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.