Chapter 8 - Move to Freedom

Recap from the last chapter: Our Abraham Schmidt (1850-1928) was living in the Kuban, Russia (east of the Black Sea) in 1874. His mother Katharina had just died. His brother and sister were married.

From the Kuban Colony delegations had been sent to America and Canada to find a new home for our wandering ancestors. Russia was not tolerant of foreigners within her borders any longer.

A sense of nationalism was spreading across Europe. It started in the 1840's and caused revolutions in country after country (Italy, France, Poland). It took awhile to get to Russia. After the Russian defeat in the Crimean War (1850's) efforts were made to salvage Russian pride by "Russifying" or assimilating the colonies of "foreigners" who were living within their borders.

Privileges were taken away. The Russian language was ordered to be taught in schools; Russian officials were to have more say in village government; and the Mennonites were no longer exempt from military duty. Many attempts were made to pacify the court of Czar Alexander II by sending delegations with offers of money to speak to him. But all of this was to no avail.

Many extended families, some congregations and a few entire villages began to pack up, sell their land and their belongings and head for a new home. Salesmen arrived in the area singing the praises of Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota and Canada. The advertisements of the day show that Yankee hard-sell was already at work. The U.S. government and the railroads were very encouraging. The U.S. had just opened the Great Plains to homesteading. The Mennonite delegations brought back reports of friendly attitudes, good land value, religious freedom and $100,000 raised by the American Mennonites to help their "Brothers" to immigrate.

1876 - the Kuban, Russia to America

By 1876 Abraham was helping his employers pack for the long journey. He took the wheels and axles off of their wagons, packed the wagon box full, nailed it shut with boards and sent it on ahead by freight. In the bottom were seeds for the vegetable garden and the fields of wheat that they would plant in the new land. 

Some of the chests had an ample layer of toasted zwieback at the top as food for the journey. Meat was smoked or salted, or it was wrapped in unleavened dough and baked until it had a hard, tough cover over the well-cooked meat. When the travelers needed the meat, they peeled the charred cover off of the preserved meat.

Although a few groups started leaving as early as 1872, the largest numbers traveled between 1874 and 1876. Abraham and his group departed from their village in April 1876 and boarded a ship in a seaport west of the Caucasus Mountains. Crossing the Black Sea to Odessa, they disembarked on May 8th and boarded a train bound for Austria. The train cars were very simple and had hard seats and narrow aisles. The trains were slow in Russia. "Saftra and poslesaftra" (patience and more patience) were needed. The Russian peasants were in no hurry to board and stood around talking to their friends until the conductor could badger them into boarding. (Henderson Mennonites by Stanley Voth, 1975)


Once in Germany they traveled to Berlin where Abraham boarded a train to the seaport of Bremen. Others from his colony went on to Hamburg where they took ship.

At both of these ports an agent appointed by the Mennonite Board of Guardians and employed by the steamship line was on duty to welcome and to aid the emigrants.

From Hamburg, fourteen families of Kuban emigrants took a steamer to Liverpool, England, where they then boarded the transatlantic steamer, the SS Wyoming. The ship's passenger list gives the names of the Nikkel family, which included Abraham's future first wife (not our great-grandmother) Katharina Nikkel. The Nikkels arrived in New York harbor on June 26, 1876. (Brothers in Deed to Brothers in Need, Clarence Hiebert, 1976)

Where was Abraham?

In his naturalization papers, Abraham wrote that he arrived in New York in June 1876 on the vessel SS Main, (SS Mein) which left from Bremen, Germany.

SS Main

Approximately 18000 Mennonites emigrated from Russia to America during the ten-year period following 1864. About 10,000 went to the U.S. and 8,000 went to Manitoba. Many of the Molotschna colony settled in Minnesota, Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas, which were the frontier states at the time.

Mennonite Settlement House helped the immigrants

Once in America they were met by the Mennonite Relief Organization and given lodging with fellow believers. Abraham continued on the Chicago, where many fellow travelers took the Burlington R.R. line into Minnesota. Abraham went on to Lincoln, Nebraska.

