Alexanderwohl 27

In the previous post we identified the names of three persons who may have been the founders of the Alexanderwohl Wirtschaften that we have thus far been unable to assign. To recap, we compared the list of 1820 Russian settlers in Rempel 2007 against our list of known Alexanderwohl settlers in order to discover if any remaining names in Rempel’s 1820 list might plausibly be considered as original Alexanderwohl settlers. 

We uncovered three such names: Jacob Ratzlaff, David Schroeder, and Jacob Voth. The goal of this and the following post is to identify these individuals as fully as possible, drawing on visa records, GRANDMA, and, for Ratzlaff and Voth, the Przechovka church book, so that we can ascertain how closely they were associated with known Alexanderwohl settlers, which in turn will enable us to develop a reasonable opinion on whether or not any of these three were likely founders of Alexanderwohl.

We begin with what we know of the three individuals, which is recorded in Rempel 2007, 176–77:

Jakob Ratzlaff (Якоб Рацлав), whose family consists of 1 male and 2 females. Settled in Russia in the year 1820. They had no cash. They brought possessions valued at 408 rubles, 70 kopeks, 1 wagon, 2 horses, 3 head of cattle; wagon, horse or head of cattle cost 420 rubles. The local administration suggested providing financial aid for building a house and establishing the household at a sum of 589 rubles.

David Schroeder (Давид Шретер), 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 303 rubles, 2 wagon, 1 horse, 2 head of cattle; wagon, horse or head of cattle cost 505 rubles. The local administration suggested providing financial aid for the purchase of 1 horse at a sum of 50 rubles, and also for building a house and establishing the household, at a sum of 589 rubles.

Jakob Voth (Якоб Фот), whose family consists of 1 male and 1 female. Settled in Russia in the year 1820. They had no cash. They brought possessions valued at 200 rubles, no wagon, no horses and no cattle. The local administration suggested providing financial aid for the purchase of 1 wagon, 2 horses, 2 head of cattle at a sum of 270 rubles, and also for building a house and establishing the household, at a sum of 586 rubles.

1. Jacob Ratzlaff

If the first entry seems somewhat familiar, it is because we already looked at it in our examination of Wirtschaft 30 (here), which we decided, based on the evidence of the census, was settled by David David Unrau. Our earlier discussion was, however, not in vain, as some of the things we discovered take on particular relevance here. 

First, this Jacob Ratzlaff may well be the same person as the one mentioned in the following visa:

Jacob Ratzlaff from Groudowko, his wife Sarah 60 (b. ca. 1760). Passport from Marienwerder issued on July 11, 1820. (Rempel 2007, 173)

The problem, of course, is explaining how husband and wife Jacob and Sarah might have become one male and two females in the settlement report above. Still, because we know of no other Jacob Ratzlaff who emigrated in 1820, it seems most likely that the Jacob Ratzlaff of the visa is the Jacob Ratzlaff of the settlement report.

Second, it is almost certain that this person is the Jacob Heinrich Ratzlaff listed after Alexanderwohl 30. Only one other Jacob Ratzlaff is listed at Alexanderwohl: Jacob Jacob Ratzlaff. He is listed at Alexanderwohl 32 and is said to have entered Russia in 1822, stayed in Alexanderwohl for an unspecified time, then transferred to Friedensdorf. All that to say, the Jacob Ratzlaff listed in the settlement report above and the visa was in all probability Jacob Heinrich Ratzlaff who is listed after Wirtschaft 30. 

Third, we can further identify Jacob Heinrich Ratzlaff as a member of the Przechovka church, specifically PCB 107 (see also GRANDMA 47812). Obviously, his Przechovka roots increase the likelihood that he settled in Alexanderwohl, where all the other 1820 Przechovka émigrés settled.

Fourth, we learn from the 1835 Molotschna census that Jacob Heinrich Ratzlaff died in 1822, shortly after the founding of Alexanderwohl. This last fact is perhaps the most significant one of all, since it may help us to explain why Jacob Heinrich Ratzlaff is not identified with any particular farmstead in Alexanderwohl. More on that in a moment, but for now we need to restate the evidence.

We know that a Jacob Ratzlaff emigrated to Molotschna in 1820 and that a Jacob Ratzlaff established a Wirtschaft, or farmstead, in Molotschna the same year. We know that Jacob Heinrich Ratzlaff was in Alexanderwohl during the first few years of its existence and died there in 1822. We also know of no other Jacob Ratzlaff who might have established a farmstead in Alexanderwohl. Taking all these known facts together, the most reasonable conclusion is that Jacob Heinrich Ratzlaff established a Wirtschaft in Alexanderwohl in 1820, before he passed away two years later. In spite of his short tenure in Alexanderwohl, he was almost certainly one of the village’s founding settlers.

If this is correct, then why, one might wonder, was he not identified with the Wirtschaft that he had formerly owned? That is, why was he not listed under that Wirtschaft in the census? An earlier post suggested (see the note at the end of the post here) that the names after Alexanderwohl 30’s head of household David Unrau begin the general listing of landless persons who inhabited Alexanderwohl. In other words, the names listed after David Unrau have nothing to do with Alexanderwohl 30; they are, rather, a different group of people, such as the landless in Alexanderwohl.

The case of Jacob Heinrich Ratzlaff both reinforces and nuances that suggestion. On the one hand, the listing of Jacob Ratzlaff strengthens the suspicion that the individuals listed after David Unrau were not associated with Alexanderwohl 30. On the other hand, Jacob Ratzlaff was owner of some other Wirtschaft, but he was a landowner, not landless. Therefore, his listing after (!) Wirtschaft 30 raises the possibility that not all of those listed at the end of the census, after the farmstead owners have been recorded, were landless. At least one—there may be more—was a deceased landowner.

Why was Jacob Ratzlaff not listed with his original farmstead? It may have been that, by 1835, after he had been dead for thirteen years, no one remembered precisely which Wirtschaft he owned. It is also possible, and probably more likely, that he was moved to the end of the census simply because there was no compelling reason to associate him with a given plot. It was sufficient to record the fact that he had lived and died in Alexanderwohl. Perhaps those more expert in the matter can weigh in and offer their perspectives on this interpretation of the arrangement of the census.

Regardless of the merits of the proposed understanding of the census layout, one conclusion remains relatively certain: Jacob Heinrich Ratzlaff was one of Alexanderwohl’s founding settlers. Only two gaps remain, two gaps that we will explore further 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.