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
- Michael and Anna Plett
- Jacob and Elisabeth Fast
- Dirk and Judith Esau
- Abraham and Anna Epp
- Johann and Aganetha Berg (Barg)
- Abraham and Catharina Friesen
- David and Christina Epp
- Isaac and Helena Fast
- Bernhard and Susanna Giesbrecht
- Jacob and Margaretha Fast
- Gerhard and Maria Wiebe
- Bernhard/Abraham and Margaretha Braun
- Heinrich and Margaretha Epp
- Johann and Elisabeth Heide (Heude)
- Heinrich and Catharina Berg (Barg)
- Peter and Christina Groening
- Johann and Catharina Hiebert
- Martin and Agatha Fast
- Aron and Margaretha Janzen
- Jacob and Catharina Boldt
- 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.
****
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.
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