TO: Part Two The Thiessen Family and The Mennonite Diaspora
TO: Thiessens' Index
Excerpts from "The Coming of the Russian Mennonites" by C. Henry Smith, Ph.D. pub. 1927 by Mennonite Book Concern, Berne, IN.
The Mennonites of South Russia are of original Dutch stock for the most part, having come to Russia by way of northeastern Prussia. As early as the middle of the sixteenth century, if not earlier, Mennonite refugees from Holland found their way to the deltas of the Vistula and Nogat in Polish Prussia, upon invitation of ecclesiastical as well as lay noblemen, who were desirous of industrious farmers for their swampy and unfruitful estates in those lowlands. Religious toleration, to be sure, was not yet the settled policy of either Church or State anywhere; but the Mennonites of Holland were experts in the art of reclaiming swamp lands by means of dikes and canals. And so, because of their economic worth, they were welcomed by these noblemen where otherwise they might have expected nothing better than religious oppression.
These estates were leased to the Mennonites by the successive owners for long periods of time until finally the former generally came into entire possession of them. Quite steadily, too, the Mennonite settlements were extended up the river in the region of Marienwerder, Graudenz, Swetz and Culm. While the lowland congregations were composed almost exclusively of Dutch refugees, the inland colonies contained a liberal sprinkling of Moravians, Germans and Swiss. Both Dutch factions, Flemish and Frisian, were represented among the congregations. ...................................................In many respects the Prussian Mennonites, living as they did in compact groups, isolated from their Polish neighbors by a distinct language, and a forbidden religion, in charge of separate schools, formed a self-sufficing social and economic as well as religious unit. They were thus the better able to perpetuate their religious and social ideals, and to maintain their identity, - a fact which explains much of the history of their children in South Russia.
As already suggested, nearly all of these Mennonites were of Dutch extraction, and the descendents of rather a limited number of ancestors as is shown by the following interesting study made in 1912 of Mennonite names in the two former Prussias. According to this study there are today among the ten thousand Mennonites of these regions 369 family names of which the following are the most common:
Penner - 527, Wiens, Wiehns - 499, Dueck, Dieck, Dyck - 492, Classen, Klaasen - 409, Wiebe - 434, Janzen, Jantzen - 292, Ehnz, Entz - 275, Janz - 254, Freese - 254, Regehr, Regier - 253, Harder - 184, Ewert - 166, Paul - 163, Neufeld - 161, Fast - 157, Franz - 141, Friesen - 140, Reimer - 140, Epp - 131, Feiguth - 120, Albrecht - 120, Nickel - 118, Peters - 107.
Nearly one-half of the entire population it will be seen is embraced in the first twenty-one names. The other half is spread over the remaining 348 names, the vast majority of which include but one or two isolated families that came into the church since the settlement in Prussia.
1. The merchants and artisans who first settled in Danzig and Elbing seemingly came from the industrial classes of the larger Dutch cities. The following names are of undoubted Dutch origin, and are not found in the country congregations - van Almonde, van Amersfort, Backrach, van Benningen, Conwentz, van Duchren, Dunckel, van Dyck, Eggerath, Engman, van Eck, Focking, van Haegen, Hansen, van Kampen, Kauenhoven, Lamberts, Momber, van Riesen, van Roy, Rutenberg, van Steen, Utesch, de Beer. The sudden disappearance of old as well as the sudden appearance of new family names is due to the fact that especially during the seventeenth century there was a lively migration back and forth between Danzig and Holland.
2. The second group includes the Flemish families in the large Delta which were subject to only a slight change from Migration. The most common names are - Claassen, Dyck, Dieck, Enz, Epp, Feiguth, Harder, Neufeld, Penner, Regehr, Regier, Reimer, Thiessen, Warkentin, Wienz and Woelke. All of these are as common today as they were two hundred years ago. Among them are a number of evident German origin.
3. The third group of names of the Frisian churches of the Orlofferfeld and Thiensdorf congregations are sharply divided from the other groups. The following are the most common: Albrecht, Allert, Bestvater, Dau, Dirksen, Froese, Friesen, Funk, Grunau, Harms, Jantzen, Mekelberger, Martens, Nickel, Pauls, Quapp, Quiring, Unger, and Wiehler.
