Franztal 17

As we work through the final paragraph of the 1848 Franztal Gemeindebericht, we are reminded in this post that Franztal was not an island, that numerous other Mennonite villages in Molotschna went through similar, if not the same, experiences as the early residents of Franztal. Fortunately for us, this means that we can deepen our understanding of Franztal’s story by comparing it to those of the other villages in the colony.

As before, we repeat the entire paragraph before offering commentary on the next sentences.

Because of the late sowing, only a little millet was harvested in the first year. The following two summers yielded harvests of only three- to fourfold at high grain prices: 1 chetvert [?] rye cost 20 and wheat 24 paper rubles. In the three years that followed, the locusts destroyed blessed crops. The harsh winter of 1825 and the year 1833 with its famine and cattle epidemic are still fresh in the memory of the settlers. As a result of the earthquake on 11 January 1838, at half past ten in the evening, the water in the well has risen significantly. In 1838 the four-field system and fallow land were introduced. In 1845 there was no hay, only sowing of grain. The years 1846 and 1847 were blessed harvests, but on 17 June of last year a hailstorm destroyed the whole crop. The storm of 25 December 1847 to 16 January 1848 caused many houses to collapse, whereby the affected families came into great need.

locusts The German word Heuschrecke means grasshopper or locust, two English words that refer to the same insect. The only difference between the two is that grasshopper is the term used when that insect is acting independently, locust when a group of those insects swarms. According to the Franztal report, the first year (1820) the farmers raised millet, and the two following years (1821 and 1822) they had poor harvests. In the three following years, or 1823–1825, locusts destroyed their crops. The Gemeindeberichten from other Molotschna villages offered similar reports. Halbstadt, for example, stated, “In 1823 and 1824 large swarms of locusts destroyed the small harvests and in 1827 a hopeful harvest.” The Muntau report remarks, “From 1822 to 1827 the locusts caused more or less damage [i.e., great damage some years and lesser damage other years]. In 1827, after causing great damage, the locusts flew off with a strong southeasterly winds, and since then, thank God, have not returned.” The Pietershagen Gemeindebericht distinguishes between the small locusts in 1823 and a larger type in 1827. Ladekopp adds that “the locust devastation of 1822, 1823, and 1824 resulted in a lack of fodder.” Münsterberg, Lichtfelde, Alexanderwohl, Mariental, Alexandertal, Gnadenheim, Liebenau, Wernersdorf, and Friedensdorf also refer to the locust plagues, which demonstrates how widespread and devastating the swarms were to the Molotschna farmers.

blessed crops. The German phrase gesegnete Ernten has been translated literally here (in all of the Gemeindeberichten the phrase is used only twice here and once in the Pastwa report), but it clearly is a reference to a promising harvest, as in the Halbstadt report’s “hopeful harvest” above. It is possible that the word blessed hints at God’s goodness in providing a promising crop, but we should probably not take that thought too far, since the locusts destroyed the blessing before it was enjoyed.

famine. The Molotschna reports likewise offer additional information on the famine (Hungersnot) of 1833. In fact, we already covered many of them in our commentary on the Alexanderwohl report. Those comments are repeated here, since they apply equally to Franztal.

According to David Moon, the disaster of 1833 had begun a year earlier: “In 1832 the whole of the southern part of Russia and the Ukraine had been hit by a serious harvest failure. The problem was exacerbated in many areas when the harvest failed for a second year in succession in 1833” (Moon 1993, 41). Other sources indicate that some localized areas, including several villages in Molotschna, were also plagued by cattle diseases.

As Moon notes, the problem was not a localized phenomenon. In fact, “all the southern, and some central, provinces, stretching from the Carpathian mountains in the west to the Caucasus in the south-east” suffered under extreme drought, hot winds, and widespread harvest failure. “Reports indicated that all hope had been lost of harvests of winter and spring grain in Ekaterinoslav, Kherson, Tauride, Caucasus, Poltava, Slobodsko-Ukraine (later Khar’kov), Voronezh, and Penza provinces, and some districts of Saratov province” (2013, 66). The Molotschna colony was located in Taruide guberniya (governorate or province) and thus was in the area hardest hit. 

The red arrow is pointing to the area of Molotschna colony. After Moon 1993, 27.

Alexanderwohl was not the only Molotschna village to single out 1833 as the worst year during the Mennonite sojourn in Molotschna. Other Gemeindeberichten gave a similar account. Halbstadt noted that 1833 was a year of complete crop failure (gänzlicher Mißwachs), and Muntau reported that “in the years 1833 and 1834 the distress exceeded all previous events.” Lindenau and Ladekopp also labeled 1833 as the Hungerjahr. Mariental, Alexandertal, Wernersdorf, and Sparrau described 1833 as a terrible year of hardship (schreckliche Notjahr).

Several of the community reports also reference the relief efforts undertaken by the government and wealthy individuals in the community to secure food and fodder to keep Molotschna’s residents and livestock alive. The Muntau report states:

The authorities established a chief commission over all the colonies, which made a loan so that they could purchase grain from distant regions. The commissions set up for the individual colonies were responsible to distribute the purchased grain among the destitute, but in such a way that they were obliged to repay everything later. 