Settlement houses were set up at the destination points. The railroad company gave free rides to the immigrants. They knew that the cash-carrying Mennonites would buy railroad-owned land at their destination. The Mennonites preferred to buy land rather than to homestead. They believed is staying separate from the government - (Give unto Cesar ...etc)

Once in Lincoln, Nebraska Abraham had to decide between settling in Nebraska or Kansas. There were salesmen promoting each.

The Mennonite immigrants seemed strange and outlandish to the Americans living out on the prairie. The Topeka Commonwealth newspaper observed:
The men appear to have conscientious scruples against wearing clothes that fit them; the idea appearing to be to get all the cloth you can for the money. The men's vests therefore descend toward the knees, and their pants possess an alarming amount of slack. Their favorite headgear is a flat cloth cap which they pull off in saluting any person. This habit they will soon drop now that they have arrived in Kansas where "nobody respects nothing." (The Story of the Mennonites, C. Henry Smith, p. 653.)

Clothing worn by the immigrants from Russia

But the attitudes of the natives soon changed when the Mennonites began spending money to buy supplies. And when their farms prospered, their ways were emulated.

Another important immigrant

Abraham's yet-to-be second wife, Katharina Regier, arrived with her family on June 29, 1879, on the SS Switzerland. Her parents and siblings followed a different route than Abraham's group because they came from the Molotschna Colony instead of the Kuban. Their journey began with a train trip across Russia, through Prussia and into Holland. Their ship (the SS Switzerland) took two weeks to go from Antwerp to Philadelphia. It was another four days by train to Lincoln, Nebraska.

Homesteading

The Mennonites were not able to get special considerations from the U.S. government as they had in Russia. They couldn't get a large tract of communal land nor were they exempt from military service. Until they became citizens they could not homestead. Abraham did not become a citizen until 1914.

So they paid their cash and began again. Unlike their previous migrations, this time they had to leave their large equipment and their livestock behind. They were only able to bring hand tools, basic necessities and whatever they could pack into their "kiste" or Russian chest. Some seeds they brought with them and some seeds that they found here allowed them to continue growing their favorite food, like - watermelons, sorghum, sunflower seeds and cucumbers.

What was it like in this new land? Were there cities and stores?

In Nebraska Abraham was confronted with the same sight that had confronted his father 60 years before in the Molotschna Colony of south Russia. Both Nebraska and the Molotschna region were vast, treeless prairies of grass as tall as a man. The only trees were along the riverbed. Both times the settlers built their houses of sod and used as little of the precious lumber as possible.


But this time the Mennonite farmers had no need to live in villages for protection. Living in villages proved to be impractical and the practice was abandoned. Instead, the farmers purchased land in quarter sections of 160 acres, either along the railroad for ease of transportation or along rivers for the good soil.


Abraham arrived arrived in America just after a plague of grasshoppers had swarmed across Nebraska. One farmer reported that he had just put his vest down in the field when the swarm hit, eating everything in sight. He said that they ate everything but the button holes!


Next: Chapter 9 Abraham marries - 1877

Chapter 7 Abraham Moves to the Kuban, Russia 1864-65

Changes in the Family

I wonder if the Schmidts had been planning on moving before Father Heinrich died in 1864. Here is a list of families who applied to move to the Kuban dated May 1864:  http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/Kuban_1864.htm

Mother Katharina (spelled Catarina in Russian) is listed as Widow Catarina Schmit (sic) with son Heinrich, 17, son Abraham, 14, and daughter Catarina, 18. (Yes, the daughter was mentioned after the sons.) They had 80 rubles of moveable household goods but no land or house.

I think that census list is fascinating because of all the little nuggets of information - confirmation of the family members, their ages, their finances and their relationship to our family. Also on the list of families who are moving to the Kuban is the family of Abraham's future first wife - Katharina Nickel, who was 7 at the time. Heinrich Nickel was owed 953 rubles for his house that he sold and he had 777 rubles in moveable household goods.

