A recent search for more information about Michalin, a village in Volhynia, turned up an interesting letter to the editor from late 1823 that was published in a periodical named New Evangelical Magazine and Theological Review. The letter appears on pages 91–92 of the March 1824 issue. For the original publication, see here.
To put this into perspective, the letter was published when David Buller was a boy of six. The letter writer, John Mitchell, seems to know a little about Mennonites, but he had more questions than knowledge, so he asked a colleague to find out more from a young schoolmaster among the Mennonites of Molotschna colony.
The letter locates Mitchell in Astrachan (Astrakhan), a Russian city 500+ miles east of Molotschna. Mitchell was a missionary with the Edinburgh Missionary Society there (see the announcement here).
Mitchell’s letter to the New Evangelical Magazine editor reports his findings and, in the process, offers us an intriguing outside but contemporary perspective on Mennonites. A word of warning: the letter is not entirely accurate in every detail. It is generally correct, but we should read it critically and carefully as no more than one perspective, a second-hand one at that, on the Mennonites of the early nineteenth century.
To the Editor of the New Evan. Magazine.
Astrachan, Dec. 16, 1823.
I ought long ago to have acknowledged the receipt of your very kind letter of the 9th of April, which came to hand in September, along with the parcel which you had the goodness to send me, containing a copy of your Magazine for last year, and up to April for the present year, together with a copy of your History of the Christian Church, in 2 vols. Having written to my brother a short time after these came to hand, I requested him to inform you of their having been received, and desired him to express to you my thankfulness for such a valuable present. I now beg leave to express my gratitude to you with my own hand, for your disinterested kindness; and although I have been long in getting an opportunity of doing this, I can assure you it is not the less sincere. Your Magazine I esteem very highly, not only for the general information it contains in regard to the present state of religion, both at home and abroad, but principally for the many valuable and well written papers introduced into it, on different subjects, which, together with the Reviews, render it one of the most valuable repositories of religious knowledge I have yet met with. Your History of the Christian Church I had read before with great satisfaction, and had set it down for one of the most concise and impartial treatises on Church History I had ever seen in print; but I little expected ever to have a copy of it in my own possession. Nor is it likely, secluded as we are in this distant corner, that I ever would have possessed it, had I not, through your generosity, been furnished with a copy of it.
Some passages in your History of the Waldenses drew my attention to the German Mennonites,* many of whom have of late years emigrated to this Empire, where they have got a large portion of land assigned to them by the Russian Government, and have the free exercise of their religion secured to them. Judging that a short account of these emigrants might be interesting to you, for more reasons than one, I made application, through the medium of one of my brethren at Karass, to a young man who is employed as a schoolmaster among them, for a short sketch of their history, and the following is the account transmitted by him. The numbers refer to the questions proposed* and which have been answered as they occurred, without any regard to order. They have not been answered so fully as I could have wished; but, imperfect as they are, they will tend to give you some faint idea of the situation of this interesting people. The letter was written in the German language, and the original has, some time ago, been sent to our Secretary in Edinburgh.
1st. The first establishment of the Mennonites in the Ukraine, which lies north of the Crimea, consisted of eleven villages, built in the year 1804, upon the rivers Moloshna and Kurisha. The quantity of land assigned them by the Russian Government in that country, amounts to 120,000 dessatines, (each dessatine is nearly equal to three acres.) In the years 1810, 11, 18, 20, 22 and 1823, the number of villages has increased to twenty-five,† in consequence of the arrival of new emigrants from Germany. With each of the villages are connected, upon an average, twenty farms, consisting of sixty-five dessatines of land each. The whole number of farms at present, amounts to 755. Of the 120,000 dessatines, 65,000 have been thus apportioned into villages and farms, and 55,000 remain for emigrants who may still join them. Besides those who have farms, there are about 300 families, who support themselves by commerce, by trades, and by day labour. Belonging to the community there is a sheep-fold, consisting of Spanish sheep, a cloth manufactory, a brewery, a distillery, and several corn mills.
2. Besides the Mennonites upon the Moloshna and Kurisha, there are fourteen villages in the district of Chortiz, lying about eighty versts to the north, these were built in the year 1783, by emigrants from west Prussia; there is also a village of them at Michelin near Machnovka, in the Government of Kiew—three villages near Ostrog, and one village near Dubno, in the Government of Volhynia, but my correspondent could not inform me of the year in which they were established, nor the number of families living in them. All that he could discover was, that nearly thirty-six years ago, about twenty Mennonite families emigrated from Pfatz, Alsace, and Zweibruck, and settled in the vicinity of Dubus.
3. All the Mennonites who live on the Moloshna, (excepting nine families, who came originally from Zweibrück on the west side of the Rhine,) as well as those in the Chortiz district, have emigrated from the west of Prussia, between the rivers Wechset and Nogat, and from the cities of Danzig, Elbing, Marienbürg, and Marienverder. The causes of their emigration were various. The poorer class, with a view of bettering their condition;—those from Prussia, because they were afraid of their former freedom, rights, and immunities, being encroached upon;—and those who left Pfatz and Alsace, about thirty-six years ago, in order to withdraw themselves and their sons from military service.