The Halbstadt report describes a parallel relief effort: “Bread grains for the needy were purchased in Poland with funds borrowed from wealthy residents.” Moon confirms the Russian government’s intervention across the affected area, which included making loans to landowners, postponing the collection of taxes, allowing duty-free importation of grain, and giving peasants permission to hunt and sell wild game (1993, 42). In spite of all these efforts, many Russian peasants fled their estates illegally in hopes of escaping the famine. 

Johann Cornies, not surprisingly, offers us a thorough description of the situation. In a letter penned 26 August 1833, he writes:

This year’s total crop failure, particularly in all local guberniias, is causing serious shortages. Some of our neighbours are starving. In our community, starvation has been avoided by communal efforts and arrangements we find beneficial. It is still impossible, however, for us to sustain our livestock through the winter. Because no hay and virtually no pasturage is available, thousands of animals will be destroyed. This fodder shortage extends over an area of approximately 300 verstas [200 miles]. Several thousand head of livestock have been accommodated for the winter in distant guberniias at the frightfully high price of four to five rubles per sheep. But where will people without means take their livestock? I have provided for the livestock on my sheep farm by buying winter fodder. To protect almost 4,000 sheep with the Nogais and on my breeding farm, I have today also sent someone out to buy feed and pasturage in the Black Sea region near Kinburn, about 250 to 300 verstas away. We look towards the future with sadness. … The price of grain is currently at twenty-two to twenty-five rubles per chetvert for rye, twenty-six to twenty-eight for wheat, and twelve to fourteen for oats. Almost nothing is available of these grains and there is no barley. We expect that when deputies sent out by the community to purchase 5,000 to 6,000 chetverts of grain return, grain will be more readily available, but not at a lower price. (Cornies 2015, 336)

cattle epidemic. Along with famine, the community was plagued by an epidemic that ravaged their herds. In July 1833 Cornies reported to Andrei M. Fadeev, chairman of the Ekaterinoslav Bureau of the Guardianship Committee, “Cattle plague is raging in nine or ten villages, with great and painful losses” (Cornies 2015, 331). In February of the following year he wrote to a friend that in Molotschna as a whole, “A quarter of the horned cattle have died of cattle plague and, in a similarly tragic situation, pox has killed several thousand sheep” (2015, 357). It was not uncommon for livestock in the colony to suffer killing epidemics, either on a local or broader scale, but the famine of 1833 no doubt exacerbated the situation by taking its toll on already-weakened animals.

One can easily understand why such devastating setbacks were still fresh on the minds of the settlers even fifteen years later. The next memorable event was a natural phenomenon: an earthquake; we will examine it more closely in the following post.

Works Cited

Cornies, Johann. 2015. Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies. Volume 1: 1812–1835. Translated by Ingrid I. Epp. Edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Moon, David. 1993. Russian Peasants and Tsarist Legislation on the Eve of Reform: Interaction between Peasants and Officialdom, 1825–1855. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

———. 2013. The Plough That Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700–1914. Oxford Studies in Modern European History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

A Classic Story

We interrupt our series on the Franztal Gemeindebericht with a post of more recent vintage and more immediate interest. In June 2018 we spent a little time getting to know another line of the Peter D Buller family, that of Peter P’s younger brother Heinrich, more commonly known as HP Buller (see here). Thanks to an email today from Mark Dillon, grandson of HP, we have more of that family’s history to share on Buller Time.

Those who read the York News Times may well recall the 13 October 2014 story about one of Mark’s cousins, Paul Buller (son of Jake and Sophie Quiring Buller and thus grandson of HP Buller), who discovered entirely by accident that their grandfather HP’s 1926 Chevy coupe was still in the area, sitting in a barn near Exeter. Those unfamiliar with the story should take the time to read it here.

To recap briefly, the car had originally passed from HP to his son David, who in 1965 sold it to Paul Jensen of Exeter for $39. Fortunately, Paul and his brothers Marvin and Ardell were able to purchase the car from the Jensen and set about restoring it. The pictures sent to me this afternoon demonstrate not only that the restoration is complete but also that the end result is magnificent.

Congratulations to all who played a role in retrieving and restoring their—and our—family history!

Franztal 16

As seems to be common with these reports, the 1848 Franztal Gemeindebericht ends with a summary listing of significant events over the course of the village’s history. In this case, the list begins with the first year of Franztal’s existence and continues through a damaging storm early in the same year that the report was written. 

Although it will take us several posts to work through all the details, the entire final paragraph of the Franztal report follows.  

Because of the late sowing, only a little millet was harvested in the first year. The following two summers yielded harvests of only three- to fourfold at high grain prices: 1 chetvert [?] rye cost 20 and wheat 24 paper rubles. In the three years that followed, the grasshoppers destroyed blessed crops. The harsh winter of 1825 and the year 1833 with its famine and cattle epidemic are still fresh in the memory of the settlers. As a result of the earthquake on 11 January 1838, at half past ten in the evening, the water in the well has risen significantly. In 1838 the four-field system and fallow land were introduced. In 1845 there was no hay, only sowing of grain.  The years 1846 and 1847 were blessed harvests, but on 17 June of last year a hailstorm destroyed the whole crop. The storm of 25 December 1847 to 16 January 1848 caused many houses to collapse, whereby the affected families came into great need.

