Przechovka Emigration 1

As we recently observed in our examination of the 1848 Alexanderwohl community report, the claim that a large body of members from the Przechovka church located in West Prussia/Poland emigrated to Molotschna in 1820 to establish the village of Alexanderwohl is generally accurate and reliable. 

We can demonstrate from contemporary records, including visas and settlement reports (see Rempel 2007, 172–73, 175–77), that around twenty-five families left their homes along the Vistula River in late August or early September of 1820, journeyed together past Warsaw all the way to Molotschna colony, where they founded Alexanderwohl the following year. Thus we are correct to affirm the general accuracy of the report that “in 1821 twenty-two families settled there.” 

Although the story in the Gemeindebericht is correct, it is apparently not complete, especially regarding the following statement:

this local community, which had existed as a church community in Prussia for over two hundred years, emigrated to Russia under the leadership of its church elder, Peter Wedel.

Taking the statement at face value, one would naturally understand it to mean that the church that had existed in Prussia for two centuries emigrated to Russia as a single group under the leadership of its elder, Peter Wedel. As far as I can tell, that seems to be the consensus view of the relation between Przechovka and Alexanderwohl: the entire Przechovka church moved from Molotschna under Peter Wedel’s leadership and founded the village Alexanderwohl there.

The truth of the matter, it seems, is not so simple and tidy. Over the next few posts we will consider documentary evidence that implies rather strongly that the 1820 group under Wedel was not the first group of Przechovka church members who emigrated to Molotschna. In fact, the 1820 group was not even the biggest group of Przechovka emigrants to Molotschna. 

To make this case, the following posts will learn as much as we can about a a number of Przechovka-area emigrants from 1819. Who were they? When did they journey to Molotschna? Which of them, if any, were members of the Przechovka church? Where did these emigrants settle once they arrived in Molotschna? After answering these questions as fully as possible for each emigrant family, we will step back and consider what our discoveries imply about the overall emigration of the Przechovka church from West Prussia to New Russia.

1. Background Matters

Peter Rempel’s Mennonite Migration to Russia: 1788–1828 provides an extensive list of Mennonites who were issued visas in 1819 (2007, 116–39). These visas were issued by the Russian general consulate in Danzig after an applicant received a passport (permission to travel) from the Prussian government. Przechovka church members received their passports from Marienwerder, capital of the Marienwerder administrative district from 1815 until 1945.

The year 1819 was a time of heavy and constant emigration, as can be seen by the number of visas issued each day in June (each visa was for an entire family):

2 June: 1
12 June: 2
15 June: 6
19 June: 28
22 June: 11
24 June: 1
26 June: 3
28 June: 17
29 June: 19
30 June: 30

June was not the only month during which visas were issued; during the months between May and September 457 visas were issued permitting Mennonite families to enter New Russia, most of them bound for Molotschna colony.

May: 12
June: 118
July: 322
September: 5

The month of July was by far the month with the highest volume of visas issued; it is also the month that interests us.

Each entry in Rempel records the same basic information, as shown in two examples below:

Martin Schroeter Farmer from Liessau with his wife, 2 sons. Passport from Danzig issued on June 20, 1819.

Abraham Franz Mennonite from Montau with his wife, 2 sons, 1 daughter. Passport from Marienwerder issued on June 25, 1819.

The head of household’s name, occupation, and village of residence is recorded, then the number of other members of the family. Last is the place and date at which the Prussian passport was issued. It is this last piece of information that helps us to narrow our search for possible Przechovka church members. Knowing that the Przechovka church was located in the Marienwerder district, we can safely ignore all the Danzig passports.

Thumbing through Rempel’s pages, we finally come to a block of Marienwerder passports at the top of page 136. Now we are ready to look for village names. The first person lived in Montau, the next two in Gatsch, then Kommerau, two from Grappe, Obergruppen, another Kommerau, then Montau, Treul, Sanskow, and another Montau. None of these villages is associated with Przechovka.

The next entry, however, is for Peter Becker from Przechowko, exactly the right place. Following is a Mennonite from Glugowko, a small village closely associated with Przechovka (see Glenn Penner’s list of West Prussian Mennonite villages here). After another Przechowko we encounter Dworzysko, another Przechovka village. The same is true of the following Konopath and on and on and on.

Suffice it to say that nestled within Rempel is a list of thirty-two Przechovka-area Mennonites who all received a visa to enter Russia on 20 July 1819. We cannot assume that all or even any were members of the Przechovka church. There was, after all, at least one other Mennonite church in the immediate area. Our next step, then, is to identify these thirty-two families as fully as possible, so that we can determine if any were part of the Przechovka church. We will pick up the search at that point 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.