Halbstadt 8

Before we proceed to this post’s text and commentary, permit me to supplement the previous post (here) with newly discovered information. Earlier I wrote that I was unaware of any “lesser” village named Tokmak that would prompt the community report to refer to the village near Halbstadt as Grosstokmak, or Great Tokmak. While looking at an 1835 map during research for this post (see here), I noticed a village just north of Tokmak named Tokmachka. Intrigued, I researched that name and discovered that the full name of the village is Mala Tokmachka (see here). Since the Ukrainian word mala (мала) means small or little, we have our explanation why the community report refers to Tokmak as Grosstokmak: it was to distinguish the village close to Halbstadt from the village of the same name a little farther north. With that mystery cleared up, we are ready to move forward with the next paragraph of the community report.

The village was founded in the insignificant lowland on the left bank of the steppe river Molochna, which originates as the Tokmak 25 versts outside of the border of the district on a significant mountain hill and runs until 2 versts before this village, where the tributary Schönhull empties into it, and from there on it is called the Molochna. It is 40 versts from the former district city, Orikhiv; approximately 120 versts from the current district city, Berdiansk; and approximately 330 versts from the gubernia city, Simferopol.

the village was founded in the insignificant lowland. The reference here is to the village of Halbstadt, not the just-mentioned Grosstokmak. We can only guess why the community report refers to the area as insignificant (German “der nicht gerade bedeutenden Niederung” is literally “the not exactly significant lowland”). The authors of the report may be hinting that there was nothing outstanding about the location, that whatever success the village came to have was due, not to the village’s location, but to its residents. Or perhaps the authors mean to imply that the location was of no interest to the residents of Tokmak or the Nogais, so they were not dispossessed or disadvantaged by the founding of Halbstadt.

left bank. River banks are conventionally labeled left or right, but how does one know which is which? The answer is simple: look down the river, that is, with the current flowing away; the bank on your left is the left bank, and the one on your right is the right bank. Since the Molochna River flows generally from north to south, emptying into the Sea of Azov, the left bank is the east side of the river, which is the side on which Halbstadt and the other original villages were located.

steppe river Molochna. There is nothing intrinsic about a river that makes it a steppe river; it is all a matter of location. The Molochna River is a significant waterway in the immediate area but pales in comparison to a major river such as the Dnipro (or Dnieper). David Moon’s comments about rivers on the steppe, as opposed to rivers that run through deep valleys, are true of the Molochna as well:

The rivers in the region—a potential source of water for irrigation—did not contain sufficient water at the times it was needed. Water levels were highest in the spring, when they were fed by melted snow, but fell over the following weeks. Some rivers dried up altogether in the summer. Due to the flatness of the terrain, the gradient of most steppe rivers was inadequate to allow water to be channelled by gravity to irrigate surrounding land. (Moon 2013, 208)

Ukrainians spell the river’s name Molochna; the Russian spelling is slightly different: Molochnaya. The German-influenced spelling of the Mennonite colony is still different: Molotschna. None of these three forms, and others of which I may be unaware, is more correct than the others, although Molochna is the more common spelling today. The community report, not surprisingly, uses Molotschna for both the river and the colony. 

originates as the Tokmak. The community report can be a little difficult to follow here, but satellite photographs bring clarity. The river known as the Molochna actually starts out as the Tokmak River. The aerial photo below shows where the Tokmak River begins (red pin on the right). The river then travels generally westward along the path of the villages and cities shown until it reaches Tokmak (yellow pin on the left). 

2 versts before this village. As noted in the previous, a verst is .66 mile, so this statement indicates that the Tokmak River ran from roughly 30 miles to the east until 2 versts (= 1.32 miles) before the village of Halbstadt. The next phrase explains what happens to the waterway 2 versts before it reaches Halbstadt.

where the tributary Schönhull empties into it. The community report identifies a particular spot on the Tokmak River, a place where another waterway joins the Tokmak. The precise location in view is marked by a red X on the satellite photograph below.