Because of the late sowing. As we learned from the report’s first paragraph (see here), the settlers did not arrive on the scene until April of 1820, and then they spent at least six weeks digging a (dry) well before locating the village along the Iushanle River (see here). Adding time to prepare the steppe land for cultivation, it was no doubt late May at the earliest before they began sowing their crop.

millet. According to the Wikipedia entry, millet is frequently used as a grain for human consumption and in livestock fodder. It is favored in a variety of locales “due to its productivity and short growing season under dry, high-temperature conditions.” Given the reference to the late sowing in the opening clause, the short growing season presumably played the key role in the settlers’ choice of this grain.

harvests of only three- to fourfold. The entire sentence of which this phrase is a part is difficult to understand, and both the translation and explanation should be regarded as provisional. The difficulty in this phrase is with the German “3 bis 4fältige.” The lack of a space between the 4 and its following word at first appeared to be a typo, but I now understand fältige to be a suffix meaning “fold” (note the resemblance of these cognate words: German f-l-t equals English f-l-d). Thus the construction seems to be saying that the harvest was only a threefold or fourfold return on the seed planted. Put in terms of life today, we might say that planting a bushel of wheat produced a crop of 3–4 bushels, which is an abysmally poor return. 

at high grain prices. One wonders why the report shifts from the low yield to high grain prices. The answer that makes the best sense in context is that the report is explaining just how bad the situation was during the first two years of Franztal’s life. Not only did the crops produce low yields, but the seed the settlers had to purchase to sow was expensive. Recall that the settlers had not previously raised rye or wheat in Molotschna; consequently, they had no seed grain with which to start. They had no choice but to buy seed from others, and the report tells us that they paid a premium for that seed. Putting the two pieces of the sentence together: it was bad enough that the settlers had to buy expensive seed; to make matters worse, they received a terrible return on their expensive investment. 

chetvert. The question mark after this word in the translation indicates that this is my best guess. The German original uses the abbreviation Tscht. (not Tscbt., as is reported, e.g., here). I do not know that this is how the Franztal writers would have abbreviated chetvert (assuming they pronounced a tsch- consonant cluster at the beginning of the word), but I think this must be the dry measure in view. A Russian chetvert was the equivalent of 5.957 U.S. bushels.

rye … and wheat. Whereas in the first year the settlers grew millet, in the next two years (and for a long time thereafter) the most common grains raised were rye and wheat.

paper rubles. On paper rubles as the most common currency at this time, see here.

We have reached a good place to stop for the time being; the following post will pick up the account with the first report of grasshopper plagues.

Franztal 15

Two paragraphs remain in the 1848 Franztal Gemeindebericht: one quite short and one exceedingly long. The short paragraph reads as follows:

At their request, eighteen families without funds received a crown advance of 10,721 paper rubles. The rest had their own assets totaling 15,260 paper rubles.

We have previously encountered Molotschna settlers receiving loans from the Russian government (see here). The purpose of these loans, you may recall, was to enable settlers without adequate means to establish their own farms. The loans were not available to all new immigrants, only to those who were assigned Wirtschaften.  

eighteen families. Peter Rempel lists twenty-seven families who settled in Franztal in 1819 (2007, 157–59). Although this probably does not include all of Franztal’s original founders, the information is likely representative enough for us to draw some general conclusions, keeping in mind that not all of the twenty-seven were assigned a Wirtschaft. Twelve of the families had no cash in hand when they arrived; eight others had 300 or fewer rubles. Given the fact that the typical loan for building a house was 589 rubles the following year, twenty of the twenty-seven families did not have sufficient cash to build a house. Thus the report’s report of eighteen families in need seems entirely plausible.

advance. The German word Kronsvorschuss, “crown advance,” makes it clear that the funding was not a gift but rather an advance against future income, that is, a loan that was expected to be repaid. 

10,721 paper rubles. At this time in Russia’s history there were two types of rubles: silver coins and bank notes (see further here). The former was more highly valued, the latter more common. Dividing the total amount of money loaned by the eighteen recipients tells us that the average loan was roughly 595 rubles, the amount typically needed to build and establish a household. 

15,260 paper rubles. The amount recorded here is not supported by the settlement reports in Rempel (2007, 157–59). The total cash held by the seven wealthiest families settling in Franztal was 3,950 rubles; the cumulative value of their livestock and other possessions was 2,495 rubles. The total value of their assets, then, was 6,445 rubles, less than half of the amount stated in the community report. We might explain this discrepancy in one of two ways. On the one hand, it is possible that the settlers did not report all of their assets to the government authorities when they entered Russia; if so, then the total listed in the Gemeindebericht may be correct. On the other hand, and in my opinion more likely, the Gemeindebericht may significantly overstate the amount brought into the colony, in order to give the impression that the settlers brought in more than they borrowed. Whatever the exact truth of the matter may be, we can say that, at its beginning, Franztal included several wealthy settlers and a much larger number of needy families who were no doubt grateful for the opportunity to build their own homes and establish their own farms.

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.

Franztal 14

The 1848 Gemeindebericht proceeds from the naming of the village, which was suggested by one of its original founders, Elder Benjamin Ratzlaff, to a brief description of others who populated Franztal at its establishment in 1820. The focus in the paragraph is primarily on the groups involved, not the individuals.