4. The fourth group is found principally in the upper Vistula congregations: Adrian, Balzer, Bartel, Ewert, Franz, Goerz, Kopper, Kliewer, Kerber, Schroeder, Stobbe, Unrau, Voth.
An interchange of these four groups was not common until within the past hundred years [see NOTE below] since which time many families have moved from the country churches into the cities, and the sharp social distinctions between Flemish and Frisians have been removed.
The uncommon names of Rogalski, Sawattzki, Schepanski, and Tellitki are of Polish origin. Hamm and von Riesen are undoubtedly from Sweden. The ancestor of the Schultz family is said to have come from Pomerania to Tiegenhof in the seventeenth century. A number of non-Mennonite families with new names were also continuously added.
NOTE: Dedication comments in The Coming of the Russian Mennonites , the source of these excerpts:
To the Prussian Mennonites, the attractive invitation sent them by Catherine of Russia just at the time of their greatest need must have seemed like a special act of Providence. Many of them turned their faces toward the proffered asylum. It was not the first time, however, that this hardhearted, though farsighted, ruler had offered liberal inducements to thrifty German farmers for settling on the Crown lands of her Tartar frontier. As early as 1763 soon after her accession to the throne, she had promised most liberal terms to any desirable colonists who might wish to locate upon her newly won lands along the Volga. These promises included free transportation; religious toleration, with the right of establishing and controlling their own churches, schools, and their own forms of local government; loans with which to establish factories and other industries; and military exemption.
As a result of these attractive terms thousands of Germans of every faith found their way into South Russia during the next forty years. But especially favorable was the offer to those religious sects whcih were more or less restricted in their religious and civil liberties under Prussian and other German autocrats. One of the first of the groups to accept Catherine's liberal terms was a colony of Moravian Brethren who located along the Mohammedan frontier, near Saratov in 1763. These were perhaps attracted as much by the prospects of an inviting missionary field among the Tartars, as by the desire for religious liberty.
It was a little later, in 1786, that the special invitation was sent to the Mennonites along the lower Vistula. This was just a few years after Catherine had wrested additional territory from Turkey bordering the Azov. Much of this became Crown land upon which she wished to settle industrious farmers whose well kept fields might serve as models for the shiftless nomadic tribes about them. Catherine had perhaps heard of the Mennonites and their work of reclamation in the swamps of the lower Vistula, through her generals who had spent several wilnters in eastern Prussia during the Seven Years' war. At any rate, however that may be, it was in the above year that she held out liberal inducements through her special representative at Danzig, George van Trappe, to the Mennonites of that region to migrate to her Crown lands in South Russia.
The first winter this band of colonists was forced to spend enroute at Dubrowna, because of unrest among the Tartars along the Turkish frontier to the south. While here their number was increased to two hundred and twenty-eight families, all of whom were supported by the Russian government until they reached their home on the Chortitz in the summer of 1789. Later immigrants came directly overland from Danzig by way of Brest Litovsk, Ostrog, and Ekaterinoslav, the journey lasting about three weeks if all went well. In 1797 one hundred and eighteen more families joined the original group; and by 1800 the colony numbered over four hundred families.
Each of the groups above mentioned, with the exception of one or two of the daughter colonies, formed independent ecclesiastical units; and furnished large contingents to the emigration movement in 1874.
As to the exact number of Mennonites who came from Prussia and elsewhere to Russia from 1788 to the time of the American emigration, students of Mennonite history are not quite agreed. But an estimate of about 8,000 is perhaps not far wrong. Of these at least 6,000 located in the Chortitz and the Molotschna colonies, and perhaps 7,000 or more were Prussians. These original 8,000 had increased by 1874 to approximately 45,000. a rather unusual population increase when compared with population growth elsewhere.
Of course, it must be remembered that Mennonites were not the only Germans in Russia at this time. All told, there were perhaps nearly 500,000 German colonists - Lutherans, Catholics, and Reformed, as well as Mennonites, mostly in South Russia and the Volga region - all enjoying the privileges of local autonomy nearly identical with those granted the Mennonites. pp.11-31
TO: Top
pp. 239-241 It may not be out of place to close this chapter with a brief reference to the every day language in use among the majority of the Russian Mennonites - the "Plattdeutsch." This dialect, with a number of variations, as its name indicates, was the prevailing speech in daily use in the low-lands all along the Baltic coast across northern Germany, and was brought into southern Russia by the Prussian immigrants in the early nineteenth century. With the exception of the Swiss groups - a very small part of the entire contingent of Russian Mennonites - the immigrants to Kansas and Manitoba clung to their inherited dialect, and taught it to their children and children's children.
