A Polish Mennonite

There have been ethnically Polish Mennonites for centuries.  That's where surnames such as Rogalsky, Sawatsky, Tilitsky, and Petkau come from.  Their forefathers were ethnic Poles, almost certainly Catholic, who became Mennonites in the 18th century or earlier.  But very few ethnic Poles have become Mennonites in North America.  One of those was John Glen #319928 (1864-1939), who joined the Kleine Gemeinde near Jansen, Nebr., having been baptized in 1891.

I came across him because he was friends with my grandparents, Cornelius #7529 (1884-1950) and Margaret Siemens; and his life intrigued me because as a Polish convert in Nebraska he was not a typical KG member.  Although he had children, none of them had any children; so he has left no descendants to research him and to preserve his memory.  So I have taken that task for myself; and he has proven to be quite an interesting, if elusive, person.

First, I decided to find his immigration record, but that proved to be a fruitless search, even with the search capabilities of Ancestry.com.  I also checked the Mennonite immigrant lists in Clarence Hiebert's book Brothers in Deed, Brothers in Need: A Scrapbook About Mennonite Immigrants from Russia, 1870-1885 and David Haury's book Index to Mennonite Immigrants on United States Passenger Lists, 1872-1904 but found nothing.  I suspected that I didn't have his Polish name and that "John Glen" was an Americanized version and that he had used his Polish name when he arrived.

So then I decided to narrow it down by finding his year of immigration in the census records.  But he reported variously that he had immigrated in 1874, 1884 (mentioned twice), 1885, and 1886.  That didn't help much.  But I did note that he said he had been naturalized, mentioning 1913 twice and 1915 once.

So I decided to look for his naturalization record since it should give his immigration date.  If either of the two years of naturalization was correct, he should have been living near Meade, Kans., since the Kleine Gemeinde had migrated there as a group in 1908.  When I searched in Ancestry, I found an index card for him in Meade, Kans., on 28 October 1913.

Naturalization index card for John Glen, 28 October 1913, Western District Court of Missouri, ARC: 572253; Records of District Courts of the United States, Record Group 21; National Archives at Kansas City, Missouri, accessed at Ancestry.com on 5 November 2016.

His naturalization card gave me a month of arrival (March 1884) and a port (New York City).  Fortunately, there were only two passenger ships that arrived in New York City in March 1884.  But Ancestry still couldn't find him with an automated search, so I browsed the records individually.  With only two ships, that was doable.

It took a while, but I came across a "Jan Glein" traveling in a group of 24 single men, mostly young, from Hungary, who arrived on 3 March 1884, on board the S.S. California from Hamburg.  The Kingdom of Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at that time, so that fit the fact on the naturalization card that he had been a subject or resident of Austria. But he gave an age of 24, meaning that he would have been born in 1859-1860, while the naturalization card gave a birth date of 10 May 1864.  But no one else on those two ships was even close, and enough of the facts fit so that I concluded it was probably he. 

Here is his name from the passenger manifest:

Passenger Jan Glein, Passenger Manifest of Vessels Arriving New York City, 3 March 1884, ship California, page 2, line 61.  Accessed at Ancestry.com on 2 December 2016.

Later I found him in the 1885 census records in Nebraska but not in the 1880 census records anywhere in the US (using the Ancestry search).  I also went manually through the entire 1880 Jefferson County, Nebr., census records, since that is where he was in 1885, but didn't find him.  So that was another piece of evidence that he arrived between 1880 and 1885.

I was so excited that I had manged to track down a single individual who changed his name shortly after arrival!  But of course, I wanted to find out who his parents were.

Checklist for West Prussian Research

If you are researching Mennonite genealogy in Poland and West Prussia, here is a checklist of items to research.  This might help in doing the "reasonably exhaustive" research that is required by the Genealogical Proof Standard.  I'm most familiar with the Gross Werder and Danzig regions in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, so my list will focus on those areas.

A.  Censuses

1. Census 1772-1773 - Prussia did a census shortly after it seized a large swath of territory from Poland.
2. Census 1776  - Mennonites only
3. Land registration 1789 - Mennonite landowners only
4. Census 1793 - Danzig region only.  Taken after Prussia seized this area from Poland.
5. Census 1811 - Elbing Territory, Mennonites only.  This region was administered separately because the King of Poland had used Elbing as collateral for a loan from Prussia in the late 17th century.

B.  Land Records

1.  1782 Grundbücher - In 1782, Prussia instituted a system of land records, some of which have survived to the present day in the Malbork, Poland, archives.  Glenn Penner scanned tens of thousands of pages of these records and posted them at the Mennonite Library and Archives web site.
2. Various Land Records online at MennoniteGenealogy.com/prussia.  Adalbert Goertz extracted lists of land owners.

C.  Prussian Archival Records

Mennonites were a people of significant concern to the Prussian government because they refused to serve in the Prussian army.  Consequently Prussian archival records at Berlin, Gdansk, Malbork, etc., have many files about Mennonites.  Many of these can be accessed on LDS microfilms.

D.  Church Records

1. Mennonite - By the latter third of the 18th century, all Mennonite churches were keeping records of marriages, births, deaths, and baptisms.  Some had even started in the early 17th century.   A list of most (perhaps all) of the surviving church books can be found here. 
2. Catholic - Before the Prussian seizure in 1772, many Mennonites were obligated to pay a fee to the Catholic parish for vital events.  The priest had to record this fee in a ledger to be audited by the diocese and often recorded genealogical information as well.
3. Lutheran/Evangelical - Mennonites living in Lutheran-dominated areas of Poland often had to record their vital events at the Lutheran parish.  Soon after the partition of Poland in 1772, the Lutheran church books became the official registry for vital statistics, which continued until the introduction of civil registration of vital events in the 1870s.

E.  Family Records

There are letters, diaries, and other personal records that have survived to the present day.  I myself have never seen or used any, but I've seen them referenced in articles on Mennonite history and genealogy.

F.  B. H. Unruh, Die niederländisch-niederdeutschen Hintergründe der mennonitischen Ostwanderungen im 16., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert

B. H. Unruh wrote a history of Mennonite settlement in the Vistula Delta and emigration to Russia.  He included an appendix with a couple hundred pages of genealogical data - one valuable section connects Prussian emigration records with Russian immigration records.

Of course, there are many more records, but these are the most important ones that can be accessed online or on microfilms.  Over time I'll write posts on each of the topics and provide more information on how to access and use them.

Do you know of any major record groups that I have missed?