Przechovka Emigration 7

The first six posts in this series have offered significant support for the hypothesis that the 1820 group of emigrants from Przechovka, the one credited with settling Alexanderwohl, was neither the first nor the largest group of emigrants from that West Prussian/Polish church. Nevertheless, we should keep an open mind about the question as we work through the second half of the list of thirty-two 1819 emigrant families. We continue with the next group  of four.

17. Peter Frey was a farmer from Jeziorka whose family included a wife and two daughters. We find only four Peter Freys in the entire Przechovka church book, three of whom were deceased in 1819. GRANDMA offers the same information, which leads us tentatively to identify this emigrant as PCB 1351/GM 35807.

The evidence on the number of Peter Frey’s daughters at this time is mixed. GRANDMA lists only one, which would seem to conflict with the visa statement that Peter and his wife had two daughters. However, two later settlement reports (Rempel 2007, 145, 158) state that there were only two females in the family, which probably indicates that one daughter had died in the interim so that only mother  (her name is unknown) and one daughter remained.

The settlement report is also valuable for telling us where Peter Frey and family settled:

Peter Frey (Петр Фрей), whose family consists of 1 male and 2 females. On their move to Russia they brought 114 rubles cash, horses valued at 20 rubles and possessions valued at 80 rubles. They arrived in Russia in 1819 and settled in Franztal, Molotschna. (Rempel 2007, 158)

The Franztal portion of the 1835 Molotschna census agrees that Peter Frey settled there (Wirtschaft 27) but adds that he and his family moved to Alexanderwohl in 1821. The Alexanderwohl entry for Peter Frey (Wirtschaft 22) adds yet further information: that he emigrated in 1819 and that his first wife had died (apparently in 1820 or 1821) and he had remarried and had more children. 

Peter Frey thus demonstrates all the patterns that we have seen develop through the first half of this investigation: a member of the Przechovka church, he emigrated in 1819 and settled first in Franztal. However, in 1821 he moved to Alexanderwohl, where the majority of the 1820 Przechovka church emigrants had settled.

18. Jacob Ratzlaff, a Mennonite from Przechovka, was accompanied to Molotschna by his wife, one son, and one daughter. The Przechovka church book lists eleven men by this name (another is crossed out), six of whom can be excluded as deceased or too young to have a family in 1819. Unfortunately, none of the five remaining Peter Ratzlaffs seems to be the person on this visa (birth year in parentheses):

• GM 47812 (1765) emigrated in 1820 (Rempel 2007, 173).
• GM 47820 (1765) emigrated in 1822, according to records for his son (see next; see also Rempel 2007, 184).
• GM 47841 (1799) emigrated in 1822, according to the Friedensdorf 11 census entry.
• GM 47739 (1771) was associated with the Deutsch-Wymysle church.
• GM 47848 (1802) was associated with the Deutsch-Wymysle church.

Three additional men named Jacob Ratzlaff from this time period also fail as candidates:

• GM 112574 (1765) apparently was born and lived in the Neumark area.
• GM 31774 (about 1780) was associated with the Deutsch-Wymysle church.
• GM 47848 (1802) was associated with the Deutsch-Wymysle church.

This emigrant must remain unidentified for the time being. That he was from Przechovka is clear, but we cannot say anything further about him.

19. Peter Becker was a Mennonite from Konopath; he and his wife had five daughters. According to Rempel, this is the same individual for whom we have two settlement reports (2007, 141, 157), the latter of which is reproduced here.

Peter Becker (Петр Бекер), whose family consists of 2 males and 6 females. On their move to Russia they brought 50 rubles cash, horses valued at 80 rubles and possessions valued at 100 rubles. They arrived in Russia in 1819 and settled in Franztal, Molotschna.

The listing of two males would imply either that the visa was incorrect or that a son was born to the family between the issuing of the visa and the later settlement.

What is important about this listing is that it apparently reveals an error with an earlier identification, in fact, with the very first one made: Peter Becker 1 (here). If you recall, we noted then that there were three Peter Beckers in this party of thirty-two households. After investigating further, I am now convinced that the one identified earlier is actually this emigrant. That obviously raises the question of the identity of number 1; we will return to that in the next post. For now, the task is to explain why Peter Becker PCB 321/GM 32099 should be identified as number 19 on this list. 