The first fifteen families of this village formed a single party in their immigration but did not have a leader. Of the others involved, some traveled with the large party whose leader was the now long-deceased elder Ohm Franz Goerz, and some also came to the country in small parties without a leader.

first fifteen families … formed a single party. The blog series Przechovka Emigration from late 2018 examined this group in some detail, and our conclusions at the end (see here) correspond, in general, with the statement given here. We identified seventeen possible Franztal settlers from the party of thirty-two who traveled from Przechovka to Molotschna in 1819, but several individuals were widowed at the time or shortly after arriving in Molotschna (Jacob Becker widow). Without knowing how the community report counted those cases, we can only approximate the membership of this group of fifteen families. The table below lists fifteen families, the first fourteen of which are fairly certain (for the complete list of the traveling party of thirty-two families, see the end of the post here). Franztal originally had only twenty-four Wirtschaften with associated land; the asterisks below indicate  households that did not include an allotment of land. Only nine of the original twenty-four Wirtschaften were settled by members of this party from Przechovka.

Wirtschaft	Settler Name	GM	Comment
3	George Nachtigal	42260
6	Peter Ratzlaff	47815
8	Tobias Schmidt	61594	married the widow of Jacob Becker
10	Peter Abrahams	46631	not in Przechovka church book
11	Kornelius Richert	48300
14	Peter Block	32253	from Montau, not Przechovka
17	Peter Becker	32099
19	Adam Ratzlaff	4327
22	Peter Unrau	61701
25*	Heinrich Ratzlaff	47821	joined by widowed sister, Anna Pankratz?
26*	Peter Becker	32122
27*	Benjamin Ratzlaff	47884	moved to Rudnerweide 2 in 1827
27*	Adam Ratzlaff	47882
27*	Peter Frey	35807	moved to Alexanderwohl 22 in 1821
??	widow Ratzlaff		possibly settled in Franztal

did not have a leader. In the midst of trying to identify the people who constituted Franztal’s earliest settlers, we should not lose sight of the fact that we have learned something new about the 1819 immigrants: unlike the more famous 1820 group that established the village of Alexanderwohl, the 1819 party made their journey without a designated leader.

large party whose leader was … elder Ohm Franz Goerz. Another portion of Franztal’s original settlers had traveled to Molotschna under different circumstances: in a party with a named leader, the elder Franz Goerz (or Goertz). The elder in view here was Franz Heinrich Goerz (GM 61901), who emigrated from Rudnerweide in West Prussia in 1819, the same year as the first Przechovka group (see Rempel 2007, 133). Goerz himself did not settle in Franztal but in Rudnerweide, the village 2 miles to the east; of course, the Gemindebericht does not claim that he settled in Franztal, only that some in his traveling party did so. A spot check of Rempel’s visa and settlement records confirms the fact that some in the same party did settle in Franztal (e.g., Peter Abrahams, Peter Daniels, Peter Janzen); however, a full reconstruction of the Franz Goerz party and the eventual destinations of all its members remains a desideratum.

long-deceased. The German word verewigte more specifically means “immortalized,” but in context the sense seems to be that Franz Goerz was deceased, not that he was immortalized, unless the idea is that he was enjoying his eternal reward. In fact, Goerz passed away in 1835, which means that he had been dead for thirteen years when the community report was written.

small parties without a leader. In addition to the large parties associated with Przechovka and Elder Franz Goerz, Franztal’s original settlers also included various people who had traveled in small, leaderless parties to their new home. These individuals must remain unknown until Franztal’s original settlers are first identified and then examined to determine when and from where they migrated. Since Rempel lists twenty-seven families who settled in Franztal in 1819, we should be able to compile such a list of original settlers at some point. For now, however, we will keep our attention focused on translating and offering a commentary on the 1848 Franztal Gemeindebericht.

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.

For the complete Franztal Gemeindebericht in German, see here.

For a brief introduction to the 1848 Gemeindeberichte, see here.

Franztal 13

As we continue working through the 1848 Franztal Gemeindebericht, translating the document and offering commentary on it as needed, we should not lose sight of why this village is important to us. From a broader perspective, Franztal was the first settlement of Mennonites who left the Przechovka church in West Prussia/Poland, being established a year earlier than the more famous congregation at Alexanderwohl. More narrowly, Franztal was the first Molotschna village in which a member of our wider Buller family (Jacob Jacob Buller) resided. Of course, he moved to Alexanderwohl within a few years (see here), but we can still consider Franztal the Buller family’s original home.

With that brief reminder, we are ready to proceed with the next paragraph; once we finish it, we will be nearly three-quarters through the entire community report.

Initially this village was given the name Pschuchowka, after the former residence of the settlers in Prussia. But since this name was not confirmed as a Polish one by the authorities, Ohm Benjamin Ratzlaff, who is currently elder of the Rudnerweide congregation but who was also one of the founders of this village, proposed the name Franztal, which was known to him from Prussia—everyone agreed.

the name Pschuchowka, after the former residence of the settlers in Prussia. According to the report, Franztal was initially given a different name: Pschuchowka. This is obviously an alternate spelling of Przechovka, the object of our attention on numerous occasions. The significance of this naming should not be missed or minimized: this first group of Mennonites to move from Przechovka to Molotschna wished to retain the name of their former home in their new location. Might this reflect a certain level of tension between the two main groups of immigrants, with the first group hoping to identify themselves as the real Przechovka? We should not read too much into the attempted naming, of course, but it is intriguing that this group of settlers tried to lay claim to the name even before the second group arrived.

this name was not confirmed as a Polish one by the authorities. The meaning of the words of this phrase are generally clear, the precise meaning of the phrase itself less so. One might read this to mean that the authorities (the noun is actually singular, so “authority”; perhaps Andrei M. Fadeev; see here) could not confirm that Przechovka was a legitimate Polish place name and so declined it for that reason. However, a more likely explanation is that the Russian official declined the name because it was obviously Polish. This is consistent with the fact that Molotschna villages consistently bear Prussian/Germanic names; not one was given a Polish name. Therefore Przechovka was presumably declined as the village name because it was Polish, not German.