The community report identifies the new waterway as the tributary Schönhull, which can be none other than the tributary labeled the Chynhul on Google Maps. According to the report, something significant takes place at this spot. The next phrase tells us what that is. 

from there on it is called the Molochna. Past the point where the tributary Schönhull joins the Tokmak, the river is known as the Molochna. One can even see this indicated on the satellite photo above. To the right of the X the river is labeled Tokmach (Tokmak); downstream past the X it is the Molochna. The change in name takes place roughly a mile and a quarter north of the village Halbstadt.

Having located the village in terms of a well-known geographical landmark, the community report proceeds to locate it in relation to three prominent cities. In the satellite photo below, Halbstadt is marked by the red pin: Orikhiv is the yellow pin to the north, Berdiansk is the one to the east, and Simferopol the one to the south.

Orikhiv. The community report spells this city name Orechow; the Ukrainian spelling commonly used today is Orikhiv. Founded around 1783, this city was only two decades older than Halbstadt. According to the community report, Orikhiv had previously served as the district capital. If I understand correctly, in 1802 Tsar Paul I redrew the political map of the area formerly held by the Crimean Khanate. As part of that reorganization, he established the Taurida gubernia (or governate), which encompassed all of Crimea and a substantial amount of land on the mainland north of Crimea. All the territory outlined in color in the map below was a part of Taurida.

The Taurida gubernia was divided into a number of districts (or uyezds).* The district/uyezd in which the Molotschna colony was located, which later was named the Berdiansk uyezd, was on the east side of the mainlaind portion of the Taurida gubernia. The city Orikhiv was on the northern border of Taurida, some 40 versts (ca. 26 miles) north-northeast of Halbstadt.

*One can think of a gubernia and its constituent uyezds as roughly comparable to a state and its counties.

Berdiansk. Located on the shore of the Sea of Azov, Berdiansk grew rapidly from a small settlement in the late 1820s and reached city status in 1835 (see here). Six years later, in 1841, Berdiansk replaced Orikhiv as uyezd capital. As we will read later in the community report, Berdiansk played a significant role in the life of the Molotschna colony by providing a ready market for the colony’s agricultural goods. As indicated in this section of the report, Berdiansk was approximately 120 versts (79 miles) from Halbstadt.

Simferopol. Located 330 versts (ca. 220 miles) south-southwest of Halbstadt, Simferopol served as the capital of Taurida from the the creation of the gubernia in 1802. Although a city had long existed on the same general location, it was newly founded and given the name Simferopol (Greek: City of Common Good) after Catherine II’s conquest of the Crimean peninsula in the early 1780s.

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.

Halbstadt 7

The previous post (Halbstadt 6) commented on the one-sentence report of the Mennonites’ arrival on the steppe. The next sentence in the community report, the focus of attention in this post, identifies who their closest neighbors were in their new home. For the German text and a translation of the full Halbstadt report, see here.

The steppe was used at that time partly by the crown peasants of the parish village Grosstokmak, lying 10 versts away, and partly by wandering Nogais.

crown peasants. At this time roughly half of Russia’s peasants were serfs, indentured individuals who not only lived and labored on land owned by someone else but also were bound to that land in a very real way, with no freedom to leave for a better position or to relocate to a better estate. Russian society recognized different types of peasants, based on who owned the land on which they served. David Moon writes, “the main categories were the seigniorial peasantry (or serfs) who lived on nobles’ estates, the state peasantry who lived on land belonging to the state, and the appanage peasantry whose land was the property of the imperial family” (1999, 22). The latter group, appanage peasants were also called court peasants, so presumably the phrase crown peasants refers to members of that grouping.

parish village. To learn what is meant by the term parish village, we turn once again to David Moon, who writes, “From the sixteenth century, most rural settlements were either villages (sela) or hamlets (derevni). The main distinction between them was that villages had churches, and were the centres of parishes that included the nearby hamlets. Villages were usually larger than hamlets” (1999, 200). Based on the community report’s designation, then, we can safely conclude that Grosstokmak was the central Russian village in the immediate area.

