Heinrichsdorf history 2

The church book account of Heinrichdorf’s founding and early years was relatively clear: the group who settled the village asked to leave Waldheim for a new home in 1845, and by early 1849 the new village had been founded; two teachers and a deacon were appointed shortly thereafter, but sometime before 1859 one teacher and the deacon returned to Waldheim, which led to the appointment and confirmation of two new teachers in 1861.

Because this account was written relatively close in time to the events that it reports, and because it was written by someone on the scene, we should treat it as generally reliable and use it to evaluate later or more distant narratives about Heinrichsdorf.

With that as background, we return to the story told by John A. Boese, whose work we consulted in attempting to discover Heinrichsdorf’s location (here). Boese actually has quite a bit to say about this obscure Volhynian village, since some of his ancestors lived there during its short existence. Boese’s account begins by observing that the some residents in Waldheim “found considerable disagreements in the church there and also in the village management.” Boese continues:

It appeared that the more well-to-do element of the village or colony desired to keep this new group, because they were poor, as a laboring class. So they would not allow them to own land. Village and church management appeared to dictate that the children of this new group should be placed in homes to serve as help. Our group was not accustomed to such idea and wanted to keep their own children in their own homes. All concerned could came to no agreement.

While Elder Peter H. Schmidt was the leader at Zabara-Waldheim, and appeared to have had good training and was a very able speaker,  the residing ministers did not seem to want to tolerate him and with all this resistance he decided to resign. He and his wife joined the group that went back to Volhynia in 1848 and his wife was the first one to be buried on the new cemetery plot in Heinrichsdorf.

This group that planned to return to Volhynia had elected Benj. P. Schmidt, (a son of Peter H.), as minister. They now applied for permission by authorities to migrate back to Volhynia. This was granted and so they returned in 1848 to an area that they had passed thru on the way to the Molotschna. This was a wooded area with the possibility of clearing enough ground for cultivation and pasture. The soil here was quite promising and the area was near good markets for their products.

Here the village of Heinrichsdorf was established. Since they had no Elder they joined the church activities of the Ostrog area where Benjamin Dirks was Elder. Later Tobias A. Unruh was Elder there and he also served this group. These church servants were still active when this group left for America.

Judging by the experience that this group had at the Molotschna, one would probably not just want to claim that “politics” had entered into the management of affairs there, but it appeared that those belonging to the more well-to-do class possessed the ruling element.

As indicated when this group settled near Zhitomir in Russia in 1848 Rev. Benjamin P. Schmidt was their leader. He was in charge of the group when they landed in South Dakota. … In 1849 when they were settled at Zhitomir in Volhynia, they elected Benjamin Unruh and John Ratzlaff as deacons but both soon left Heinrichsdorf. Then in 1859 Tobias H. Retzlaff and David Unruh were elected as ministers.

Several elements of Boese’s account deserve closer attention.

1. We begin with specific claims that we can check. Boese states that Benjamin P. Schmidt was elected minister. The Heinrichsdorf church book reports that Benjamin Schmidt was a teacher and that the minister was Benjamin Dirks (see here). Interestingly, Boese says that Schmidt was appointed while the group was still in Waldheim, a possibility that we suggested earlier. It seems, at first glance, that Boese has some facts correct and some incorrect.

Tobias A. Unruh (1819–1875)

2. Boese also identifies Benjamin Dirks as the elder of the Ostrog-area church (i.e., Karolswalde and other Mennonite villages around Ostrog). The church book indicates that Dirks “was endorsed as the minister by the [unnamed] reverend church elder.” In this case, Boese is apparently correct, since Ernst Crous (1959) reports that Benjamin Dircks was elder of the Ostrog-area churches beginning in 1817, followed in 1853 by Tobias A. Unruh, whom both Boese and the church book correctly identify. One wonders if the church book is mistaken about Benjamin Dirks or if there was a second person by the same name who served as minister in Heinrichsdorf. All we know for certain is that Boese does have his facts right in this case; the church book may as well.

3. Boese states that Benjamin Unruh and John Ratzlaff were elected deacons; according to the church book Unruh was indeed a deacon, but Ratzlaff was a teacher.

4. Finally, Boese reports that in 1859 Tobias H. Retzlaff and David Unruh were elected ministers. As we read in the church book, these two were elected teachers in 1860 and confirmed in 1861. While Boese has the names correct, his date is slightly off. Importantly, this particular report also hints that Boese’s term minister is what the church book refers to as a teacher, which should lead us to accept that perhaps his statement about Benjamin Schmidt (number 1) is correct after all.

Presumably Boese is reporting all that he was told about Heinrichsdorf from his ancestors who lived there. Recall that, although Boese wrote this account in 1967, he was already involved with matters of Mennonite history in 1930, when some of the Heinrichsdorf residents were still living in his South Dakota community.

At worst, the oral history that Boese passes on to his readers has the basic parts of the story correct—the when, where, and who questions—even if some of the details are not entirely accurate. This is important to keep in mind as we consider what Boese writes about why the people left Waldheim in the first place.

According to Boese, the Heinrichsdorf group left Waldheim due to economic oppression and religious disagreement. His specific charges are several and need to be read carefully:

the more well-to-do element of the village or colony desired to keep this new group … as a laboring class. So they would not allow them to own land.

Village and church management appeared to dictate that the children of this new group should be placed in homes to serve as help.

While Elder Peter H. Schmidt … appeared to have had good training and was a very able speaker,  the residing ministers did not seem to want to tolerate him and with all this resistance he decided to resign.

In other words, according to Boese, those who left for Heinrichsdorf were not allowed to own land and were kept in the position of laborers; the village and church leaders dictated that their children should be placed in homes as servants; and this group’s religious leader, Elder Peter H. Schmidt, was resisted to point that he resigned in frustration.

The same explanation is promoted by Martin Schrag: “Not all were satisfied with their new home, Waldheim, in the Molotschna settlement. Religious and economic misunderstandings arose between the older settlers and the newcomers (Schrag 1959, emphasis added). Does this settle the matter, or is Schrag merely repeating the same story told by Boese? Schrag does list in his Volhynia bibliography another book by Boese, which raises the possibility the two telling the same story.

Fortunately, it is possible to check one element of Boese’s reconstruction of events: his claim that the group who left Waldheim were not allowed to own land. We know for a fact that was not true for at least one of the returnees: Benjamin Buller 2. But perhaps Benjamin Buller was an anomaly and the other returnees did not own land in Waldheim.

There is a simple way to check this claim, by comparing the list of returnees on the 1845 list of those who had declared their intent to return with the comprehensive list of Waldheim landowners from the years 1838–1841. That will be the task of the next post in the Heinrichsdorf history series.


Works Cited

Boese, John A. 1967. The Prussian-Polish Mennonites Settling in South Dakota 1874 and Soon After. Freeman, SD: Pine Hill Press. Available online here.

Crous, Ernst. 1957. Karolswalde (Rivne Oblast, Ukraine). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.

Schrag, Martin H. 1959. Volhynia (Ukraine). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.