Why did they move to the Kuban?

In the last blog we talked about the lack of land in Molotschna motivating the move. The other motivation was religious freedom. It started with a religious revival. As the original immigrants to Russia had become first settled, then comfortable and then wealthy, their original religious way of life had changed. It is noteworthy that the Mennonites were awarded the exclusive rights to make and sell alcohol in the Ukraine. For a religion that believed in temperance this was certainly a change in values.

In 1860 a religious revival swept the colony, started by a Lutheran preacher. He emphasized the joy of rebirth through baptism. He chided the congregations for their laxity - crude jokes at wedding, drunkenness and a lack of charity to their fellow man. His followers wanted a change and they found it in this re-awakening to their religious beliefs.

So in 1860 the Mennonite Brethren church was founded with its emphasis on the fundamental beliefs of Mennonite doctrine while also enjoying the emotional side of their spiritual freedom. They couldn't change the offenders or kick them out of the church because church membership was mandatory. (Smith's Story of the Mennonites, p. 433). But what they could do is gather around themselves like-minded people and worship together separately from the others.

It was difficult to separate in the same small community. The division caused strife within the colony. When Johann Classen went to St. Petersburg and petitioned the authorities for official recognition of their new church without losing their privileges, he also asked for a land concession under favorable conditions for a new settlement "along the Kuban River", in the upper Caucasus. (ibid, p. 434)

I imagine a conversation like this between Abraham and his mother:

"Muttie, did you hear?" Abraham might have said. "Brother Classen is taking people to the Kuban! He said we could go and work for another family and eventually own our own farm!"

"I don't know, Abraham. It is a long way around the Black Sea. And fierce Turks live there."

"Not anymore! The Russians have driven them all away. And beside there is plenty of land for everyone!"

"Now, Abraham, did he say we would be allowed to worship as we please?"

"Yes, Muttie, he had the Mennonite Brethren church recognized by the Czar!"


The Kuban

Click on the map to see a larger version

In 1864,Katharina Funk Schmidt and her children left their life in Schardau and her husband's grave to move once more to a new frontier. After three weeks of traveling in the back of a bumpy wagon, they arrived at a vast prairie where they and their fellow settlers would build a new colony.

That first winter, many became discouraged and returned home to the Molotschna Colony. But Abraham's family stayed.

Life was not easy for Katharina, 57, in this new frontier. They were back to sod houses again. While they waited for the new crops to come in, their supplies often ran low. The territory was still wild and undeveloped. (This was why the Russian government wanted them to move there - to colonize this new acquired territory.)

The Cossacks signed a treaty with Russia

The native Cossacks were only partly "civilized". The Cossack villages were scattered at intervals along the Kuban River as outposts for the Russian government. These Mennonites were still foreigners and needed watching. The Cossacks were not farmers. They were traders. Their villages were squalid, dirty and consisted mostly of men. The few women were concubines who lived first with one and then with another of the men. The marshes created by the Terek and Kuban Rivers made perfect hiding places for bandits waiting to raid the farms and villages. Sometimes parents scared their kids into good behavior, not with tales of bogeymen, but with tales of kidnapping by the wild, bellicose tribes in the region.

A Cossack hut

But the soil was fertile and the climate was ideal. Fish were plentiful. The rivers teemed with herring, carp and salmon. The sturgeon were so big that they had to be hauled in by a team of horses! And, in time of great need, the settlers were only a few weeks ride from the old colony.

Katharina and her children lived in the Kuban for ten years. 

What about Abraham's brother and sister? According to the census, by1869 Heinrich, 24, was married to a Katharina, 34. He will follow Abraham to America in 1878.  Abraham's sister Katharina, 23, married a man from Poland. The 1869 Kuban Census says she was married in the Mennonite Region of Poland. We lose track of her here.