Grosstokmak. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (here), Tokmak was established in 1784, just twenty years before Halbstadt, by Russian state peasants (i.e., members of the state peasantry mentioned above) from the Poltava gubernia, a province roughly 165 miles to the north-northwest. The town took the name Tokmak from its location on the Tokmach River, which empties into the Molochna River a little more than 2 miles west of the village. According to a German Wikipedia page (here), the village was generally known as Tokmak but occasionally referred to as Grosstokmak (or Groß-Tokmak), which means Great Tokmak. One would think that there must have been another, smaller Tokmak that was distinct from Great Tokmak, but I know of no such village or hamlet in the area.

10 versts. The verst was a Russian measure of distance of that time period, equal to .66 mile. Thus the 10 versts from Tokmak to Halbstadt was roughly 6.6 miles.

Nogais. As reported earlier, historically the Nogai Tatars stemmed from the Golden Horde led by Nogai Khan, a descendant of Ghengis Khan. The Nogai, who were Muslim and spoke a dialect of Turkic, were settled in the Molotschna region by the Russian government between 1792 and 1810 in an attempt to prevent their defection to the Turks, against whom Russia warred periodically during this period. The Nogai were seminomadic herdsmen who moved their flocks and herds through the Avoz Lowlands (see further here).

Work Cited

Moon, David. 1999. The Russian Peasantry 1600–1930: The World the Peasants Made. London: Longman.

Halbstadt 6

We continue our exploration of the Halbstadt community report with a long post on a single sentence. The full report (at least all that has been translated thus far) can be found here.

After spending most of the winter in the Chortitza Mennonite district, they arrived in the spring of 1804 on the steppe assigned to them for settlement by the military governor, the Duke of Richelieu, and the chairman of the Yekaterinoslav Office for Foreign Settlers, Mr. Kontenius.

winter in the Chortitza Mennonite district. As noted earlier, the 1803 immigrants left Grodno in small groups of families; the first families began the approximately six-week trip in early August, while the last groups departed in late October. Instead of pushing all the way through to their final destination, the families traveled first to Chortitza, a distance of roughly 625 miles. They would travel the final 50 miles to Molotschna after spending the winter with their sisters and brothers in the faith. This arrangement not only benefited the travelers (there was not enough time before winter set in to build adequate shelter in Molotschna); it also provided a much-needed financial boost to the struggling Chortitza colony. Heinrich Heese explains:

The arrival of our Molotschna brethren during the years 1803–05 saved our community from total bankruptcy; for it was through them that money once again began to circulate amongst us. These comely brethren encountered much better conditions than had our [Chortitza] fathers; for the late nobleman Contenius … had already arrived, and it was he who poured out upon them all the benefits of which the government was capable, benefits which had been so sparingly extended to our fathers. These new immigrants paid our fathers in cash for living quarters and barns, which till then had not been used because, for the sake of convenience, our cattle had been fed outside throughout the winter. Our fathers, in return for a fee, also took care of their purchases from the Russians and earned money while assisting them in the building-up of their colony on the Molotschna. Thus the wholly enervated community was partially restored to life. (quoted in Friesen 1980, 112–13)

spring of 1804. According to the 1808 Revisions List (Unruh 1955, 305–6), twenty of the twenty-one founders of Halbstadt arrived at their farmsteads on 21 June 1804; twelve families from Muntau and nineteen from Fischau arrived the same day. The Halbstadt founders were thus part of the initial wave of Molotschna settlers. The first group of five families arrived on 18 June, and they were followed by a steady stream of immigrants: three families on 19 June, fifty-one families on 20 June, the fifty-one families already reported for 21 June, ten families on 23 June, and one family on 24 June. Additional families arrived over the next four months: one family on 2 July, eighteen on 5 July, thirty-one on 15 July, three on 20 July, one on 12 September, one on 15 September, and one each on 2, 5, 9, and 15 October. By the end of 1804, over 180 families had taken up residence in the new Molotschna colony.

steppe. For a seven-part series on the Russian steppe, see the following links: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 (vegetation), part 5; (climate), part 6 (black soil), part 7 (drought).

