Przechovka Emigration 11

After taking a brief detour to identify several 1819 emigrants who showed up on a Volhynia list, we are ready to return to our list of thirty-two families as recorded in Rempel’s Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828. We ended with family 20, headed by Kornelius Richert (see the post here); we pick up with the next family in the list.

21. Peter Ratzlaff, a Mennonite from a village that Rempel writes as “Bek(e/o)rntz,” had a wife and one son. Now that we have a copy of the original record, we can check the reading of the West Prussian village for ourselves.

Peter Ratzlaff is the first one listed in the extract, number 497. The second line of the main column of his entry identifies him as a “Menonite de Bekersitz,” or, a Mennonite from Beckersitz. I see nothing unclear in the reading; the letters all seem reasonably clear, so Rempel’s uncertain reading should be replaced with the more certain Beckersitz, a village known to us from other sources (here).

The Przechovka church book lists fifteen men named Peter Ratzlaff, but the majority were either dead or too young to have a family by 1819. Of the remaining candidates, one stands out as particularly promising: Peter Heinrich Ratzlaff (PCB 111/GM 47815). He was born in 1784, married the first time in 1809 (his wife died childless) and a second time in 1812. His first son, also named Peter, was born in 1813, but his next child was not born until 1826. In other words, as far we know this Peter Ratzlaff had a wife and one son in 1819.

More tellingly, the 1835 Molotschna census lists four males named Peter Ratzlaff, and only two of them emigrated in 1819: Peter Heinrich Ratzlaff and his son Peter Peter. There is no question, then: Peter Heinrich Ratzlaff (PCB 111/GM 47815) is the person listed on the 1819 visa.

It is no surpise where this Peter Ratzlaff was located in 1835. Like so many others of the 1819 group, he settled in the village Franztal, Wirtschaft 6, to be specific. As we have seen numerous times in this investigation, this 1819 emigrant was a member of the Przechovka church in West Prussia/Poland and settled in Franztal a year before the better-known Przechovka party of 1820 made their journey to New Russia.

22. Daniel Unrau, as we can see above, was a Mennonite from Glugowko who was accompanied on the journey by a wife, one son, and two daughters. Our attempts to identify this individual are much less satisfying than they were for Peter Ratzlaff.

The Przechovka church book lists one Daniel Unrau (PCB 1000/GM 106834). All we know about him is that he was born in 1782 to Hans and Liscke Schmidt Unrau. There is no known record of a marriage or of children, although presumably he had both if he lived into adulthood.

The 1835 census lists one man named Daniel Unrau, but he emigrated in 1818 and settled first in the Chortitza colony and moved to Molotschna only in 1824. 

Given the rarity of the name and the birth year, Daniel Unrau (PCB 1000/GM 106834) was likely the person listed on the 1819 visa, but we cannot say more than this. We have no idea where this family settled or what became of them; they vanish from the historical record as quickly as they appeared.

23. Jacob Schmidt, like Daniel Unrau, was a Mennonite from Glugowko. According to the visa, he had a wife but no children, which generally implies that the couple was either young and awaiting their first child or older, with all their children in their own families. In this case, the first explanation is the correct one.

If you recall, this is one of the families who appeared on the Volhynia census list discussed previously (see the fourth family here). There it is reported that Jacob Schmidt had a wife named Anna and a daughter also named Anna. How can we harmonize the visa report of no children and the census list reporting a daughter? Simple: daughter Anna was born 21 July 1819, eight days after the passport had been issued and one day after the visa was entered in the record shown above. 

All the facts cohere, so we can identify this person as Jacob David Schmidt (PCB 1302/GM 32895). His brothers Andreas and Heinrich were also part of the traveling party who presumably spent the winter of 1819–1820 in Wyscock, Volhynia. Like his two brothers Andreas and Heinrich, Jacob was an original settler in Alexanderwohl (Wirtschaft 18; see here).

The Jacob David Schmidt family both repeats the pattern noted previously and offers a variation on it. Like others in the 1819 emigration group, this family belonged to the Przechovka church and ended their journey by taking up residence in Molotschna. Unlike most of the 1819, or so we think at this time, the Schmidts did not go directly to Molotschna but spent the winter in Volhynia; further, when they did finally travel to Molotschna, they settled in Alexanderwohl (along with the members of the 1820 group?), not in Franztal, where so many of the 1819 group made their homes.

24. Heinrich Schmidt, a Mennonite from Przechovka, emigrated with a wife and one son. We just mentioned Heinrich two paragraphs above as the brother of Jacob and Andreas Schmidt, who were also part of the 1819 emigration group.

Additional information appears to confirm our preliminary identification of Heinrich David Schmidt (PCB 1345/GM 32966) as the twenty-fourth person on our 1819 list. 

1. Heinrich was born in 1793 and married Maria (Maricke) Buller in 1817; Maria was the daughter of Jacob Buller (see the top teal box in the Buller chart here: Jacob 377). Their first child, son Heinrich, was born in 1818 or 1819, before the family applied for a passport or visa and made the trek eastward. 

2. The Volhynian census referenced earlier also supports the identification, since it lists Heinrich and Maria Schmidt and their year-old son Heinrich (see family 5 here and here). 

3. The 1835 Molotschna census offers additional information, but it both confirms and complicates the picture. On the one hand, Heinrich David, Maria, and family are located at Alexanderwohl  5. We learn in the census that son Heinrich died in 1823, but six other children had been born since then. All signs point to this being the 1819 family. On the other hand, the census states that the family entered Russia in 1820; the notation is above the family of Wirtschaft 4, but it carries over to all the families who follow unless indicated otherwise. 

It is tempting to explain this as reflecting the fact that the Schmidts wintered in Volhynia and did not go on to Molotschna until 1820. Unfortunately, that explanation does not hold for Heinrich Schmidt’s brothers, who also wintered in Volhynia: both are listed as emigrating to Russia in 1819. In the end, it seems that the census is in error, since we know that all three brothers and their families left West Prussia/Poland in late July or early August of 1819, spent the winter in Volhynia, then completed their journey to Molotschna sometime in 1820.

***

We are able to identify with relative certainty three of the four families listed in this post. One family follows the pattern we have seen earlier: a Przechovka church family emigrated in 1819 and settled in Franztal. Two families took a different course: they, too, were members of the Przechovka church and emigrated in 1819, but they spent the winter (at least) in Volhynia, before traveling on and settling in Alexanderwohl—presumably around the same time as the better-known 1820 party that is credited with founding that village. Based on our study of these families, we can conclude that the accepted history of the Przechovka–Alexanderwohl church and village was apparently not as neat and tidy as it appears in the 1848 Gemeindebericht. Precisely how messy that history actually was remains to be seen.

	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
21	Peter Ratzlaff	111/47815	settled at Franztal 6
22	Daniel Unrau	??	identification uncertain; possibly 1000/106834
23	Jacob Schmidt	1302/32895	settled at Alexanderwohl 18
24	Heinrich Schmidt	1345/32966	settled at Alexanderwohl 5

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.