Ohm Benjamin Ratzlaff. The word Ohm means uncle, but it was frequently used with reference to a church elder; that is the apparent significance here. This is not our first encounter with Benjamin Ratzlaff; we discussed his life rather thoroughly in an earlier post (see here). We need add here only that Ratzlaff receives his own entry in GAMEO (here). However, the entry is mistaken about Ratzlaff dying in Kansas; he died in the Henderson immigrant house and is buried at the Bethesda Cemetery.

currently elder of the Rudnerweide congregation. Like his father Peter, Benjamin Ratzlaff served in this key role. Benjamin was ordained elder in the Rudnerweide church in 1835, so he was obviously an elder when the community report was written in 1848 (he remained an elder for the rest of his days). The village Rudnerweide was roughly 2 miles directly west of Franztal, and most of Franztal’s residents were associated with that church.

one of the founders of this village. Ratzlaff was indeed one of the founders of Franztal, but he did not live there when the report was written. According to the 1835 Molotschna census, Ratzlaff moved to Rudnerweide in 1827, that is, eight years before he became an elder in the church.

known to him from Prussia. Benjamin Ratzlaff was born in Jeziorka, a small village not far from the Przechovka church, but he obviously knew of other Mennonite groups. In fact, he took the name Franztal from a Mennonite village in Neumark, roughly 120 miles west–southwest of Przechovka (see here). If you recall, Franztal and its sister village Brenkenhoffswalde were established by a group of Mennonites from (mostly) Jeziorka who retained contact and connections with their home church Przechovka. At least three Ratzlaff families were among the founders of Franztal, so Benjamin’s knowledge of and fondness for Franztal presumably stemmed from familial connections to that village. We do not know that any of the original founders of Franztal in Molotschna had spent time in Franztal in Neumark, but it is a question we will keep in mind as we continue to reconstruct the history of the village.

Franztal 12

With this post we will finish the long but important fourth paragraph of the 1848 Franztal community report. As before, the entire paragraph is repeated for context.

The village is laid out in the direction from northeast to southwest. The Iushanle forms the border between the village and the land of the Tatars; the distance to the opposite border of the village Chernigov is 7 versts. On the northwestern side of the village along the lane are the orchards, each of which is a dessiatine in area and is already planted with a considerable number of fine fruit trees. At the end of the orchards rises the tree grove, which offers a lovely sight from the village with its green-leafed trees. On the west the village borders on Grossweide, on the east Pastwa, and it is 60 versts from the district seat Berdyansk. The numerous ancient burial mounds (Mohilen) give the land, one might say, a warty shape. The surface is almost everywhere black soil, in places containing saltpeter, with a layer of gravel and quarry stone, which lies over a Faden deep and in places comes to light. Although the productivity of the land does not equal that of the Molochna, trees, grains, and food crops thrive here as well. Violent storms often destroy the grain fields in rows.

black soil. The German term used, “schwarze Erde,” no doubt refers to the characteristic chernozem (Russian), or black soil, region of the Eurasian steppe. We devoted an entire post to this soil type last year (see here). As explained in greater detail there, the humus content of the black soil made the steppe region, as Stephen Rudnitsky puts is, “the granary of Russia.” He adds that “the black earth is a product of the transformation of loess, with a strong admixture of the products of decomposition” (1918, 104).

saltpeter. Although the community report does not elaborate on the significance of the saltpeter, its mention is most likely negative. Saltpeter was, to be sure, used in the manufacture of gunpowder and in some meat-curing processes at that time. (The use of saltpeter as a fertilizer seems to have come later.) However, several sources mention that the presence of saltpeter rendered soil less suitable for agriculture, whether for field crops or for pasture (see, e.g., here). Thus it seems that the reference to saltpeter here carried the same sort of negative implication.

which lies over a Faden deep and in places comes to light. Careful readers will note a correction to the translation here, from “over a thread/strand” to “over a Faden.” Although we encountered this term earlier in the report, I had forgotten that a Faden is a Prussian unit of measurement equivalent to 6 Prussian fuss (comparable to our foot; see Carrington 1864, 77). Thus the apparent meaning of this statement is that the gravel layer and quarry stone (the report does not say what type of stone) was, in some areas, 6 feet below the surface of the ground (see also Rudnitsky 1918, 104). However, in other places the black soil was much thinner, to the extent that the quarry stone breached the surface of the ground.

