in 1823, at age thirty, acquired his own Wirtschaft: Alexanderwohl 2. Similarly, Peter Franz Goerz emigrated with his family in 1819, lived with them in Grossweide, then became owner of Alexanderwohl 8 in 1826, also at age thirty.

What do these four individuals have in common? They all moved to Alexanderwohl from some other village within Molotschna colony. They did not emigrate to Molotschna and settle immediately in Alexanderwohl. This makes all the difference in the world. According to Helmut T. Huebert, “Settlers of new villages who came from within Russia received no government subsidy” (Huebert 1986, 42). This must be the explanation that applies to these four: each moved to Alexanderwohl from within Molotschna (Russia); consequently, each one was disqualified from receiving a government loan to buy livestock or build a house. In this respect, these four were more like the six who settled at their own expense than the majority who relied on a government loan to set up their households.

5. One final matter deserves attention: how the information found in our list compares to that given in the community report. The latter states simply: “Of the immigrant families 20 received a government loan of 4104 R. (Rubel), 284/7 K (Kopack) Silver.” As before, it becomes evident that the community report is generally accurate but mistaken with some details. That is, our list agrees that twenty settlers received some sort of financial aid; ten did not. The Russian records confirm the Gemeindebericht.

However, the statement that these twenty loans totaled 4,104 rubles seems seriously mistaken. The total of just the household loans for the seventeen settlers who have loan amounts listed is 9,585 rubles; adding in the three additional unknown amounts, not to mention the loans for the purchase of livestock, would push the total even higher. Perhaps we are misunderstanding the claim of a total loan amount of 4,104 rubles; however, it seems more likely that, nearly three decades after the fact, the total was misremembered and/or miscalculated.

The next post will present another side of the financial equation: how much in cash and goods the Alexanderwohl settlers brought with them to Molotschna.

Works Cited

Huebert, Helmut T. 1986. Hierschau: An Example of Russian Mennonite Life. Winnipeg: Springfield.

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

Alexanderwohl 29

The last few posts of this series (here, here, and here) filled in the three prior gaps in our identification of Alexanderwohl’s original landowners. If contradictory information arises at some point in the future, we will revise our list of the thirty original Wirtschaft settlers, but for now we can proceed under the assumption that we have an accurate list. 

Of course, creating the list was not the entire goal of this exercise; now we want to look at it from various angles and perspectives so that we can develop a more complete understanding of the history of Alexanderwohl. We begin by comparing the 1848 Alexanderwohl Gemeindebericht (community report) with the details of the list, in order to discover the extent of their agreement.

The Gemeindebericht, as we read earlier, reported the founding and early settlement of the village as follows:

By 1821 twenty-two families from the Prussian Chief Magistrate’s District of Schwetz in the regency of Marienwerder were settled there, seven more in 1823 and one more in 1824.

Of course, 22 + 7 + 1 = 30 Wirtschaften settled. Does our list confirm or contradict this accounting of when the plots were settled? We previously arranged the list by Wirtschaft (see, e.g., here), but for the purposes of this examination it matters little which farmstead a family inhabited; more important is the year a family arrived in Molotschna colony and/or established a household, so that is how we will rearrange our list.

1819 Settlers

1. Jacob David Schmidt
2. Heinrich Peter Unrau

1820 Settlers

1. Heinrich Jakob Buller
2. Jacob Peter Buller
3. Martin Jacob Kornelsen
4. Andreas Jakob Nachtigal
5. Jacob Jacob Pankratz
6. Jacob Heinrich Ratzlaff
7. Johann Peter Ratzlaff
8. Andreas David Schmidt
9. Andreas Peter Schmidt
10. Heinrich David Schmidt
11. David Peter Schroeder
12. Heinrich Isaak Schroeder
13. Johann Peter Schroeder
14. David David Unrau
15. David Johann Unrau
16. Peter Johann Unrau
17. David Bernhard Voth
18. Jacob David Voth
19. Peter Heinrich Voth
20. Peter Jacob Voth
21. Peter Benjamin Wedel