assigned to them. I recall reading somewhere that the original group of Molotschna settlers had their Wirtschaften assigned to them while they were still in Chortitza. I am now unable to find the source of that information, but at least two considerations imply that that is what happened. First, the Heinrich Heese quotation above mentions that Samuel Contenius (see below) was present in the Chortitza colony during the winter of 1803–1804, when the future Molotschna settlers were there; since Contenius was involved in the assignment of Wirtschaften, it is reasonable to think that the assignment took place at that time. Second, most of the residents of each village generally arrived on the same day, which implies that they traveled in village groups, as it were. For example, we already noted that twenty of the twenty-one Halbstadt families arrived on 21 June 1804. Similarly, nineteen of twenty-two Fischau founders arrived on the same day, 20 June 1804, as did twenty out of twenty-two of Münsterberg’s original families. Even the first group of five families to arrive (18 June) all settled in the same village, Altona. The most likely explanation of this overlap between traveling party and village residence is that the Wirtschaften were assigned while families were still in Chortitza and served as the organizing principle for the formation of the traveling parties on the final leg of the journey.

military governor, the Duke of Richelieu. The identity of the individual in view is clear: Armand Emmanuel du Plessis, Fifth Duke of Richelieu (for a brief account of Richelieu’s life, see Height 1975, 97–113). What is less certain is the accuracy of the governmental position attributed to him: military governor.

By most accounts, Tsar Alexander I appointed Armand Richelieu governor, or mayor, of Odessa in 1803, then two years later, in 1805, promoted him to governor-general of New Russia (LeDonne 2000, 172; Height 1975, 104). There is no mention of Richelieu as military governor in the usual story of his life. However, according to LeDonne, prior to 1822 the specific title usually translated governor-general with respect to Richelieu’s assignment was “military governor of Kherson (or Odessa) and ‘administrator in chief’ … of Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, and Tavrich (Crimea) provinces” (2002, 25 n. 49). In light of this, a reference to Richelieu as military governor seems plausible.***

That still leaves the problem of the timing: as noted above, most date Richelieu’s promotion to 1805, a year after the Mennonite colonists had been assigned their land. Thus far I have found only one scholar who dates it to 1804. Julia Malitska writes, “In 1804, Richelieu was appointed Military Governor of Kherson province, based in Odessa and with responsibility for other southern provinces of the empire” (2017, 100). Unfortunately, she does not cite any sources to document her claim. She does add, “From the time of his appointment in 1803 as Town Commandant [or governor or mayor] of Odessa, Richelieu had taken a close interest and concern about the colonies. His office was involved with the activity of the Guardianship Office” (2017, 100).

If Malitska is correct about her dating of Richelieu’s promotion, then the community report is probably correct not only in referring to Richelieu as a military governor but also in reporting that he was involved in the assignment of land to the first Molotschna settlers. However, in the absence of corroborating evidence, we should hold that conclusion as only possible, perhaps not even plausible, but definitely not certain.

***Interestingly, LeDonne reports elsewhere that the title governor-general fell out of favor during the early 1800s and was replaced with the designation military governor (2001, 14). This likely explains why the pre-1822 title highlighted the military governor part of the role. For governors-general in Russia, see also Shandra 2021.

Yekaterinoslav Office for Foreign Settlers. This short phrase offers a great example of how confusing historical details can become for readers far removed from the events being reported. Consider, first of all, the name of the city: Yekaterinoslav. One frequently encounters the spelling Ekaterinoslav, which is just as correct as the version used here. To complicate matters further, the name of the city has undergone numerous changes. The first recorded name of the settlement was Novyi Kodak (New Kodak, since the original Kodak had been destroyed). In 1784 Catherine II renamed the city Yekaterinoslav after herself, but in 1796 her son and successor, Tsar Paul, removed her name from the city and gave it the name Novorossiisk. His son and successor, Alexander I, reversed his father’s decision in 1802 and restored the name Yekaterinoslav. That name stood until 1918, when it was changed to Dnipropetrovsk, a word that combined and commemorated the Dnieper River (Dnipro) and a Soviet revolutionary named Grigory Petrovsky. Finally, in 2016, with the Soviet Union now only a memory, the name was shortened to Dnipro. The city itself is located roughly 85 miles north-northwest of Molotschna.