Abraham's mother, Katharina Funk Schmidt died in February 1874. She was born in Prussia on 22 June 1807. She was married first to David Unrau who died in 1843. She had a daughter with him - Maria Unrau Neufeld. After her husband David died she married our Heinrich Schmidt and had 3 children - Heinrich, Katharina and our grandfather/great-grandfather Abraham. Then she moved to the Kuban and died in 1874.

Abraham was a man of 24 when his mother Katharina Funk Schmidt died.(Handwritten diary by Abraham Schmidt. Original with Hulda Langhofer, translation from Rosalie Berg.)
Still unmarried and landless, Abraham was ready for the changes that were in the air.

Note: I have not uploaded our family tree yet. I am giving you references to one that is publicly available, but is not complete.

Chapter 6 Father Heinrich's Death 1864

Abraham's Father Dies, 1864

Abraham was just 13 years old when his father died in Schardau, Molotschna Colony, south Russia. His father Heinrich was 70 years old when he died. This was a remarkably long life for this era and for this part of the world. Since they didn't have immunization yet, people died of common childhood diseases as well as epidemics. During the Crimean War of 1853-1856 (between England and Russia), the Mennonites nursed and cared for five thousand wounded soldiers. The soldiers left behind typhoid, typhus and dysentery.

Florence Nightingale made nursing a legitimate profession for women through her example in the Crimean

Malaria was another killer, but it was slow and hidden. The swampy riverbanks were fertile land for growing watermelon, which was a Mennonite favorite. But the rivers were also home for the mosquitoes that spread malaria. Many people blamed watermelon for the "sweating sickness" - malaria.

Also many women died from "blutvergiftung" or puerpural fever also known as "childbed fever", and up to 30% of infants died at birth or in their infancy. In 1880 the sixty villages of the Molotschna Colony only had one doctor. Midwives delivered the babies. These midwives didn't receive any particular pay but were exempt from paying taxes. (Mennonite Encyclopedia, www.gameo.org)


When do they move? Isn't Abraham going to come to America?


A Religious Move - but not to America
After his father died Abraham along with his mother Katharina Funk Schmidt, his older sister Katharina, and his brother Heinrich, all moved to the Kuban area of Russia, which was 200 miles east of their village of Schardau.

They didn't move alone. Almost 100 families were granted land by the government, although only 67 families actually moved. (Mennonite Encyclopedia, www.gameo.org) They went there  for two reasons. First of all, the Molotschna and Chortitza Colonies had run out of land. And second, there was a religious revival.

Land Opportunities

Mennonites were invited to Russia as master farmers. A model farm supposedly needed to contain approximately 175 acres. The Russian government forbade the division of the farm upon the death of the owner. It had to be kept intact. One son inherited the land and the other children found other jobs where they could. They were landless and were spoken of as "Anwohner". (Smith's Story of the Mennonites, by C.H. Smith, 1957, p. 410.) The landless had no vote in the local village assembly. By 1870 it is estimated that at least two-thirds of all heads of families in both colonies were without land. Many were granted a small patch of land to build a hourse and to make a living as best they could on their "kleinewirtschaft".

The original lots of 175 acres were sufficient for sheep raising. Remember, that's how the colony started - growing wool? But as they turned to growing wheat, the farmers needed more acreage to be profitable. Finally, the pressure of the population encourged the colonial government to ask the Russian officials for permission to set up "daughter" colonies. The Mennonites were granted land in the Kuban in 1862.

A Religious Revival and the first Mennonite Brethren

As I read about the Kuban, I was surprised to read that the founders of the new colony were also among the first to call themselves Mennonite Brethren. That's when I learned about the many branches to this tree of faith.

If a congregation differed enough in their beliefs that they could not reconcile, then their only choice was to start a new church. Sometimes the difference might seem trivial, such as whether ribbons could be worn on underwear. (Henderson Mennonite: From Holland to Henderson, Stanley E. Voth, 1982.) But actually these seemingly trivial differences were symbols of larger issues. (Conversation with Kevin Enns-Rempel, Pacific University, Fresno)

The early Mennonites had their differences of opinion too. The people from Holland were Frisian and the people from Flanders were Flemish. Each accused the other of worldliness in dress or furnishings.