1821 Settlers

1. Peter Christian Dalke
2. Peter Benjamin Frey

1822 Settlers

1. Jacob Jacob Buller
2. Peter Johann Reimer
3. Heinrich Jacob Schmidt

1823 Settler

1. Heinrich Peter Block

1826 Settler

1. Peter Franz Goerz

Before we compare the list and the Gemeindebericht directly, we should clarify several matters about the list. First, the two 1819 individuals (Jacob David Schmidt and Heinrich Peter Unrau) emigrated to Molotschna in 1819 but actually did not settle, according to the Russian records, until 1820, with the rest of the largest group of settlers. Therefore, we will count them among the 1820 group.

Second, although the official founding of Alexanderwohl took place in 1821, most of the earliest residents arrived in 1820. These 1820 settlers in our list are the same as the 1821 families referenced in the community report. They arrived in the last three months of 1820, received their government funding, and finished setting up their households, which presumably included building a combination house-barn, sometime in 1821. The Gemeindebericht labels them 1821 settlers because that was the year of the village’s birth.

With these clarifications in mind, we are ready to compare our settlement list with the reconstruction offered by the community report. It is obvious that the two sources agree in broad outline, with over two-thirds of the farmsteads settled during Alexanderwohl’s first year. However, just as we saw when we compared the Waldheim Gemeindebericht with contemporary records (see here), some of the details of the Gemeindebericht do not correspond to our independently created reconstruction.

For example, the compilers of the 1848 community report believed that twenty-two families settled in Alexanderwohl’s first year; in fact, there were at least twenty-three. Further, the community report claims that seven additional families settled in 1823, but our list has only one for that year but lists two for 1821 and three for 1822, to arrive at a total close to the community report’s. (We will return to the issue of the seven 1823 families in a subsequent post, since seven Alexanderwohl names also appear in Rempel 2007, 191.) The community report has the last family settling in 1824, our list in 1826.

That the two sources agree in broad terms should give us confidence that our general understanding of the founding of Alexanderwohl is secure. The main body of the residents arrived in Molotschna in 1820 and completed building their households during the following year. But what do we do about the disagreements with respect to the details?

Two plausible explanations come to mind: either we misinterpreted the settlement information at our disposal and created an inaccurate list, or the compilers of the community report misremembered the specifics of the village’s founding, even though they knew the general contours of that event.

In my view, the latter explanation is the more likely. Recall that the Gemeindebericht was written in 1848, twenty-seven years after Alexanderwohl’s founding. Without access to documentary records, the compilers of the report had to rely upon the village’s collective memory, which one would expect to be trustworthy on the general picture but prone to confuse or misremember various details.

They recalled, for example, that the last Wirtschaft was not claimed until after the earlier settlements but seemingly misdated that settlement by several years. Similarly, they knew that over twenty families settled the first year, but they misremembered the exact number and missed it by one. Yet again, they seemed to know that all but one of the Wirtschaften were settled by 1823 (i.e., the report’s 22 + 7), but they mistakenly compressed the settlements spanning three years into a single year: 1823.

What is the lesson we should learn from this? Although the Alexanderwohl Gemeindeberichte is broadly accurate, it is not a contemporary source, at least not as contemporary as the Russian settlement reports that Peter Rempel (2007) has compiled. The further removed any source is from the event that it purports to record, the greater the likelihood that the record will contain one or more errors, at least in terms of the specific details that it offers. We will see the same dynamic at work when we consider our list from another perspective, as we will do in the following post.

Work Cited

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

Hierschau

The field of Mennonite history is rich with publications of various types and appropriate for readers of all levels. This blog has had occasion to mention some of them from time to time, such as From Kleefeld with Love (Harder 2003), Cross-Cultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppe: Settling the Molochna Basin, 1783–1861 (Staples 2003), Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies (Cornies 2015), A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp, 1851–1880 (Dyck 1991), None But Saints: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia 1789–1889 (Urry 1989),  and The Coming of the Russian Mennonites: An Episode in the Settling of the Last Frontier, 1874–1884 (Smith 1927), to name just a few.