does not equal that of the Molochna. The statement that the Franztal land did not equal that of the Molochna in terms of productivity may sound odd, given the fact that Franztal was located in the Molotschna colony, but the reference is probably to the land east of the Molochna River from which the colony took its name. In other words, the land associated with Franztal was not as fertile as that associated with the villages established in Molotschna colony on the left bank of the Molochna River. The Molochna River runs from north to south on the wast edge of the map below; the villages to its east were the first Mennonite villages in Molotschna. Franztal, on the other hand, is on the far right a little below center. The distance from Franztal to the Molochna River was over 30 miles, which certainly was distance enough to explain a change in productivity.

grain fields in rows. Although all the words in this short phrase are straightforward, the meaning of the word strichweise, translated “in rows,” is not completely clear. The first part of the sentence tells us that violent storms frequently destroyed the field crops of Franztal’s farmers in some manner, but exactly how the crops were destroyed is uncertain. The phrase “in rows” might make one think of a row crop such as corn, and the German word used here (Kornfelder) could be translated “corn fields.” However, the word more commonly refers generically to grain fields, and it almost certainly does in this instance, since Russian Mennonites in the 1840s did not grow fields of corn.

This leaves us with the dilemma of how to understand the phrase “in rows.” Perhaps the meaning is comparable to what we see today with wheat or barley fields after a storm with violent winds passes through. The winds blow the grain in the field over, laying it flat, although not always uniformly. As seen in the photo to the right, some patches of grain remain standing even when all the other around is on the ground. It may be that the writers of the Gemeindebericht are trying to describe such a phenomenon. Even if this is not the exact meaning, we are clearly to envision violent storms frequently arising on the steppe and damaging the Franztal farmers’ crops as they swept through and across the grain fields.

***

The next paragraph in the community report offers fascinating historical background about the naming of the village; we will turn to that paragraph in the next post in this series.

Work Cited

Carrington, Robert C. 1864. Foreign Measures and Their English Values. London: Potter. Available online here.

Franztal 11

We continue with the long fourth paragraph of the 1848 Franztal Gemeindebericht. The previous post about the community report (here) covered the sixty thousand trees that had been planted in and around the village. This post picks up at that point, with the report author looking out “from the village with its green-leafed trees.” As before, the entire paragraph is repeated for context.

The village is laid out in the direction from northeast to southwest. The Iushanle forms the border between the village and the land of the Tatars; the distance to the opposite border of the village Chernigov is 7 versts. On the northwestern side of the village along the lane are the orchards, each of which is a dessiatine in area and is already planted with a considerable number of fine fruit trees. At the end of the orchards rises the tree grove, which offers a lovely sight from the village with its green-leafed trees. On the west the village borders on Grossweide, on the east Pastwa, and it is 60 versts from the district seat Berdyansk. The numerous ancient burial mounds (Mohilen) give the land, one might say, a warty shape. The surface is almost everywhere black soil, in places containing saltpeter, with a layer of gravel and quarry stone, which lies over a thread/strand deep and in places comes to light. Although the productivity of the land does not equal that of the Molochna, trees, grains, and food crops thrive here as well. Violent storms often destroy the corn/grain fields in rows.

Grossweide. The village Grossweide, which was founded the same year as Franztal, was a mile and a half to the northwest (center left village in the map below). The village Prostore (Просторе) occupies the site today.

Pastwa. Also established in 1820, Pastwa—modern Kvitkove (Квіткове)—was located just under a mile and a half northeast of Franztal. As we suspected earlier and have since confirmed, Franztal’s land lay between the two villages (see also the map here).

60 versts from the district seat Berdyansk. The distance of 60 versts is equal to roughly 40 miles. Although the port settlement had been in existence since the latter part of the seventeenth century, it was not named Berdyansk until 1841, when Tsar Nicholas I gave it that name. A year later Nicholas designated Berdyansk the district capital, so the community report is correct to label it a Kreisstadt. Berdyansk’s location with respect to Franztal (upper left end of the line) is shown on the satellite photo below.

ancient burial mounds (Mohilen). Although the Molotschna Mennonites were the first to settle and farm the land, they were not the first to inhabit it. We have frequently mentioned the Nogai, of course, but even they were latecomers to the region. Many centuries earlier, as far back as the eighth to fourth centuries before Christ, a nomadic people known as Scythians ruled the territory north of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov and farther to the east. The wealthy rulers of these people left behind burial mounds, many of which are visible even today. David Moon writes:

The seeming monotony of much of the steppes was broken by a few features. Many visitors commented on the burial mounds, or kurgany. William of Rubruck wrote that ‘Coman graves’ were ‘visible to us two leagues off’ as he headed east to the north of the Sea of Azov. They were still there five and a half centuries later, at the start of the nineteenth century, when Mennonite settlers arrived at the Molochnaya river, and saw the same ‘kurgane or mohilen (old Scythian graves)’ on ‘the otherwise flat steppe’. (Moon 2013, 43, quoting Goerz)

a warty shape. The writers of the Gemeindebericht offer a picturesque metaphor to describe how the burial mounds appeared on the otherwise flat landscape. 

We are nearly finished with this long paragraph, but enough remains to warrant separate treatment. Therefore we will pick up with the black soil of the Ukrainian steppe in the following post.

Work Cited

Moon, David. 2013. The Plough That Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700–1914. Oxford Studies in Modern European History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Oma Buller

One of the nice features about Google advanced searches is the ability to search a single website for a given term. I use that feature regularly to find where Buller Time discussed something in the past, and recently I did the same with the Chortitza: Mennonitische Geschichte und Ahnenforschung website, searching for any occurrences of the name Buller. One result in particular caught my eye.