Like the city, which had five different names over its history, the government office in view went through various incarnations, which can create significant confusion. In 1763, during Catherine II’s reign, the Russian government formed a department in St. Petersburg called the Bureau of Guardianship of the Foreign Colonists. As its name implies, the department was to oversee the settlement and care of foreign peoples settling within Russia’s borders. This centralized approach lasted all of three years, after which it was supplemented by the establishment of a regional office in Saratov. Sixteen years later, in 1782, both the bureau and its Saratov office were abolished, and foreign colonists were placed under the authority of the provincial (gubernia) authorities. According to David Rempel, “This meant that they were now subject to the same oppression and extortions as the native peasantry and with the same results” (1933, 37). Consequently, within the first year of Paul’s reign, on 4 March 1797, Russia returned to the former model, with the establishment of the Expedition (Department) of Political Economy, Guardianship of the Foreigners and Domestic Economy. After several years devoted to on-site investigation of conditions in the colonies, a local bureau was established in Novorossiisk (i.e., Yekaterinoslav) on 6 April 1800. This is the office to which the community report refers. However, the story does not end here. According to the Mennonite Heritage Centre (here), the Yekaterinoslav office was initially named the Guardianship Office for Foreign Settlers in New Russia but changed its name ever so slightly a year later, in 1801, to the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Settlers in New Russia. Eventually the number of colonists in New Russia increased to the point that the local bureau could no longer manage its workload. Therefore, in 1818 a new governmental department was organized to meet the need; that department is known in English-language documents as the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Settlers in Southern Russia, the Guardians’ Committee of the Foreign Colonists in the Southern Region of Russia, and the like. This Guardianship Committee continued to operate until it was finally abolished in 1871.

Contenius. In keeping with the theme of the previous paragraphs, we begin by noting that this person’s name is often spelled differently: Contenius is more common in English-language contexts, Kontenius in German-language works. Samuel Contenius (1749–1830) conducted the on-site investigation of New Russia referenced above, so it was only natural that he was appointed the first judge (chairman) of the Yekaterinoslav Guardianship Office. According to John R. Staples,

Contenius was an energetic proponent of agricultural modernization, and his wide contacts with the central Guardianship Committee administration in Kishinev, and with senior governmental authorities in St. Petersburg, often allowed him to bypass administrative red tape and push through reforms among the foreign colonists under his supervision. Contenius was a domineering bureaucrat who … placed enormous demands on everyone he commanded…. Although Contenius officially retired in 1818, he retained an office and staff in Ekaterinoslav until his death in 1830, and continued to be a driving force in colonist affairs until almost his last days. (Staples 2015, xxxvii)

Contenius enjoyed close and positive relations both with Armand Richelieu, military governor/governor-general of the province, and Johann Cornies, the most influential Mennonite within Molotschna colony. As already noted above, Contenius certainly was involved in the assignment of land to the founders of Halbstadt, as reported in the Halbstadt Gemeindebericht. Whether that consisted only of assigning the general area on the steppe or extended to the assignment of village areas and perhaps even individual Wirtschaften remains unknown.

Works Cited

Friesen, Peter M. 1980. The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 1789–1910. 2nd ed. Translated by J. B. Toews, Abraham Friesen, Peter J. Klassen, and Harry Loewen. Fresno, CA: Board of Christian Literature, General Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches. Available online here.

Height, Joseph S. 1975. Homesteaders on the Steppe: Cultural History of the Evangelical-Lutheran Colonies in the Region of Odessa. Bismarck: North Dakota Historical Society of Germans from Russia.

LeDonne, John P. 2000. “Frontier Governors General 1772–1825 II. The Southern Frontier.” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas NS 48 (2000): 161–83.

———. 2001. “Russian Governors General, 1775-1825: Territorial or Functional Administration?” Cahiers du Monde russe 42:5–30. Available online here.

———. 2002. “Administrative Regionalization in the Russian Empire 1802–1826.” Cahiers du Monde russe 43:5–34. Available online here.

Malitska, Julia. 2017. Negotiating Imperial Rule: Colonists and Marriage in the Nineteenth-Century Black Sea Steppe. Södertörn Doctoral Dissertations 135. Södertörn: Södertörn University. Available online here.

Rempel, David G. 1933. “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia: A Study of Their Settlement and Economic Development from 1789 to 1914.” PhD diss. Stanford University. Available online here.

