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