The caption reads:

Helene Schmidt (Tochter von Margarete H. Konrad) und Katharina Buller (Tochter von Katharina H. Konrad) mit der Oma Buller, Kleefeld – ca. 1937.

Helene Schmidt (daughter of Magarete H. Konrad) and Katharina Buller (daughter of Katharina H. Konrad) with Grandma Buller, Kleefeld, circa 1937.

We should first clarify that the Kleefeld mentioned here is not the Molotschna village but is rather a village of the same name in the Slavgorod Mennonite Settlement in western Siberia. Nevertheless, it is always intriguing to find Bullers regardless of where they live.

The first order of business, of course, is to try to identify these three persons. This Grandma Buller (she married into the Buller family, was not born into it) had two granddaughters who are identified both by name and by mother’s name. This makes it easy to find the girls in GRANDMA.

Searching for a Katharina Konrad (the maiden name of the second girl’s mother) who was married to a Buller produces an immediate match: the little girl on the far right is Katharina Heinrich Buller, who was born sometime between 1935 and 1939 (GM: 1211844). The fact that GRANDMA does not list an exact birth year is a good indication that Katharina was still living when this information was entered. The birth date of her younger sister Erna, for example, is listed as 2 October 1942 because she passed away in 1997.

The GRANDMA information for Helene Schmidt confirms that we have the right family in view, since this girl was the daughter of Margarete Konrad and Gerhard Schmidt. The two mothers of the girls shown—Margarete and Katharina—were sisters, the daughters of Heinrich Jakob Konrad and Margareta Penner, both of whom were born in Rosenort, a village in Molotschna colony.

Needless to say, Katharina Buller is of most immediate interest to us. Her father was Heinrich Buller, her mother Katharina Konrad. Katharina the daughter married Emanuel Bairit and had three children with him. Interestingly, her husband died in Germany in 1996. Apparently the family moved from Russia to Germany sometime after the birth of the children.

But what about Katharina’s father Heinrich Buller? Unfortunately, we do not know the names of his parents, only that he was born (according to family records) 7 November 1905 and died 23 September 1974 in Zlatopol, Altai Krai, Russia, a small town roughly 40 miles south of the Kleefeld mentioned above. We can presume that the woman pictured above was Heinrich Buller’s mother, which made her Katharina Buller’s grandmother.

When I started this investigation, I hoped that we could identify the family line of which Katharina Buller was a part; unfortunately, for the time being we cannot go back earlier than Katharina’s father Heinrich. This is not the end of the quest, however, since there is more to learn about Bullers in this region. According to Cornelius Krahn (1959), Franz Buller of Zagradovka was one of the representatives who first surveyed the area prior to the establishment of the Slavgorod Mennonite settlement in 1907 and later served as minister and eventually elder. More recently, Igor Trutanow (2015) has written of Bullers who still live in the same area, in Konstantinovka, including a friend of his named Heinrich who had a sister Elisa and a mother Anna.

Beyond that, we should not forget that David Buller’s second wife and their son Heinrich moved to this same general area in 1908 (see here and here). In fact, the location where that group of Bullers settled, Miloradovka, Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, was a mere 60–65 miles from the Kleefeld where the Bullers pictured above lived. In the satellite photograph below,  Miloradovka is the yellow pin on the left, Kleefeld the red one on the right; Konstantinovka, the recent home of another Heinrich Buller, was roughly 5 miles to the west of Kleefeld.

It was interesting to learn at the outset of this post that several Buller families lived in western Siberia in the 1930s; it is remarkable to discover at the end that members of our own extended family of Bullers may still live in the area. This certainly merits further investigation.


Works Cited

Krahn, Cornelius. 1959. Slavgorod Mennonite Church (Slavgorod Mennonite Settlement, Siberia, Russia). GAMEO. Available online here.

Trutanow, Igor. 2015. Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. Toronto: Lulu.

Franztal 10

We will return to the 1848 Franztal Gemeindebericht shortly, but before we do, the 1830s map of Molotschna colony deserves one more close look. We learned in the previous post (here) that the map contains various details that inform our understanding of the map’s original creation and occasional updating. As we will discover in this post, the map also contains details that can clarify and enrich our understanding of Franztal in the mid-nineteenth century. We begin with a closeup of the relevant portion of the map.

The village Franztal is shown in the lower center, along the Iushanle River; its assigned land extends to the north, where it borders the land associated with the non-Mennonite village/area of Chernigov. Drawing from our work in the previous post, we can note that the village name is written in a formal script, that the village is assigned a number (40), and that the outline of the village itself appears to be as professionally executed as were Lichtfeld, Alexanderwohl, Waldheim, and other early villages. In other words, Franztal (as well as Rudnerwiede, Grossweide, and Pastwa) was on the original map.

Two additional features also deserve mention.

1. Earlier commentary on the first paragraph in the community report admitted ignorance on the exact meaning of the following sentence: “In order to have the colony established in the middle of the plot, the settlers chose a place located in the same depression where the colony Grossweide is located” (see here). The extract from the map above makes it clear that the depression extended east from Grossweide all the way across Franztal’s farmland. Therefore we can be reasonably certain that the location where the settlers originally wanted to locate the village—“in the middle of the plot”— was in that depression, probably centered between the west and east boundaries.