Shandra, Valentyna. 2021. “Governor-Generals of Southern Ukraine: Formation and Implementation of Development Policy in the 1770s–1880s.” Pages 84–105 in Port-Cities of the Northern Shore of the Black Sea: Institutional, Economic and Social Development, 18th–Early 20th Centuries. Edited by Evrydiki Sifneos, Oksana Υurkova, and Valentina Shandra. Black Sea History Working Papers 2. Rethymnon, Crete: Institute for Mediterranean Studies– Foundation of Research and Technology. Available online here.

Staples, John R. 2015. Introduction to 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.

Unruh, Benjamin H. 1955. Die niederlandisch-niederdeutschen Hintergründe der mennonitischen Ostwanderungen im 16., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Karlsruhe-Rüppurr: self-published.

Grandpa Chris’s Story

Today my brother Dan sent a photo of a brief entry that he discovered in the 6 March 1920 issue of The Nebraska Farmer magazine. The entry, written by one Cornelius P. Buller, age 13, of Lushton, Nebraska, recounted an interesting story.

Further investigation revealed that each issue of The Nebraska Farmer contained a section titled Young People that typically contained five to eight such stories. It seems that the magazine invited Nebraska kids to send them brief stories for each issue. The best stories received some sort of prize; others were honored by being published for the magazine’s large readership.

No one familiar with Grandpa Chris’s storytelling prowess will be shocked that he showed it at an early age. Still, it is quite a surprise to learn that at least one of his stories was published when he was a young teen.

Halbstadt 5a

After publishing the previous post, I discovered two more Molotschna censuses available online. The 1811 census, translated by Glenn Penner, is available here. The 1814 census, translated by Richard Thiessen, is available here. With this additional data in hand, we can extend our survey of the Heinrich Epp family a little further.

The first change to note is the absence of Heinrich’s wife Margaretha. Clearly, sometime between 1808, when she turned sixty-two, and 1811 she had passed away.

A second significant change documented in 1811 is Heinrich Jr.’s assumption of head of household duties. Heinrich Sr., age sixty-seven, remains a member of the family, but his son Heinrich and his wife Justina now manage the family Wirtschaft. 

Other changes to the family at that time include the addition of Heinrich Jr. and Justina’s daughter Justina, age three. Of the six daughters born to Heinrich Sr. and Margaretha, only Maria remained, along with her husband Abraham Hiebert and their daughter Maria.

By 1814, the picture had changed further. Heinrich Sr. still lived with his son and daughter-in-law, who now had another daughter, Margaretha. Heinrich Sr.’s daughter Maria does not appear on the census, and we learn from GRANDMA that she passed away in 1813. Since Maria’s only daughter Margaretha was born 3 June 1813 and her widowed husband Abraham Hiebert remarried six weeks later, on 15 July, it seems most likely that she passed away during or as a result of complications from childbirth.

Finally, the number of livestock and farm implements owned continued to increase, as shown in the table below: 

	1805	1806	1807	1808	1811	1814
horses	3	5	5	6	5	8
cattle	6	10	13	14	10	14
sheep	0	0	1	1	0	20
pigs	0	0	4	?	0	6
plows	0.5	0.5	0.5	0	0.5	1
harrows	1	1	0	0	1	0
wagons	2	2	2	2	2	2

During their first ten years in Halbstadt, the Heinrich Epp family weathered painful losses and enjoyed noteworthy gains. No doubt their experience was replicated by many more of these original Molotschna settlers.

Halbstadt 5

We pick up the narrative with nearly two hundred Mennonite families en route to their new home. When the preceding paragraph in the community report ended, the immigrants were well funded, thanks to the Russian crown, and ready to set out for their destination some 675 miles away. The Gemeindebericht paragraph that is the subject of this post recounts the last two legs of that journey. 

Among these immigrants were also the twenty-one families who founded the village Halbstadt. After spending most of the winter in the Chortitza Mennonite district, they arrived in the spring of 1804 on the steppe that was assigned to them for settlement by the governor general, the Duke of Richelieu, and the chairman of the Yekaterinoslav Office for Foreign Settlers, Mr. Kontenius. The steppe was used at that time partly by the crown farmers of the church village Grosstokmak, lying 10 versts away, and partly by wandering Nogais.