4. Almost every year a few families from Prussia join them. Every stranger received into their community must be baptized again. My correspondent does not say, whether they have received adult baptism or not, but I suppose he must mean the latter.
5. Every head of a family, is master of his property.
6. Every possessor of land pays a tax of fifteen kopeks per dessatine, which for a farm, amounts to nine rubles, seventy-five kopeks, and twenty-five kopeks for supporting the post. Head money is also paid, but the rate is not fixed. At one time it amounts to a ruble and sixty kopeks; and at another, only seventy-five kopeks. This tax is paid to the village overseers, who transmit it to the chief superintendant, by whom it is sent to the rent office.
7. Their civil affairs are managed by a district Superintendant, two Assessors, and two Writers. The Superintendant and Assessors are changed every three years, but the Writers hold their office for life.
8. They have special privileges, but different from those of the Moravians in Sarepta. They are under the guardianship of the office for Foreign Affairs, in the Government of Ekaterinaslav.
9. With regard to their religious tenets; they swear no oath—they abominate war— acknowledge the validity of Adult Baptism only, and of course reject that of Infants. They are divided into two sects; the Flämigier, and the Friesen. My correspondent promised to send me two of their Catechisms, to give me a better view of their faith, but they have not yet come to hand.
10. The ordinance of the Lord’s supper is administered twice or thrice a year, always in the forenoon. The Flämigier receive it sitting, the Friesen standing. The old Friesen, who formerly wore long beards, have also the ceremony of washing the feet after the dispensation of the ordinance.
11. Each congregation has an elder, four teachers, and two deacons, who are chosen from among themselves. The manner in which the election is gone about is as follows:—When the office of elder or teacher is vacant, the elders of the community, in a circular letter, require all the fathers of families to pray to the Lord, that he would shew them whom he hath chosen to fill the vacant office, at the same time, intimating when the election is to take place. On the day appointed, one of the elders addresses the meeting; and after the votes have been taken, he who has the majority is considered as duly elected. The district in which my correspondent resides, is divided into four parishes, viz. Petershagen, Orlof, Alexandervohl, and Rudnerveide. The two first parishes have the Brother Berend Fort for their elder; Alexandervohl, Brother Peter Wedel, and Rudnerveide, Brother Frang.
This is all the length my correspondent goes in his account of the Mennonites. I have heard from others, that among their neighbours, their character stands high for sobriety and industry; yet, I fear, there are many things among them that would require to be set in order. A Missionary from Britain, of their own sentiments on the subject of Baptism, might, I have little doubt, through the blessing of God upon his labours, be the means, not only of drawing their attention to the scriptural order of the ordinances of the Gospel, but likewise of stirring them up to active exertions for making known the Gospel to the Tartars, many of whom are resident in their neighbourhood. I have lately been informed, that an individual from amongst them was so much affected with the state of the Tartars, that he hired himself as a servant among them, for the purpose of learning their language, and thus qualifying himself for preaching the Gospel to these poor deluded followers of the Arabian Prophet. He had made considerable progress in the acquisition of the language, when some family affairs made it necessary for him to return, for a time, to his native city. He was expected to return last summer, and, I suppose, has long before now resumed his disinterested labours among that people. May his labours be rewarded by seeing many turned from the error of their ways. The Tartars in that quarter and in the Crimea, present a most interesting field for Missionary exertion; and I trust the time is at no great distance, when labourers shall be raised up to cultivate it.
I remain, my dear Sir,
Yours most affectionately,
JOHN MITCHELL.
* It may be useful to some of our readers to explain, that the Mennonites are descended from that branch of the WALDENSES, who, to escape from the persecution to which they were exposed in the valleys of Piedmont, fled, in the latter part of the twelfth century, into Flanders, and settled in the provinces of Holland and Zealand, where they maintained their principles, and led simple and exemplary lives. Mr. Adam, in his Religious World Displayed, Second Edition, 1823, Vol. II. p. 186, tells us, that “From the History of the old Dutch Waldenses of that period, and from the doctrines they then held, and during the following; centuries, a striking similarity is apparent between them, and the ancient and later Dutch Baptists. And though there is no particular reference to Baptism in any of the Confessions of Faith of the Waldenses, it is mentioned, on the authority of Hieronymus, Verdussun, Cligny, and other Roman Catholic Authors, that the Dutch Waldenses rejected the Baptism of children, and applied the ordinance to adults alone.—EDITOR.
† Here the account is somewhat obscure. It states the number thus, “In the years 1810, 11, 18, 20, till 1822, from new emigrations twenty-three villages have been built, and this year two more,” so it is not very evident whether the number of villages, in all, be twenty-five or thirty-six.
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