Die mit Haken und Oesen,
Wird Gott erlosen;
Die mit Knopfen und Taschen
Wird der Teufel erhascen

Those with hooks and eyes (on clothes)
Will be saved by God;
Those with pockets and buttons
Will be seized by the devil. (Henderson)

Sometimes the differences occurred over large issue, like discipline. If someone broke a law in an early Mennonite colony the only punishment available was to "ban" the wrongdoer. They didn't have jails and weren't part of the Russian judicial system. Although not used very often, this system of discipline conformed to the pacifist ideal. When a Mennonite was "censured" no one in the church could speak to him or do business with him. (Smith's Story of the Mennonites, by C.H. Smith, 1957.)
Since they were in a community set apart from the rest of the world this could be devastating. Imagine taking your wheat to market and having no one willing to buy it. Or going to the only store in town and finding no one to sell you any food.

One division in the church came about over whether this "no speaking" rule applied to family members. Could a wife talk to a banned husband?


And this is where the Mennonite Brethren started.
More tomorrow....with my thanks to cousin Myron T. for his help in editing this blog.

Chapter 5 Abraham Schmidt's Daily Life 1850-1872

What sort of chores did Abraham do?
One chore that Abraham loved was taking care of the horses. They were used for transportation and also for plowing. For seeding, four horses pulled a three-share plow. A man or large boy rode one of the horses and guided the other horses and the plow. When a part of the acreage was "kept black" or fallow every year by plowing it two or three times during the summer, the farmers used a one-share plow.

Abraham loved horses all of his life. In America Abraham was known for his "fine, matched set of black funeral horses. Everyone wanted to borrow Abe's buggy for their funeral procession," wrote Walter Karber (Abraham's grandson).

In this picture Abraham is about 60 years old. His wife Katharina Regier Schmidt is 52. They are standing in front of one of their horses. I believe that in the following generations this love of horses evolved into a love of cars by his son Henry Schmidt and his grandson R. Schmidt.

In the spring there were many jobs for the boys to help with. For example, there was plowing and sowing the fields; planting the gardens and pruning shrubs. Some chores were done year round like feeding, cleaning and caring for livestock. In the summer everything was readied for the harvest. They repaired and sharpened tools. The hand scythe was the only tool made out of steel because it had to have a good temper and keep a sharp edge. The haying was done two or three weeks before the harvest.

Immediately after haying the rye was reading for harvest. This was a valuable and useful crop. Rye was grown mostly to make into bread. "roggenbrot" was a favorite of the Mennonites. Abraham's granddaughter Dorothy remembers the best roggenbrot that she ever tasted was made by her cousin Rosa Voth Toews. After harvesting the rye, the workers tied it into bundles to keep it smooth until it could be threshed in the winter. After threshing the straw was used for roofing and some was braided into hats by both men and women.

The barley and oat harvest followed. The farmers used the barley for cattle, horse and hog feed. They took the oats to market and traded it for young pigs, ducks and geese. Since barley and oats were easier to harvest, the sons of the family did the harvesting and the women did the binding.

Men were hired for cutting and binding the wheat harvest. As soon as it was ripe they tied it in bundles and set it up in shocks -fifteen bundles to a shock. Everyone tried to get done with the harvest before the weather changed. They worked from sunup to sundown. Many times they had to cut at night when there was a full moon. The first harvesting machines didn't come on the market until 1875, after our Mennonites had left for America. (Henderson Mennonites: From Holland to Henderson by Stanley E. Voth, 1982.)

OK, but what about OUR Mennonites? What was going on in Abraham's family?"
Next blog - a death and a move...