The nice thing about all of these books is that they can be purchased easily or, in the case of The Coming of the Russian Mennonites, downloaded freely. Unfortunately, a number of older but no less important works are not so readily available. For example, Heinrich Goerz’s The Molotschna Settlement (1993) is out of print and available only from used booksellers. So also most other titles in the Echo Historical Series, such as Goerz’s Mennonite Settlements in Crimea (1992), David H. Epp’s Johann Cornies (1995), and Gerhard Lohrenz’s Zagradovka: History of a Mennonite Settlement in Southern Russia (2000). 

Yet another volume that fits into this category—too little known and not easily acquired—is Helmut T. Huebert’s Hierschau: An Example of Russian Mennonite Life (Huebert 1986). As far as I am able to tell, Hierschau is out of print, thus unavailable from Amazon and most other online booksellers. The book is offered for sale at the Kindred Productions website (here), with whom the original publisher, Springfield Publishers, cooperated. But it seems that Springfield has gone out of business, so for all practical purposes the book is or soon will be out of print.

This is unfortunate (and avoidable—see below), since Huebert’s work should interest anyone with a desire to learn more about nineteenth-century Molotschna. The village of Hierschau, if you recall, was only a kilometer down the road west from Waldheim, where David Buller lived out his days. Further west, but still along the same road, was Alexanderwohl, the home of many Bullers and the center of our interest in recent weeks. Hierschau, in other words, was right in the middle of the area where our ancestors lived. In fact, several Bullers lived in Hierschau itself from its very earliest days.

Huebert is more a storyteller than a professional historian, but he seems to be a careful storyteller who conducts thorough research and narrates only what he knows to be accurate. Huebert’s skills  and expertise are evident in every chapter; the following excerpt, in a section on the Molotschna colony’s climate, is but one example of the informative yet engaging style on display:

Overall yearly precipitation was low, averaging 30–35 cm (12–14 inches), most of this coming in May, June and July. Unfortunate­ly, the rain often came in the form of violent rainstorms, sometimes accompanied by hail. A 1901 report from Tiegerweide mentions that it was hot and dry, except for thunderstorms with hail in early May. This was followed by great downpours in the last half of June; much grain on the steppe was flooded away; vegetables in the gardens on a number of occasions were under four feet of water. Another description of the same period tells of a terrible storm on June 23, 1901, in which a severe weather system with rain and hail wrought great destruction in Muntau, Halbstadt, Petershagen and Ladekopp. Standing grain was flattened by hail, fruit was destroyed, much foliage knocked off and gardens were damaged. Even some old majestic trees were twisted off or uprooted. Hailstones were as large as walnuts and were “piled up as high as the windows.” Many laden and empty wagons were overturned, and buildings, particularly barns and sheds were damaged. In the forests and gardens there were many dead crows, songbirds and doves. Though there was no loss of human life, some people had black eyes and swollen ears. The storm was likely quite widespread, since other villages in the Molotschna also reported severe damage. (Huebert 1986, 21)

So much for an illustration of his style. What about the contents of the book? Huebert’s work begins by setting the background: beginning with the rise of Anabaptism and specifically Mennonitism, through the emigration first to Poland, then to Molotschna, whose physical features and ecology he describes in detail. He then moves to the establishment of Hierschau in 1848, filling in the details as needed by drawing on the patterns and practices from other Molotschna villages. For example, he reconstructs the founding of Hierschau as follows:

As had been the case in Landskrone, it is likely that applications were accepted in the Molotschna for sites in the new village, in this instance to be a model village. If there were more applicants than sites, the correct number would have been chosen by lot. The site, and likely the village plans were already drawn up by Johann Cornies, so it re­mained to mark out the streets and yards by plowing a furrow along the borders. (Huebert 1986, 40)

Huebert then recounts as much of the history of the village as he is able, often by means of a brief biography of a prominent citizen. Passing through the golden age that characterized the latter part of the nineteenth century, he turns to World War I and the Russian Revolution, the years of the Soviet-created famine, and, finally, the hardships in and aftermath of World War II’s Eastern Front, after which Hierschau ceased to be a Mennonite village.

