Speaking of Dosidorf

The recent post on the identification of the Mennonite landlord in the 1848 lease (here), a landowner in the village of Dosidorf (also known as Zabara), is not the end of our interest in this village, nor was the 1848 lease our first encounter with Dosidorf. In fact, the village name appeared on the 1833 list of Mennonites who wished to move from Volhynia to Molotschna (for Glenn Penner’s translation of the list, see here; for the post about it, see here).

We did not pay attention to the village name because it appears in the third section of the list, which has nothing to do with Bullers. But since we have now noticed this village, let us return to the list to see if we can connect some dots. The 1833 list ends with entries for four families:

	Head of Household	Males	Females	Total	Trade
1	Peter Schmidt	4	3	7	Leinweber (linen weaver)
2	Cornelius Funk	3	1	4	Leinweber (linen weaver)
3	Peter Wedel	3	4	7	Leinweber (linen weaver)
4	Peter Nachtigal	6	6	12	Landwirth (landowner/farmer)

Schmidt, Funk, Wedel, and Nachtigal are names we have encountered alongside Bullers as far back as the Przechovka church, but we are not so interested in these names as in what is said about these Mennonites. They were, in 1833, “currently living on the estate of the Prince Joseph Ljubomirsky in the colony Doschidorf.” Is Doschidorf the same as Dosidorf?

The Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe Volhynian Gazetteer (Stewner 2012) records only one village name similar to either Doschidorf or Dosidorf:

Dosseldorf/Sabara Kol. (Zabara/Zabara), Baranivka, Zhytomyr, Ukraine; Кол. Досилъдорф (Забара)

The equation of Dosseldorf and Zabara implies quite strongly that Dosseldorf = Dosidorf, given that we already know that Zabara was an alternate name for Dosidorf. Further, it is clear that Doschidorf and Dosidorf are simply variations in representing the same German word (dorf, meaning “village,” is a clear sign that this was the German name for the village; the Russian name was Забара = Zabara). As we have noted frequently, there was no authorized spelling standard, and names were written on the basis of phonetics.

So, it seems safe to conclude that the Doschidorf in the 1833 list is the same as Dosidorf in the 1848 lease and, by extension, the village Dosidorf to which, according to Martin Schrag, Swiss-Volhynian Mennonites moved in 1837. But let us think about that a little.

In 1833, four Mennonite families from Dosidorf wanted to move to Molotschna. Four years later a number of Swiss-Volhynian Mennonite families moved to the village from where they moved. Is it possible that the two events are somehow connected? That is, was part of the reason that the Swiss-Volhynians moved to Dosidorf to assume the leases and the houses that the earlier Mennonites were leaving? I know of no clear evidence indicating that they did, but it remains an intriguing and likely hypothesis nonetheless.

It gains a little more credence when one jumps ahead to 1848 and realizes that use of the land was passed back from Swiss-Volhynian Mennonites to a group with the names Decker, Kohn, Ratzlaff, Schmidt, and Voth—apart from Schmidt not identical with the 1833 group but of the same tribe of Mennonites, so to speak. In the end, both land transfers suggest that these two groups—the Swiss-Volhynian Mennonites and the Prussian Mennonites (for lack of a better term)—had periodically close relations with each other throughout their shared Volhynian sojourn (see further Schrag 1974, 62–66).

One side note before we end. It is highly likely that at least two of the 1833 Dosidorf Mennonites who wished to move to Molotschna were among the original residents of Waldheim. As noted in the second post on the Waldheim settlers (here), we can deduce the names of four of the eight original Waldheim residents by comparing entries in the 1839 and 1840 lists. Those four settlers were:

• Peter Heinrich Nachtigal
• Kornelius Johann Funk
• Kornelius David Unruh
• Peter Tobias Sperling

Although we cannot know for certain, it seems likely that Peter Nachtigal in the 1833 list above is the same as Peter Heinrich Nachtigal here, likewise Cornelius Funk in the 1833 list and Kornelius Johann Funk here.

Of course, we should not overlook the identification of Peter Schmidt as Cornelius Funk’s stepson in the 1839 Waldheim settler list, so this gives us a third Dosidorf Mennonite who settled in Waldheim. Of the four 1833 Dosidorf heads of household, only Peter Wedel has not been located thus far.

Where has all this led us? We know now that the Dosidorf Mennonites did end up in Waldheim, and we suspect that their Volhynian land was taken over for a time by Swiss-Volhynian Mennonites who would farm it for at least the next ten years.


Works Cited

Schrag, Martin H. 1974. The European History (1525–1874) of the Swiss Mennonites from Volhynia. Edited by Harley J. Stucky. North Newton, KS: Mennonite Press for Swiss Mennonite Cultural and Historical Association.

Stewner, Frank. 2012. SGGEE Volhynian Gazetteer. Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe. Available online here.