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.