Among these immigrants. The sentence begins with the general body of immigrants, the nearly two hundred families making the trek from West Prussia to New Russia, but quickly narrows its focus to the twenty-one families who founded Halbstadt. Before we learn more about those families, we should take a moment to describe this mass migration.

Peter Rempel’s Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828 provides archival information about all the families who moved to Russia in 1803. According to his records, the large body of Mennonite families traveled south from Grodno in at least twenty smaller groups (what he calls conveyances). Most groups included between eight to twelve families, but one group had only three families, and another had sixteen. These groups did not all travel together; rather, most groups left Grodno separately from the others. For example, the first group left Grodno on 6 August 1803, and the second and third groups departed two days later, on 8 August. The fourth group left on 11 August, the fifth on 14 August, the sixth on 15 August, and so on. The twentieth and final group that Rempel lists departed on 22 October 1803, two and a half months after the first group had set out. No doubt the first groups had already arrived at Chortitza before the final groups even began their journey. 

Drawing upon the information provided in Rempel 2007, we can also form an idea of how this process moved forward in a relatively orderly way. For example, six of the seven families of conveyance 2 arrived in Grodno on 5 August 1803; the other family had arrived two days earlier. All the families in this group set out on 8 August, only a few days after first arriving. The nine families of conveyance 3, who also left Grodno on 8 August, had all arrived on 5 August as well. Jumping ahead to conveyance 20, we see that all twelve families in this group arrived in Grodno on 15 October 1803 and departed a week later, on 22 October. (See also Grodno Immigration Records at the end of the post.)

Based on this evidence, we can safely conclude that the first leg of the trip, from West Prussia to Grodno, likewise involved small groups of families traveling together, one after another. Whether this apparently slow but steady stream of immigrants was regulated by the Prussian authorities’ pace of issuing visas or, less likely, planned by the Mennonites themselves is uncertain. Whatever the cause, it resulted in small groups of Mennonites arriving in Grodno every few days. After these families collected their funding, they formed a conveyance and departed on the next leg of their journey three to seven days later. In all likelihood, the groups who left Grodno included families who had traveled together from West Prussia and some who first met in Grodno.

twenty-one families. Scattered among these twenty groups were the twenty-one families who founded Halbstadt. Thanks to several documentary sources, we can identify nearly every adult and child within each family. Before we list the heads of those families, it is worth our time to cite the sources.

• 1805 Molotschna Mennonite Settlement Census: translated by Glenn Penner, available here
• 1806 Molotschna Mennonite Settlement Census: translated by Tim Janzen, available here
• 1807 Molotschna Mennonite Settlement Census: translated by Glenn Penner, available here
• 1808 Revision List: reproduced in Unruh 1955, 305–6; on Russian Revision Lists, see here

All four sources agree that the following twenty-one families founded Halbstadt; the sources also agree on the location within Halbstadt of each family (e.g., the Pletts in Wirtschaft 1):

1. Michael and Anna Plett
2. Jacob and Elisabeth Fast
3. Dirk and Judith Esau
4. Abraham and Anna Epp
5. Johann and Aganetha Berg (Barg)
6. Abraham and Catharina Friesen
7. David and Christina Epp
8. Isaac and Helena Fast
9. Bernhard and Susanna Giesbrecht
10. Jacob and Margaretha Fast
11. Gerhard and Maria Wiebe
12. Bernhard/Abraham and Margaretha Braun
13. Heinrich and Margaretha Epp
14. Johann and Elisabeth Heide (Heude)
15. Heinrich and Catharina Berg (Barg)
16. Peter and Christina Groening
17. Johann and Catharina Hiebert
18. Martin and Agatha Fast
19. Aron and Margaretha Janzen
20. Jacob and Catharina Boldt
21. Peter and Catharina Esau

These four sources, along with Rempel’s Mennonite Migration to Russia, also supply interesting details about these settlers. For example, we learn the following about the family of Heinrich and Margaretha Epp, who settled in Wirtschaft 13. 