I write all this to make several points. First, Huebert’s Hierschau is both informative and an engaging read, so I encourage anyone interested in the history of Molotschna colony, or the Russian Mennonite experience in general, to secure a copy to read, if ever you have a chance.

Second and more important, Huebert’s Hierschau is an example of a valuable piece of Mennonite history that is in danger of being lost to the sizable group of Mennonites whose interest in Mennonite history is more casual and personal than academic or professional. Important works such as Huebert’s Hierschau, as well as all of the Echo Historical Series volumes and similar works now available only from used booksellers, should, in my view, be brought back on the market so that they receive the broad readership that they deserve.

The technical aspect of bringing these books back into print is simpler than many realize. As long as one has a clean copy of the book, it can be submitted to a print-on-demand printer, who will scan the book into a PDF file that can be printed as a paperback or hardcover book, then printed “on demand,” that is, whenever an order is placed. The cost of putting a book such as this back into print is usually less than $200, often much less.

If one wants to invest greater time and effort, it is a relatively simple thing to do to scan a book, then use the OCR (optical character recognition) function of Adobe Acrobat to turn the scanned pages into actual text, that is, letters and words and sentences and paragraphs. One can then copy that text into a page-layout program such as Adobe InDesign so that the finished product looks like a brand new book. That InDesign file is then output as a PDF file that can be sent to the on-demand printer for printing and sale, just as before.

Even better, once one has a PDF file of the book, one can create a Print Replica Kindle version that can be read on any computer, tablet, or similar device. The cost of creating this Kindle e-book is zero; all that it requires is a few minutes of time on a computer. So, if one wanted, one could make a book such as Huebert’s Hierschau available in both print and e-book format, so that it is not lost to future generations of Mennonite readers.

None of this is difficult from a technical perspective. The only real challenges are determining who owns the rights to a given book (i.e., who would need to give permission to have the book published) and identifying an entity to serve as the publisher of these books. This latter task is not something for an individual to take on; rather, some Mennonite organization would need to be the one who officially publishes and, more importantly, sells the books. If such an organization exists, they could do a great service by preserving these artifacts of the Mennonite past.

We will return to our normal fare in the next post, but I wanted to get these ideas down in writing and, more important, out before Buller Time’s readers, some of whom might be in a position to move them toward reality. I am always happy to talk publishing (my email address is at the upper right of the blog); it is, after all, both my career and my passion—after Buller Time, of course.

Works Cited

Cornies, Johann. 2015. Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies. Volume 1: 1812–1835. Translated by Ingrid I. Epp. Edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Dyck, Harvey L., ed. and trans. 1991. A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp, 1851–1880. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Epp, David H. 1995. Johann Cornies. Translated by Peter Pauls. Echo Historical Series 3. Winnipeg: CMBC and Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Goerz, Heinrich. 1992. Mennonite Settlements in Crimea. Translated by John B. Toews. Echo Historical Series 13. Winnipeg: CMBC and Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

———. 1993. The Molotschna Settlement. Translated by Al Reimer and John B. Toews. Echo Historical Series 7. Winnipeg: CMBC and Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Harder, John A., ed. and trans. 2003. From Kleefeld with Love. Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora Press.

Huebert, Helmut T. 1986. Hierschau: An Example of Russian Mennonite Life. Winnipeg: Springfield.

Lohrenz, Gerhard. 2000. Zagradovka: History of a Mennonite Settlement in Southern Russia. Translated by Victor G. Doerksen. Echo Historical Series 4. Winnipeg: CMBC and Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Smith, C. Henry. 1927. The Coming of the Russian Mennonites: An Episode in the Settling of the Last Frontier, 1874–1884. Berne, IN. : Mennonite Book Concern, 1927)

Staples, John R. 2003. Cross-Cultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppe: Settling the Molochna Basin, 1783–1861. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Urry, James. 1989. None But Saints: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia 1789–1889. Winnipeg: Hyperion Press.