As noted above, the Peter Becker in view here had a wife and five daughters according to the visa but a wife, five daughters, and a son according to the settlement reports. This actually accords fairly well with what we know of Peter Becker GM 32099. According to the 1835 census (Franztal 17), he still had three daughters at home: Katherina and Cornelia by his fourth (and current) wife; Elizabeth by his third wife (this daughter is missing in GRANDMA). Becker also had daughters by his second wife, and according to GRANDMA two of them were apparently alive and at home in 1819 (as best as we can tell).

In addition, Peter Becker’s son Jacob was born around 1819 (the precise date is not known), which would correspond to the notion that was not born until after the visa application but sometime before the settlement later that year.

Because Peter Becker GM 32099 fits the facts of this emigrant so closely, we should retract the earlier identification and assign him to this individual.

20. Kornelius Richert was a Mennonite from Przechovka whose family included a wife, one son, and two daughters; his brother-in-law Peter Pankratz is also listed as a member of the traveling party. The listing of his brother-in-law helps us to identify this individual, since it reveals his wife’s maiden name. Thus we can state with reasonable confidence that this person was PCB 1251/GM 48300.

Born in 1787, Kornelius Richert married Helena (Lehnke) Pankratz in 1809. It is not clear how many of their children were still living in 1819 (Jacob 6951 complicates matters), but the most reasonable count is a son and two daughters. (See below on brother-in-law Peter Pankratz.)

Rempel cross-references two settlement reports (2007, 142, 159), but they complicate matters further, since they disagree on the gender distribution in the family: two males and three females (what we expect) versus one male and four females. The discrepancy may be a clerical error, although we cannot be certain. The one thing both settlement reports confirm is that Kornelius Richert emigrated in 1819.

Further, the 1835 Molotschna census locates this family at Franztal 11 (the second settlement report mentioned above agrees), which is not surprising, given what we have seen throughout with other emigrants on the list. The census confirms the 1819 emigration date and the names of the children known to us.

In the end, this family follows the pattern we have previously observed: a member of the Przechovka church emigrated to Molotschna in 1819 and settled in Franztal. Out of the four individuals covered in this post, three adhere to that same pattern.

***

If the name Peter Pankratz sounds familiar, it is because it has arisen at least three times previously in this series: once as emigrant number 15 and twice as a driver on the journey (numbers 6 and 15). It is interesting to note now that brother-in-law Peter Pankratz is listed on the Kornelius Richert visa but apparently was not part of the settlement party for that family, since the settlement reports list at most two males, which were Kornelius and his son. 

This raises the question whether the Peter Pankratz who was Helena Pankratz’s brother (i.e., brother-in-law to Kornelius Richert) ended up as the driver for one of the other parties (either 6 or 15). We have no evidence to support or disprove this notion (it does not even rise to the level of a hypothesis), but it is interesting to think of the possibilities.

One thing we do know: according to the 1835 census, the Peter Pankratz who was Helena Pankratz’s brother later owned Wirtschaft 4 in Franztal (see earlier comments about Peter here). The connections between this group of 1819 emigrants and Franztal continue to increase.

	Name	PCB/GM	Comment
1	Peter Becker	??	originally misidentified
2	Jacob Wedel	276/106688	based on association with Glugowko
3	Heinrich Unrau	1149/86839	settled at Alexanderwohl 14
4	Peter Wedel	??	perhaps PCB 262/GM 81631, a Przechovka elder
5	Heinrich Ratzlaff	141/47821	settled at Franztal 25
6	Anna Pankratz	140/43100	widow and sister to number 5 above
7	Jacob Becker	334/32008	Jacob passed away; his widow married Tobias Schmidt (number 28)
8	Adam Ratzlaff	192/4327	settled at Franztal 19
9	George Nachtigal	662/42260	settled at Franztal 3
10	Peter Unrau	1322/61701	settled at  Franztal 22
11	Martin Cornelsen	1250/33801	emigrated in 1820; settled at Alexanderwohl 1
12	Martin Köhn	??	first name probably an error
13	Maria Schmidt	??	probably from Przechovka
14	Benjamin Ratzlaff	1320/47884	settled first in Franztal
15	Peter Pankratz	??	destination unknown
16	Andreas Schmidt	1272/43155	settled at Alexanderwohl 14
17	Peter Frey	1351/35807	settled first in Franztal; moved to Alexanderwohl in 1821
18	Jacob Ratzlaff	??	Mennonite from Przechovka
19	Peter Becker	321/32099	settled at Franztal 17
20	Kornelius Richert	1251/48300	settled at Franztal 11

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.