Chapter 4 More about Abraham Schmidt in Russia

Isolation from Russia

Catherine the Great invited the hard-working Mennonite to live in Russia

While the Mennonites from northern Europe (Switz., Poland, Germany, Alsace-Lorraine, Holland) lived in Russia, they had their own self-governing colonies. They might employ Russian servants or workers but they did not intermarry or adopt the language. If anyone did inter-marry, they lost the privileges granted to the colonists under the special charter from Catherine the Great. All of their systems -  education, government, commerce, transportation, etc. - were among their own community. In other words, they were isolated from the Russian culture.

Why do we care that Abraham wrote his diary in German?
If Abraham was able to write German he must have gone to the village "schule". This was taught by either a parent or a graduate of the new teachers' school in nearby Ohrloff. In these church-governed villages everyone went to church and all the children went to school. One must be able to read the Bible in order to find salvation.

Everyday life for a boy
I'm sure that Abraham would much rather have been fishing or catching frogs along the creek. Many of the boys his age liked to trap rabbits, mice or ground squirrels. The trapper received praise and maybe even a coin for getting rid of these pests.

 Sometimes the boys went nest-egg hunting. There were cuckoos, nightingales, turtledoves, blackbirds and owls in abundance. However, the boys were cautioned to leave the storks alone, because a stork nest on their roof meant good luck.

Since firearms were against their beliefs, only one man in the village had a rifle, to protect their flocks from the wolves.

Abraham could have explored the woods along the creek by his home village of Schardau. Literally millions of trees were planted by the settlers under the urgings of Johann Cornies, an agricultural specialist. The settlers planted nearly a quarter of a million trees a year to stop the wind from blowing the soil away and to help hold the rain.

Sundays
Abraham looked forward to Sundays when work was kept to a minimum and everyone had time to visit with friends and relatives. His mother woke him early to do his chores before he put on his "other" pair of pants and shirt which were kept for Sunday. Mama always looked nice in her special church apron. It was made of fine, white linen with a three-inch crocheted border around the edge. She would never leave the house without also wearing her "doke". Her "doke" was a dark maroon kerchief made of fine wool, embroidered with bright red flowers and green leaves. (Letter from Mary Martens, Vancouver, Canada, April 5, 1989)

Imagine little Abraham skipping along the street on his way home from church. He passes the fine picket fences and brick gateposts of the farmers with a full 175 acres, called the "wirtschaft", and then he passes the small plots just big enough for a house and a garden, which were called the "kleinewirtschaft". These were assigned to the craftsmen and widows. (Trailblazer For the Brethren, by Betty S. Klassen, 1941, p. 15)

At the end of Sunday, everyone sat down to "faspa", a simple meal that didn't require cooking. These meals included such items as cold cuts, zweiback and fruit "moos" (like stewed prunes). In most homes it was thought that Sunday couldn't come without zwieback (pronounced "twayback" in Low German). Baked on Saturday with enough for Sunday's three meals and some to begin the new week, it continues to be a favorite kind of bread. "Zwie" means two. The rolls were made by pinching off a bit of dough and placing it like a head on a larger ball of dough and then pressing it down before baking.

Chapter 3 Heinrich Schmidt's Family 1850

The Birth of Abraham
So there was Heinrich living in the south of Russia in 1850. He had come to Rueckenau as a boy of 18 in 1811. Now he moved a few miles away to live in Schardau with his wife Katharina Funk and their 2 children.
And that is where our great-grandfather Abraham Schmidt was born on July 23, 1850. Heinrich was 57 and Katharina was 43 when their son Abraham was born. They also had an older son Heinrich and a daughter Katharina.

(Yes, I know. A lot of people with the same name. Now you can see why nicknames were very popular. They would call someone by the nickname of a physical feature, a job or a hobby, etc.)

In a letter dated May 5, 1948, A.A. Smith wrote to his niece Jean, "My father (meaning Abraham) had only one brother with two sons, Henry and Abraham respectively."
I was confused by all these Henrys and Abrahams also. But recently I found Abraham's older brother Heinrich, the one that A. A. Smith was writing about. And I found 3 generations of his children. They live in Nebraska now.

