Lichtfelde Village History #2: The Departure

Let's begin our detailed study of the Lichtfelde village history. Here is the first paragraph:

15. Lichtfelde. Acting on their own initiative, in 1818 a significant number of Mennonite families decided to emigrate to join their co-religionists in South Russia, as they had no more prospect to receive land for their descendants in Prussia.

"Acting on their own initiative." The first emigration from Prussia to Russia, which resulted in the establishment of Khortitsa (Chortitza), was a three-year process that began in 1786 with an official invitation from the Russian minister in Danzig to the Mennonites. The churches sent delegates to survey the land, who spent a year traveling to Russia and negotiating. After they returned and reported, two groups departed in 1788 and spent the winter en route, arriving in 1789.

When the second colony Molotschna was established in 1803, Elder Cornelius Warkentin had learned that land was available, so the prospect of emigration was discussed at a minister's conference in August 1803. Large groups of Mennonites left and arrived in Khortitsa by fall, where they wintered with fellow Mennonites. In 1804, another large group joined them and they established new villages in Molotschna. The whole process was simpler and faster.

When the third wave arrived in Molotschna, beginning in 1818, they came in smaller groups, not in the organized mass migrations that established Khortitsa and Molotschna. And they were more responsible for organizing their own journey. In reality, there had been three decades of contacts among the Russian government, Mennonites in south Russia, and Mennonites in Prussia. It was much easier to emigrate to Russia in 1818 than it had been in 1788.

"in 1818" The Napoleonic Wars had ended in 1815, so the threat to the Prussian state had disappeared, and they no longer needed Mennonite support domestically. So they ended sales of state land to Mennonites, making it more difficult to acquire land for children and expansion. At first the Prussian government refused to give exit visas, but eventually they relented, but on the condition that Mennonites would pay an exit tax of 10% of the value of their property.

"a significant number of Mennonite families" Either 254 or 255 families emigrated over a roughly two-year period. If we assume 5 people per family, this would be roughly 1300 people. It would be interesting to know if they traveled in one huge group (unlikely since they came from different parts of Prussia) or several large groups. Or was it many groups of a few families? Presumably the wealthier families rode wagons or carts, in which they also hauled their possessions. Poorer families or individuals would have walked, perhaps pulling a handcart or carrying everything they owned in a backpack. 

"to join co-religionists in South Russia" It was much easier for this third wave of Mennonites to emigrate to south Russia because they had friends and relatives in Molotschna Colony to welcome them and to help them get settled in their new homeland.

"no more prospect to receive land for their descendants in Prussia" A farming family needed to buy more land for its children to farm, or their future economic prospects would decline. Children would be forced into a craft or trade, which was much less profitable than farming. The Prussian government was hoping that this economic pressure would force Mennonites to give up their non-resistance, but the prospect of cheap farmland in Russia gave them a way to keep their faith and to prosper economically. Thus, our ancestors saw this as God's provision for them.

The German original:

15. Lichtfelde. Aus eigenem Antrieb entschlossen sich im Jahre 1818 wieder eine bedeutende Anzahl mennonitischer Familien, zu ihren Glaubensgenossen nach Südrußland auszuwandern, weil sie in Preußen keine Aussicht mehr hatten, Land für ihre Nachkommen zu erhalten.

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.

Hamburg vs. North American Passenger Lists

Whenever our Mennonite ancestors departed a European port, a passenger manifest was prepared before they left and filed at the port.  Unfortunately, most of those have been destroyed, but lists for Hamburg for 1850-1934 and Bremen 1904-1914 have survived.  Since the vast majority of Mennonites departed from Hamburg, this is a resource not to be missed.

The Hamburg lists (and possibly the Bremen lists, although I have not used them) are better than the North American lists for several reasons.  Generally, the handwriting is better on the Hamburg lists.  The Hamburg clerk spoke German, so he could communicate better with the emigrants than the New York clerk.  And the Hamburg list usually gives more detail on the geographic origin of the passenger, usually giving the province (not just the country as the New York lists do) and sometimes even giving the exact village name.

The best way to find the Hamburg list is to search on Ancestry.com.  To go directly to the collection, this is the link.  If you don't have an Ancestry subscription, you have to order the microfilm from the Family History Library.  If anyone knows of a free source, please add that in a comment.

If you can't find your ancestor's name in the Ancestry index to the Hamburg lists, you can search them manually for the ship and then go through that ship's passenger manifest.  The typical transatlantic voyage took about two weeks, so start 3-4 weeks before they arrived in North America and go forward until you find the ship.

Here's an example of the illegible chicken scratches on a typical Quebec arrival record (and this is not the worst by far):

Family of Gerhard Siemens, Passenger Manifest of Vessels Arriving Quebec, Canada, 27 August 1874, ship Hibernian, list 63.  Accessed at Library and Archives Canada www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/passenger.

