Siebert or Hiebert?

It occurred to me this afternoon that I had no idea where in Molotschna Johann Siebert, the father of Sarah, who was the the wife of Peter D Buller, lived before taking up residence in Kleefeld. I thought it would be easy enough to find out: I would simply look in the 1835 Molotschna census. Certainly the name of Johann’s father, Cornelius Peter, would appear.

Surprisingly, the index to the census (here) lists only one Siebert family in the entire colony, and it is not Cornelius Peter Siebert but rather Heinrich Peter Siebert, who was born around 1800 (based on his reported age) and who resided at Elizabethtal 1. The absence of Johann’s father Cornelius was a mystery begging for a solution.

GRANDMA is obviously the first place to look, but the entry for Johann Siebert offers no mention of the census. The only conclusion we can draw from the information there is that Johann was thirteen years old in 1835.

We should not overlook the fact that Johann’s father Cornelius and the Heinrich listed in the census both have the middle name Peter, which raises the possibility that they had the same father. There is only one place to look for the answer: GRANDMA. The entry for Cornelius links to his father Peter, whose page is shown below.

Obviously, Cornelius Peter and Heinrich Peter were brothers, with the former born circa 1796 and the latter in 1802. The page for Heinrich Peter adds that he resided at Elizabethal 1 in the 1835 census (as we noted above) and notes that he came to Russia in 1822. What about the page for Cornelius?

Note first that Johann is listed as Cornelius Peter’s fourth child, born 13 June 1822. Farther down in the Notes section we read: “The 1835 Molotschna Census lists him at Elisabethal #22 and says he came to Russia in 1828.” According to GRANDMA, then, Cornelius lived in the same village as his brother Heinrich at the time of the 1835 census. If this is true, then why is Cornelius not listed in the index to the census?

The English translation of the census we have consulted previously (see here for background on that translation) reveals the answer to this question. 

Family 22 in Elizabethal lists the head of household as Kornelius Peter Hiebert. The parenthetical “Siebert” above the line (with a question mark) is presumably a translator’s addition. Comparing the names and ages of the sons in the census against the GRANDMA entry (children 3, 4, 5, and 8), as well as two daughters on the census page not shown, confirms that this family is that of Cornelius Peter Siebert, not Hiebert. The fact that Cornelius’s brother Heinrich lived at the same village only increases the probability that this is Cornelius Peter Siebert. In other words, it seems that the census mistakenly records Hiebert for Siebert and thus obscures, at least at first glance, the presence of our Siebert ancestor in 1835 Molotschna.

Knowing that Johann was raised in Elizabethal fills in a small piece of his history, but it may open the door to us for a better understanding of when and how he ended up in Kleefeld thirteen years later. At least now we can watch more attentively for other clues about Johann or his family’s whereabouts and doings in Molotschna during the middle of the nineteenth century.

One final note: According to the census, the Cornelius Peter Siebert family settled in Molotschna in 1828. GRANDMA adds that they emigrated there from the Gross Werder (large marsh) in Prussia (Poland), a lowland area where the Vistula empties into the Baltic Sea. Johann was six years old when his family journeyed to Molotschna. Johann then spent the balance of his childhood and over three decades of his adult life in Molotschna, before emigrating to the United States in 1879. Johann Siebert did not merely move from one country to another once in his life; he actually did so twice—and even moved from one continent to another when we was nearly sixty years old. Like many others of his generation, Johann was quite a remarkable person to have persevered through so much. We all can take a lesson from his life.