Daily Life
Abraham's diary is written in High German. Low German was a spoken language used in everyday life. It wasn't a written language, so Abraham probably went to school, as most children in the Mennonite community did, in order to learn to write.

Why did they have two languages? And why didn't they speak Russian or Polish since that's where they lived?
Because many Mennonites viewed change as potentially detrimental to their religious integrity, the original Dutch Mennonites of the 1600's resisted the change to the use of High German in their church service even while living in German-speaking areas. They preferred the language of their home in the lowlands of Holland. That language was called Low German or "Plattdeutsch". It wasn't until 1760, one hundred years after their arrival in German-speaking Poland, that the Dutch Mennonites finally allowed German to be used in church. But they still kept the Low German for everyday speech. The same thing happened when English was introduced into the church service in the 1930's in the United States. The Mennonites continued to use books with High German on one side and English on the other.

Henry H. Thesman and wife Sara Jantzen

Some Russian ways were adopted by individual families. Dorothy remembers her grandfather Henry H. Thesman playing Russian gypsy tunes on his violin. With Russian-style soft slippers on his feet, Grandpa Thesman rosined up his bow and let the dust fly as he sang the tunes in Russian.


Next will be: What was daily life like for Abraham Schmidt when he was a child?

Chapter 2 What was it like in the south of Russia in 1811?

When Heinrich Schmidt arrived with his family on the vast prairie in southern Russia, no one else lived there. Only half-civilized nomadic tribes of Tartars roamed the area.

The colonists built the original 48 villages like Rúckenau (est. 1811) and Schardau (est. 1820) along the Molotschna (which means milk) River that flows into the Black Sea. The later villages were established every one to three miles along the streams and tributaries. They were strung out along the dusty, country road like beads scattered along a string.

Everyone lived along the main village street. The plots of land divided among the original settlers were 180 feet by 720 feet with the house set back from the main road. Although the first houses were made of sod, by the time Abraham was born in 1850, everyone had rebuilt their house in the precious lumber that was brought in by wagon from hundreds of miles away. The farmland lay behind the houses, all in an orderly fashion. Because of the cold winters, the settlers attached the houses to their chicken coops and stock pens. They did this so they wouldn't have to go out in the cold and rain to take care of the animals, but it gave the impression that the animals lived in the house with them.

The early economy of the colony began with sheep and cattle raising. Wool was in demand in Europe (do you care that it was because of the demand for uniforms caused by the Napoleanic Wars?). The expanse of waving grasses made sheep raising easy and profitable. As transportation developed and markets became more accessible, agriculture turned more toward wheat farming. (Henderson Mennonites: From Holland to Henderson by Stanley E. Voth 1982)

Was Heinrich Schmidt a farmer?
Not everyone was a farmer. Abraham wrote in his diary that his father Heinrich "was a chauffeur for a wealthy miller in Russia".

 

Some of the people had small businesses like the blacksmith, dressmaker, cabinetmaker, wheelwright, and weaver. These businesses apprenticed children and taught them skills in return for their labor.

There were also 13 "hollander" mills in the Molotschna colony. The owners of these mills were often wealthy because the climate was perfect for growing cereal crops. The average farm grew 500 pounds of wheat per acre. 

The Mennonite farmers grew rye to make their famous "black bread". They also developed a particularly hardy strain of wheat that came to be known as "Turkey Red". The Mennonite farmers brought this wheat to the United States in the 1870's. According to the previously mentioned book about Henderson (see above) all the wheat grown in America today came from the Mennonites' Turkey Red.

The wealthy millers employed many servants including chauffeurs to drive their carriages and their wagons. The wagon driver hauled the flour in long wagon trains to the port city of Berdjansk on the Sea of Azov  about 60 miles away. Cornelius Janzen, a grain dealer, bought and sold wheat for the Mennonites.

So perhaps Heinrich got a job driving the wheat to the port city. What an exciting job for a young man!

What happened next? The next installment will be about Heinrich and his wife Katharina and the birth of our grandfather/greatgrandfather/2xgreatgrandfather Abraham Schmidt.