According to Rempel, this family traveled in conveyance 14, which departed Grodno on 8 October 1803. Family members listed include (ages in parentheses): Heinrich (58), Margaretha (57), their son Heinrich (25), and daughters Christina (27), Margaretha (24), Anna (22), Gertruda (18), Maria (16), and Katharina (16). Rempel also reports: “In Grodno they received 108 rubles in silver for food (from September 30, 1803, until the departure date October 8, 1803, plus an additional 40 days) and 50 rubles in banknotes for animal feed for the trip” (Rempel 2007, 69).

How does this information compare with what we read about the funding received in the previous post? This family had nine members above the age of twelve. Since they were all in the same age category, we can divide the total grant of 108 rubles by nine to determine how much each person received: 12 rubles, which equals 1,200 kopeks. We read earlier that each person was “given traveling money from there on for forty days—20 kopeks currency for every soul over twelve years.”

Dividing the 1,200 kopeks that each person received by a daily allowance of 20 kopeks results in a grant that would cover sixty days. However, this family spent only eight days in Grodno (nine if one counts the day of departure), so each person should not have received more than 960 kopeks. Comparison with other records reveals the source of the discrepancy: the daily rate was higher than the 20 kopeks recorded in the Halbstadt report. Checks of other Grodno immigration records (see Grodno Immigration Records at the end of the post) confirms that the rate for individuals twelve and older was 25 kopeks a day; those younger than twelve received 12 kopeks a day. Several final notes about the Rempel summary: (1) the grant to individuals was to pay for food on the journey, as suggested earlier; (2) somewhat surprisingly, the food allowance was given in silver rubles, which bore a higher value than paper rubles; (3) the grant of 50 rubles was, as suspected, for animal fodder on the journey, but it was given in bank rubles; why it was not paid in silver rubles is unclear.

Other primary sources fill in additional information. For example, the 1808 Revision List reports that the family moved to Halbstadt from Neuteicherstadtfeld in West Prussia (see Unruh 1955, 305; there is a conflicting report that identifies their former village as Neuteicherhinterfeld). By comparing the Rempel immigration report (2007, 69) with the three censuses, we learn that the two oldest daughters were no longer part of the family by 1805; whether they married or passed away is unknown.

The 1808 Revision List and the 1805, 1806, and 1807 Mennonite censuses also report the livestock and farm implements the family owned:

	1805	1806	1807	1808
horses	3	5	5	6
cattle	6	10	13	14
sheep	0	0	1	1
pigs	0	0	4	?
plows	0.5	0.5	0.5	0
harrows	1	1	0	0
wagons	2	2	2	2

Because the 1805 census was taken little more than a year after the Heinrich and Margaretha Epp family arrived in Molotschna, it seems safe to conclude that they brought most, if not all, of the livestock from their former home in West Prussia. Within four years, they had doubled their number of horses and cattle and expanded their holdings to include pigs and one sheep.

Similar accounts could be written for many, if not most, of the other immigrants who passed through Grodno in the second half of 1803. In this post, we tarried a little with the Epp family to fill in, correct, and clarify some of the details associated with their journey. In the next post we will pick up the thread of the narrative with the immigrants’ arrival in Chortitza.

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Grodno Immigration Records

Glenn Penner has made available online some of the Grodno records contained in Rempel. Those who wish to see the evidence for themselves will find Penner’s file here. Penner’s entries correspond to the following conveyance lists in Rempel 2007, 57–62.

List of the 16 Mennonite families who left on 14 August 1803 = Rempel conveyance 5

List of the 8 departed Mennonite families = Rempel conveyance 2

List of the 10 departed Mennonite families = Rempel conveyance 4

List of the 9 departed Mennonite families = Rempel conveyance 3

List of the 10 departed Mennonite families = Rempel conveyance 1

Works Cited

Rempel. Peter. 2007. Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828. Edited by Alfred H. Redekopp and Richard D. Thiessen. Winnepeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Unruh, Benjamin H. 1955. Die niederlandisch-niederdeutschen Hintergründe der mennonitischen Ostwanderungen im 16., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Karlsruhe-Rüppurr: self-published.