For the following brief observations regarding the language I am indebted to Professor C.C. Janzen, of the University of Maine, who says:
The Plattdeutsch is a soft, open vowelled dialect. A large proportion of the words of two or more syllables end in a vowel. This is especially true of verbs and plural nouns. To express the possessives most nouns must be followed by their possessive pronoun of the same gender. Only a few nouns express the possessive by the adding of an "s." Three genders are distinguished. In the singular nominative masculine and feminine gender use the same definite article. Nouns may be said to be declined without change of form, except the change from the singular to the plural. Verbs are conjugated somewhat like German verbs. The sentence structure is very similar to that of the German.
NOTE: Not in "The Coming of the Russian Mennonites" - Much work is being done on getting the Plattdeutsch language codified, written down, and even used for translating the Bible into a readable book for Russian Mennonites around the world. This dictionary/translator is helpful to many later generations whose vocabulary is less than perfect./JT
In America the Russian Mennonites soon dropped the Russian language (what little they knew of it) and began to learn the English in its stead. That made them again trilingual. So long as the school laws permitted a relatively long term of German school the children usually acquired a poor German, and a very bad dialectual English. Their writing in either language was beset with great difficulties and many mistakes. With the lenghtening of the English term the German has been almost crushed out, and the Plattdeutsch is slowly going the same way. Some Sunday school classes are now conducted in English since the children can not read German or understand it when it is spoken to them.
The Russian Mennonites used to teach their children various nursery rhymes and ditties. I remember two especially which my mother taught me long before we went to the District school two miles away:
Schokel, schokel, scheia,
Ostril, et wi Eia,
Pingsti et wi wittet Brot,
Staw wi nich dann woa wi groat,
Staw wi doch dann kom wi ennt loch.
Free translation:
Rockabye, rockabye, bye
Easter we eat eggs,
Pentecost we eat white bread;
If we die not then we grow large,
But if we die we are put into the hole.
Also:
Otboa langnes sett op sine greeni Wes,
Haft rodi Stewilkes aun,
Sitt aus een Adelman.
Wannea woat he wadda komi?
Opt Joa, opt Joa,
Wann di Roggi ripi
Wan di Poggi pipi,
Wann di Kalwa blori,
Enn di Deri knori,
Pip Mus, Otboa es tus.
Free translation:
Mr. Stork long nose sits upon his green meadow,
Has on red bootlets,
Looks like a nobleman,
When will he come again?
When the rye becomes ripe,
When the frogs pipe,
When the calves bawl,
When the doors creak;
Pipe mouse, the stork is here.
Mennonites, being strongly individualistic, have always been prone to branch out into innumerable divisions. The Russian Mennonites were no exception to this rule. The immigrants of 1874 represented four well defined groups at that time -
(1) the main body of the church, sometimes called Kirchliche Mennoniten by the smaller groups in Russia, but in this chapter known as General Conference Mennonites, because they affiliated themselves in course of time with that body in America;
(2) the Brueder- Gemeinde or Mennonite Brethren;
(3) Krimmer Brueder; and
(4) the Kleine Gemeinde.
To these must be added several others of strictly American origin, such as the Holdemanites, and the followers of Isaac Peters of Nebraska, and Aaron Wall of Minnesota. There are several groups also which, although they did not form separate branches of the church in Russia, yet they formed independent ecclesiastical units; and continuing their compact settlements in America without affiliating with any other group they may well be regarded as independent branches of the church at large. Among these are to be numbered the Sommerfelders, Bergthalers, and Old Colonists, all of Canada. In all of the fundamental and characteristic tenents of historical Mennonitism these all agree. Such differences as keep them apart are small and insignificant, sometimes merely geographical, social or temperamental. Form of baptism may seem more serious, but even that ought not be an insurmountable difference.