 And this is a typical record from the Hamburg departure records (for a different family):

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Passenger Manifest of Vessels Departing Hamburg, Germany, 7 August 1874, ship Halifax, lines 62-64, Hamburg Passenger Lists 1850-1934, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Germany, Indirekt Band 26, Microfilm S_13127.  Accessed at Ancestry.com on 23 November 2013.

Which would you rather try to read?

Interpreting Immigration Records

There are many records in the Peter Rempel book Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788-1828 that give economic information about the families that immigrated from Prussia to Russia.  But it's hard to know how to interpret this information.  And this applies not only to immigration records but Prussian census records, US tax records, and many other sources.  The key is to put the information in context.

For example, I was looking at the immigration arrival record of Gerhard Fast #117515 (ABT 1774-1830) who moved to Russia in 1819.  Here's the translation of that record from the book:

Peter Rempel, Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788-1828 (Winnipeg, Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, 2000) 168

From comparing to Grandma, you can figure out that the unnamed females are his wife Helena Wiebe and his eleven-year-old daughter Katharina.  Gerhard and Helena had five children, but four of them had died already, leaving only Katharina.

Next, they had no cash and no horses, which means that they probably walked the roughly nine hundred miles and carried their few possessions on their backs or in a hand cart.  They had to be tough and determined to make such a long journey on foot.  Or perhaps, they rode on the wagon of friends or relatives who were in their group of immigrants.  That also means that they were dependent on subsidies from the Russian government to eat along the way and to start their new farm in Russia.

Finally, they had household possessions worth 129 rubles.  There's no way to convert rubles from that time period to current dollars, so that number alone doesn't mean much.  But Peter Rempel gave source citations for all his translations.  In this case, it comes from list "W4," and if you look at the back of his book, he gives the original source for all his translations.

He deposited a microfilm with all his original sources at the Mennonite Historical Centre Archive in Winnipeg, and I got a copy of the original.  Here is the snippet of Gerhard Fast's arrival record:

Gergard" Fast" arrival record, family #80, Spisok" o pribyvshykh" iz" zagranitsy v" 1819-go Menonistakh" i poselennykh" v" Khotitskykh" i Molochanskykh" koloniakh" [List of Mennonite and settler arrivals from abroad in 1819 to Khortista and Molochansk villages], no date, Russian State Historical Archive, St. Petersburg, Russia, Fund 383, Inventory 29, File 443, Pages 246R at Mennonite Historical Center Archive, Winnipeg, Manitoba, St. Petersburg Archive collection reel #4.

Here is what the columns mean:
Family #80
Head of household - Gergard" Fast"
1 male (Gerhard)
2 females (wife Helena Wiebe and daughter Katharina)
3 total people
no cash
no horses
household possessions worth 129 rubles
total possessions worth 129 rubles (i.e. including cash, horses, and household possessions)

There were 177 families listed in this document, and the clerk totaled the value of all their possessions at the end, so we can figure out the average that each family had.  Perhaps this group was unusually wealthy or unusually poor - we don't know.  But we can see where Gerhard and his family fit in the group.

 
Recall that first three columns list the number of males, females, and total people.  The fourth column is the cash they brought, which totaled 113,615 rubles for 177 families, or an average of 642 rubles per family.  Gerhard had no cash, so he was definitely among the poorer in the group.

The next column is the horses, which were worth 9036 rubles (the document doesn't tell us the number of horses, just their value), which would be an average of 51-rubles-worth of horses per family.

Then the household possessions are totaled at 47,814 rubles, or an average of 270 rubles per family.  Gerhard's family had 129 rubles, so they had less than half the average.  

The final column is the value of total possessions, which is 172,462 rubles, or an average of 974 rubles per family.  Again Gerhard had only 129 rubles worth of total possessions.

In all the economic measures in the immigration report, Gerhard and Helena Fast were definitely poor.  They weren't the poorest because there were families who came with literally nothing.  But they were close to the bottom.

This context tells us a lot about Gerhard's family.  They must have come from real poverty in Prussia, walked to the Molotschna colony in Russia and were given a farm in the Rudnerweide village.  They would have had a lot of work to build their farm in Russia into a viable economic unit.  But you can understand why a poor family from West Prussia would be willing to undertake such a difficult journey.  Not only did immigration give them the opportunity to practice their faith in Russia without the restrictions that Prussia put on the Mennonites, but also it gave them a chance to escape grinding poverty.  Perhaps their poverty back in West Prussia even explains why their first four children died young.  This was truly a new beginning.

Whenever you come across records with areas of land or amounts of money, try to put them in context.  If you can find the totals for the village or the group of immigrants, then you can compare them to the average.  The principle applies to any kind of records, even to more recent property tax records from the US.  Thus you can give context to the lives of your ancestors.