We should also note the label applied to the depression on the left side of the map. The first word is difficult to make out, but the second clearly reads Steppfluss, literally “steppe river.” This German word is rare; in fact, a Google search turns up only two other occurrences: one in the Elisabethal Gemeindebericht, and one in the Schardau Gemeindebericht. Apparently this was a term commonly used in Molotschna but nowhere else. By way of contrast, a search for the English equivalent steppe river returns nearly twenty thousand results.

What are we to make of the German term? The Elisabethal report refers to a “trockenen Steppfluss,” that is, a dry steppe river. The Schardau report refers both to the “Steppfluss Juschenlee” and to the “Fluss Juschanlee.” The latter term is a clear reference to the Iushanle River, which means that the former term must mean something else (note also that the first term is spelled Juschenlee with an e, not Juschanlee with an a). What exactly the word Steppfluss signifies is uncertain, but the most likely explanation is that it refers to something like a river but not a river, perhaps to a long depression that would fill with water if a nearby river overflowed its banks or, on higher ground, whenever rainwater or melting snow exceeded the capacity of the surrounding ground to absorb it. Until new evidence indicates otherwise, we should think of the Steppfluss as a depression that frequently filled with water.

This understanding also explains why Franztal’s original settlers wanted to locate the village in this depression: they thought that it boded well for finding water underground. Unfortunately for them, it did not, which led them to locate the village next to the Iushanle River. (One wonders if Grossweide successfully dug wells to serve that community’s needs.)

2. The map also show, it seems, which land was set aside to farming/gardening and which land served as pasture. Note on the map the three sections of Franztal land that show what appear to be long rows. This is presumably where the villagers raised flax, potatoes, and any other crops used for human or animal consumption. The majority of the land, it is evident, was pasture.

Although the Molotschna colony eventually became famous for producing cereal crops, especially wheat, that was not the case in the late 1830s. Recall that a record of the crops planted in Waldheim in spring 1839 listed only potatoes and flax (see here and especially here). Other crops were planted, to be sure, but they were not as central to Molotschna agriculture as were these staples. My sense is that Molotschna agriculture shifted decisively toward cereal crops in the late 1840s and early 1850s, but that remains to be confirmed or clarified by further research.

There are no doubt more insights to be gleaned from careful examination of this and other maps, but for now we will return to our analysis of the 1848 Franztal community report.

Molotschna Map

A closer look at the second map referenced in the previous post (here) has led me to revise my view of when it was originally published. I invite you to follow along as I note the evidence that caught my eye and prompted my change of mind. 

To recap, the previous post noted (1) that the reference to 1836 on the map related only to the date of the statistics that the map summarizes for the colonies shown and (2) that the map includes a number of villages established well after 1836, such as Hierschau (1848) and Alexanderkrone (1857). This implied rather strongly that the map was published after the founding of the latest village shown. This perfectly logical deduction was undermined, however, by a too-hasty look at the visual evidence.

The first clue came to light through a more closer examination of the Kleefeld part of the map. See if you can spot the problem in the extract below.

The outline of the village covers part of the name Juschanlee Fluss (Iushanle River). No respectable mapmaker would have done this by design. Rather, one imagines that the mapmaker would have first drawn in all the physical landmarks, including villages, then added the labels as a final step. The fact that Kleefeld covers the river name implies that it was added later.

Once one begins to look more closely, several other inconsistencies come to light. First, the script in which Kleefeld and Alexanderkrone are written is different from that used for Lichtfeld. Second, Lichtfeld is assigned a number (30), but Kleefeld and Alexanderkrone are not. Third, the quality and style of the village outlines is noticeably different: Lichtfeld looks finished and professional; Kleefeld and Alexanderkrone suffer by comparison.

These differences are not restricted to these three villages; they can be seen in others as well.

The villages on the north side of the river are all original to the map; those on the south side appear to be later additions, as indicated by the different script for the village name, the lack of a number, and the more amateurish appearance of the village outline.

In light of this evidence, we should revise the earlier hypothesis that the map was published after the founding of the last village shown. In fact, the map was published after the establishment of the last village shown on the original map but before the founding of the first village added by hand to the original map. 

The first step in this revision is an obvious one: to list all the villages obviously added by hand to the map.

• Hierschau: 1848
• Nikolaidorf: 1851
• Paulsheim: 1852
• Kleefeld: 1854
• Alexanderkrone: 1857
• Mariawohl: 1857
• Friedensruh: 1857
• Steinfeld: 1857
• Gnadental: 1862
• Hamberg: 1863
• Klippenfeld: 1863
• Fabrikerwiese: 1863

The last village founded prior to Hierschau was Landskrone, in 1839; the village before Landskrone was Waldheim, in 1836. The extract below shows all three villages together.

Waldheim on the right and Landskrone in the center are both numbered and appear to use the same script for the village name; Hierschau, lying between them, is clearly a later addition. It is possible that the outline of Landskrone is also an addition, since it differs significantly from the style of all the other village outlines on the original map. One might suggest that the general location of Landskrone had been decided when the map was made but that the details of its layout could not be added until later. 

In the end, although we cannot state precisely when the map was first created, we know that it was certainly after 1836 and before 1848, probably around 1839, when Landskrone was planned but not yet fully established. When and how often the map was updated by hand after that remains a mystery.