TO: Top
General Conference Mennonites
p. 243
The term Kirchliche or Altkirchliche which literally translated means "churchly" is a name coined by the Mennonite Brethren and applied to the main body of Mennonites in Russia to distinguish the latter from the smaller groups that have severed their connection with the parent body. The name is not in common use in America. This is by far the largest group of the immigrants of 1874. Although they came from widely scattered communities in Russia, and in many cases from more or less isolated self governing ecclesiastical units, yet in America they formed themselves into a common Conference. As early as 1877, it will be remembered, ten of the Kansas congregations organized what became known for some years as the Kansas Conference. The most important common task which claimed the attention of these meetings for some years was education; but later missionary effort, publication questions, and evangelism were given a prominent part on the conference programs. ...... In church government this Conference is congregational, each congregation being a self governing unit, determining its own church policy. The different congregations therefore joined the Conference as individuals and at diferent times. ... (Many) matters are left to each congregation. And on these points local groups can disagree without interfering with their more important common efforts. Customs are not all alike. Some are of Swiss origin, others of Prussian. Some pay their ministers, others do not. The Swiss, and several other groups practice feetwashing in connection with the communion service; most of the congregations never knew the practice, while by still others it has been discarded. Most of them practice baptism by affusion. A few permit either form. Practically none prescribe the exact form definitely. Most of the Russian congregations in the General Conference are opposed to secret societies. ...This group is not only the largest and most progressive of all the Russian Mennonites, but the most thoroughly Americanized as well. (1923)
Mennonite Brethren
.
Much larger than either of the other two groups above mentioned (Kleine Gemeinde p. 247 and Krimmer Brethren p. 250), but, with the exception of Eckert's congregation, not organized as early in America, was the branch of the church known as the Brueder Gemeinde, or the Mennonite Brethren Church. These, too, trace their history back to Russia where in 1860 eithteen souls, but not a preacher among them, dissatisfied with the rather formal, ritualistic and enemotional religious life that prevailed among the Molotschna Mennonites at that time, and influenced largely by a strong spirit of emotional evangelism that was sweeping over the German colonists of South Russia, withdrew from the Mennonite body to organize a church of their own. Instead of leading young people into church membership over the easy road of religious instruction in the home and the schools, ending up in a course of catechetical instruction, they believed that the only sure entrance was by way of the hard road of a definite religious experience which often involved a bitter struggle with the powers of darkness, and accompanied with great anguish of soul; but if victorious, followed by definite assurance of salvation and feeling of great joy. Like the Krimmer Brethren, they demanded that all converts to the new faith, whether former church members or not, must be rebaptized by immersion. They assumed the name Mennoniten Brueder Gemeinde, because by retaining the name Mennonite they hoped to retain also all the special concessions which the Czar's government had originally granted the first settlers from Prussia, and which under any other name they would likely have forfeited.
The movement at first aroused the most bitter antagonism among the Mennonites from whom they withdrew; and to the discredit of many of the elders of the main body it must be said that in their attempt to prevent the withdrawal of the new group, they used means that were decidedly inconsistent with their historic doctrine of toleration, and nonresistant faith. It was only after several appeals to the St. Petersburg government, and the intervention of influential officials at Odessa that the Mennonite Brethren were permitted to withdraw peaceably and organize their own independent church. The growth was steady from the first, although by 1874 the whole number was still less than one thousand.
With the exception of the Eckert group near Gnadenau, as already indicated, there were no organized congregations to emigrate as such in the early years. In nearly every settlement, however, there was a limited number of individuals who in Russia had been members of the Brethren churches. In most cases these soon found one another in America, and forming small groups they worshipped together in private homes. Organized church life can hardly be said to have existed before the coming of Elder Abraham Shellenberger to Kansas in 1879. With the advent of Shellenberger, who was accompanied by a number of Brethren families, aggressive measures were adopted for conserving the scattered members, and securing new members largely at the expense of the old church. Through numerous revival meetings and other evangelistic efforts considerable inroad was made upon the membership of other branches for some years. The present membership (1923) is about eight thousand. Hillsboro, Kansas, the seat of Tabor College, and of their publishing interests is still the headquarters of the church, although Oklahoma has now more congregations than Kansas. Being immersionists, they have always been rather sympathetic towards the Baptists both in Russia and America, and have lost some members to them. Stressing as they do the emotional side of their religious natures, they naturally crave new experiences more eagerly than other Mennonite groups; and perhaps for that reason are more readily victimized by unhealthy religious movements. In certain localities they have lost heavily to the Adventists, and other more or less fanatical sects. [specifics concerning prohibitions and recommendations for the group follow, see pp. 256-257]
TO: Part Two The Thiessen Family and The Mennonite Diaspora
TO: Thiessens' Index