Thinking about Kleefeld 2

The first half of this discussion (see here) suggested that the evidence we have of Johann Siebert’s situation in Kleefeld argues against attributing his emigration to financial distress, political upheaval, or religious persecution (real or imagined). Something else must have motivated him to sell the title to Kleefeld’s Wirtschaft 34, pack up his family and belongings, and journey to central Nebraska. To gain greater insight into that “something else,” we will consider Mennonite inheritance practices and the makeup of Johann’s family itself.

According to Russian law, Mennonites who owned land in one of the colonies (e.g., Molotschna) were prohibited from subdividing a 65-dessiantine (ca. 175 acres) allotment in order to sell it or pass it on to their children. Russian law further specified that inherited land was to go to the youngest son in the family, although the Mennonite community was granted permission in 1800 to follow their own inheritance customs. Thus as a rule the oldest Mennonite son inherited the right to the allotment on the passing of the father, but he was expected to compensate his siblings for their “share” in that land holding. For example, if an allotment was worth 6,000 rubles and the oldest son had seven living siblings, he would pay each of them 750 rubles, so that, in effect, each child of the deceased received an equal inheritance (see further Urry 1989a).

This arrangement, although as equitable as possible under the circumstances, really did little to help the younger siblings over the long term. Granted, they possessed a sum of money equivalent to their share in the family, but they still did not own the land needed to support their own families. It is not difficult to see how in only a few generations the landlessness problem mentioned earlier developed across the Molotschna colony. All that is background to our consideration of Johann Siebert’s family situation and what light that might shed on his decision to leave Kleefeld behind.

Johann and Katharina Rempel Siebert were married in 1846 and immediately started their family. Sarah was born in 1847, and ten more children followed over the next nineteen years. Two of the children died before reaching adulthood (Cornelius in 1860 and Anna-1 in late 1858 or 1859), so that by 1879, when Johann and Katharina emigrated to the U.S., they had nine living children: five daughters, all older than their remaining four sons.

Sarah Siebert Buller

• Sarah, as we know well, was married to Peter D Buller, the second-born son in his family. Sarah and Peter emigrated at the same time as Johann and Katharina and likewise settled near Henderson.


• Katharina was married to Jacob Heinrich Friesen, the only child in a family with no record of land ownership in Molotschna. They emigrated at the same time as Johann and Katharina but apparently headed north and settled in Saskatchewan, Canada.


• Maria was married to Abraham A. Thieszen, the firstborn son of Aron Thiessen (GRANDMA spells their last names differently). Abraham’s family emigrated to the U.S. (Mountain Lake, Minnesota) in 1876, three years before Abraham and Maria traveled with her family to Nebraska. They also settled in Henderson.


• Maragretha was a single twenty-three-year-old in 1879.


• Anna-2 was a single nineteen-year old in 1879.


• Diedrich (eighteen), Johann J (seventeen), Peter (fifteen), and Kornelius (thirteen) were all unmarried and living at home in 1879.

Margaretha Siebert (later Epp)

The reality for fifty-seven-year-old Johann Siebert was that most, perhaps all, of his children would end up landless if they remained in Kleefeld.

That fate was already sealed for his oldest daughters Sarah, Katharina, and Maria. Even if Sarah’s in-laws did own a farm, Peter D was the second-born and had no prospect of inheriting it. Katharina’s in-laws did not own land, as far as we know. Finally, Maria’s in-laws had already emigrated to the U.S., so even if they had owned land previously it was long gone.

Similarly, of Johann’s four living sons, only one would be able to inherit Kleefeld Wirtschaft 34, and one wonders what eighteen-year-old Diedrich was supposed to do in the meantime. (Johann had no idea how long he would live, of course, but it turns out that he lived another twenty-nine years after emigrating and passed on when Diedrich was forty-seven [assuming Diedrich lived that long].)

The only other children with any hope of being a part of a land-owning family were Margaretha and Anna-2, but if the experiences of their three older sisters were any indication, that was a slim hope indeed.

In all likelihood, Johann knew that eight of his children would be landless the rest of their lives, and even Diedrich would have to wait many years before owning the family farm. With prospects such as this, it is easy to imagine that Johann decided to sell his land in Kleefeld in order to seek a better life for the entire family in the U.S.

This is all speculation, obviously, but it is speculation with some basis in evidence. Clearly, Johann was not moving to improve his own situation; he was already set for life. So if he was not moving to improve his financial situation or out of political or religious concerns, what else would there be but to take care of his children—all of his children—the best way he could?

The site of Kleefeld today. No trace of the village is visible from the air.

Since we are already knee deep in speculation, why not wade out a little farther? The timing of Johann’s decision is both interesting and suggestive. According to James Urry, the earliest groups of emigrants “were forced to sell their land and farms cheaply; a full farm valued at 6,000–7,000 rubles before emigration often sold for as little as 3,000 rubles during the period of intense migration. By the late 1870s, however, Molochnaia prices had regained their pre-emigration levels” (Urry 1989b, 221). As the last Kleefeld landowner to emigrate, at the end of the 1870s—in 1879, to be exact—Johann undoubtedly sold his allotment for top ruble, far more than he would have been able to negotiate five years earlier.

On the ground, only a windmill in the middle of a field remains to mark 
the location of Kleefeld. The village was apparently abandoned during 
World War II, when the German–Russian front stretched across 
Molotschna for a number of weeks. The site was completely razed 
in the 1990s; even the cemetery was plowed and turned into a field.

To wade a little deeper into speculation—although the names of several Kleefeld landowners appear in the Schnurbuch discussed here, meaning that they borrowed money from an aid society to finance their journey and the costs of setting up a household in the U.S., neither Johann’s name nor those of any of his sons-in-law are found in that record.

This does not prove that none of these four families who traveled together did not take out a loan, but it lends credence to the notion that the money Johann received from the sale of Wirtschaft 34 was used to pay the significant costs of transporting four families (twenty-five people in all) and their goods from New Russia to Nebraska, perhaps even to purchase farmland once they arrived. In fact, it is perfectly reasonable to think that Johann served as his own family aid society, that he loaned his married children the funds they needed to emigrate and then establish their own farms in their new homeland.

All speculation, obviously, but this scenario does answer several vexing questions:

• Why did Johann decide to emigrate? A: To provide the opportunity for all of his children to own and farm their own land.


• Why did Johann emigrate so much later than other Kleefeld residents? A: His emigration was not out of fear or necessity, so he waited until land prices rose in value.


• How were the landless Peter D and Sarah (and the other married children) able not only to pay for the trip to Nebraska but also purchase 80 acres of land within the first week after arriving? A: Johann used the money he received from selling his land allotment to fund the journey and the initial purchases of land, probably in the form of loans to the sons-in-law.

Even if some of the details turn out to be mistaken, the general explanation seems to be headed in the right direction—and until someone stumbles across a long-forgotten diary or a promissory note that sheds additional light on this phase of our family history, it is probably the best that we can do.

Sources Cited

Urry, James. 1989a. Land Distribution (Russia). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available here.

———. 1989b. None But Saints: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia 1789–1889. Winnipeg: Hyperion Press.