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?

Abraham Schmidt - the Beginning Chapter 1

Having just survived the coldest winter since their arrival in south Russia, the colony of Molotschna was enduring a heat wave in July 1850 as Katharina Funk Schmidt gave birth to baby Abraham. History would note record temperatures that year from a low of 14 degrees below zero in January to a high of 102 degrees in July.

To make it worse, storms came sweeping across the broad, treeless Russian plains filling the air with dust. It was enough to make any immigrant want to return home, if they had a home to return to. But these immigrants didn't. When the Mennonites left their homes along the Vistula River of Poland, they sold their houses and land, packed everything they owned on wagons and trudged hundreds of miles to the south of Russia. It took them between five and seven weeks to get to the new colony.

OK, so that's why they weren't Russian even though came to America from Russia.

From 1804-1840 six thousand Mennonites left Poland. They left Poland because they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs, especially their refusal to bear arms. The Napoleonic Wars were making it hard to avoid conscription into the army. (Personally, I think that the neighbors were jealous. The Mennonites were such good farmers that they were able to move into the swampy land along the Vistula River and turn it into productive farmland. When they left they had to sell to whoever would buy it for whatever price they could get.)

Then, were the original Mennonites Polish?

Not necessarily, although during the 100 years that they lived in Poland some local people joined their religious community. The Mennonites came from other countries like Holland, Switzerland, France and Germany. They banded together through their common religion and beliefs, the same beliefs that forced them out of their native countries.

Which country did Abraham's parents come from?

Abraham's parents were not born in Russia according to his diary.(Personal diary owned by Hulda Langhofer)

His mother, Katharina Funk, was born on June 22, 1807 in the part of Poland ruled by Russia. Abraham called this area "Polen Russia".

His father, Heinrich Schmidt, was born in German in 1793. Heinrich (the father) came with his parents to the southern part of Russia when Heinrich was 18 - that was in 1811.  Heinrich came with his father Daniel, 51, his stepmother Barbara, 37, and brothers and sisters.(Die Niederlandish by Unruh, p.330)

They brought with them 1 horse, 6 cows, 5 sheep, 1 harrow, 1 wagon, and a spinning wheel. They settled in the Molotschna Colony near the Black Sea in a newly created small village of 30 people, called Ruckenau.
Soon after they arrived in Rückenau, Heinrich's sister Susanna married Jacob Draksel, a neighbor, on February, 25, 1813.

But why did they pick Russia? And why right then?

Russia under the rule of Catherine the Great had just won a war and gained millions of acres of unoccupied agricultural land along the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The Russian government wanted to settle the area with industrious, stable farmers. She offered liberal inducements - such as free land and transportation; support until they were settled; tax exemption for a limited time; self-government within their region; exemption from military duty; and, most importantly, religious tolerance. After Catherine the Great died, her son Paul continued the same offer.

In Summary
Abraham was born in Russia in 1850 but his father and grandfather had come from Germany in 1811. Their religion and their culture remained intact in Russia through their communal solidarity.

More tomorrow......