©Loretta Willems October
8, 2013
Heinrich H. Zimmermann (1866-1934) &
Maria Dyck Zimmermann (1861-1905)
“Mrs. Lena Zimmerman Willems was born in South Russia in the
Firstenland in Syejowka on February 6, 1893, to Rev. and Mrs. H. H. Zimmerman,
and departed this life at the age of 70 years, 5 months and 24 days in a
Tulare, California hospital. … She came to Winkler, Manitoba, Canada, with her
parents in 1903.”[1]
My
grandmother, Helena (Lena) Zimmerman Willems, was born in a Mennonite village
on the southeast bank of the Dneiper River in what is now Ukraine, a land she
knew as South Russia. The year was 1893;
the name of the village was Sergeyevka, which was one of the villages in the
Fuerstenland, a daughter colony of Chortitza, the first colony established by
the Mennonites in the steppe land bordering the Black Sea. Grandma’s father was Heinrich H. Zimmerman, a
Mennonite Brethren preacher. Her mother
was Maria Dyck Zimmerman, who died when my grandmother was a young girl.
Back in
the 1990s, when I began to seriously pursue research into the family history, I
asked my father what he knew about his mother’s parents. He said he didn’t know very much, but one
thing he remembered was my grandmother telling him that her mother was sick
when the time came for the family to leave Russia—so sick she knew she was
going to die—and she told her family they must go without her. Dad said the family didn’t want to leave his
grandmother, but she insisted. Reluctantly,
they obeyed her wish. She died shortly after
they left. Dad was almost eighty years
old when he told me this story, crippled from a stroke, and the thought of his
grandmother being left behind to die alone haunted him.
That
tragic story was gripping and truly haunting.
However, subsequent research did not support it. Maria Dyck Zimmermann did not die alone. Her death came 6 April 1905, in Winkler,
Manitoba, not quite two years after her family left Russia. She died surrounded by her family and beloved
church community. The story of her death
is told in a letter written by her husband, Heinrich, that was published in the
Zionsbote, the Mennonite Brethren
newspaper which circulated throughout the MB world—Canada, the United States,
South Russia. Printed in the May 7, 1905
issue, a month after Maria’s death, it was written while H.H. Zimmerman’s grief
was fresh. It is a long letter (1500
words), and in it HHZ tells about more than Maria’s death. He tells the story of his life up through
Maria’s last days and final release from suffering. The letter is an out-pouring of Heinrich’s
heart, and the story he tells is no less dramatic and compelling than the one
that gripped my father’s imagination.
The Zionsbote Letter
I found this letter on my first foray into the
Index to the Zionsbote, the Mennonite
Brethren newspaper, which is archived at both Fresno Pacific University in
Fresno, California and Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas as well as the John
A. Toews Library at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. I can read enough German to be able to
extract genealogical data from printed material, and when I pulled up this
letter on the microfilm reader and read the opening words, “Am Kuban, Russland, bin ich geboren” --“I
was born in the Kuban, Russia,” I knew that I’d found a treasure. However, my German is not good enough to
truly enter the world of the text. That
awaited translation by a generous friend who is fluent in German and familiar
with old Gothic print.[2] Reading that translation when it arrived was
like stepping through a door into the past.
Suddenly this great-grandfather who died before I was born was alive,
speaking to me—a tender-hearted man who sounded very much like his daughter, my
Grandmother Willems.
That
letter not only provided a glimpse into the heart of a man long dead, it
provided names and dates that were not in existing family records—data that
could be used for further research. What
follows is the story that emerged out of both the letter and the research it
enabled.
“Born on the Kuban”
My great-grandfather
Zimmermann begins his letter to the Zionsbote by stating
that he was born on the Kuban,
Russia. That simple statement opens into
a whole, vast backstory that connects him to important events not only in the
history of the Mennonites in the Russian Empire, but also a tragic history of a
whole people, a history that I’d never heard until I began to research “Kuban.”
The Kuban is the region
along the Kuban River which flows into the northeast coast of the Black Sea
just south of the narrow straight between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. It has its origins in the Caucasus Mountains,
which are located at the southern end of the strip of land that separates the
Black Sea from the Caspian Sea. Georgia
and Azerbaijan are located on the southern side of the mountains. Just south of those two countries is Iran,
the land formerly known as Persia. On
the southwest is Turkey, the heart of the old Ottoman Empire, Russia’s other
ancient enemy. The Mennonite settlement
where Heinrich Zimmermann was born was in the northwest part of that region, on
the steppe land just across the Kuban River from the town of Nevinnomyssk, which, when the
Mennonites began to arrive in the early-1860s, was only a small settlement
around a fort, a fort necessary because this land had long been a battleground
in the Russian Empire’s 100 year effort to add the Caucasus region to its
empire.
The Kuban River had long
been a major frontier line between Russia and the original inhabitants of the
Caucasus. Russia held the north bank. South was the region known then as Circassia,
the home of a mountain people whose traditional lands covered the northwest
side of the Caucasus Mountains and included the entire the eastern shore of the
Black Sea. The Circassians were not the
only mountain people to stubbornly resist the Russian Empire’s land-grab, but
they were among the most stubborn.
Russia’s military leaders were determined to clear the land of as many
of these troublesome people as possible. What resulted has come to be known as
genocide. Circassian villages were
raided, marauding Russian soldiers killing everyone they found, including women
and children. Other Circassians were
forcibly deported, jammed onto crowded decrepit ships. The result was misery, suffering and death.[3] According to historian Walter Richmond “at
least 600,000 people lost their lives to massacre, starvation and the elements
while hundreds of thousands more were forced to leave,” adding that by 1864,
three-fourths of the population had been “annihilated.” English journalist Oliver Bullough gives a
more conservative estimate of the total number of deaths, but his indignation
is just as great as Richmond’s:[4]
“The Russian troops of Alexander II—hailed today as the great reformer
of the tsarist empire, but for the Caucasus tribesmen the biggest murderer of
them all—could only defeat the Circassians by driving them en masse from their
lands on the Black Sea coast.
“In what was the first modern genocide on European soil—fifty years
before Turkey’s Armenians were butchered, ninety years before the
Holocaust—perhaps as many as 300,000 Circassians died from hunger, violence,
drowning and disease when Russia expelled them from their lands on their final
defeat in 1864. Scattered pockets of
their descendants still cling to the slopes of the North Caucasus, but the vast
majority of the nation now lives in Turkey, Israel, Jordan and elsewhere in the
Middle East. What was once their country
is now home to Russians, Armenians, Cossack, Ukrainians and all the other loyal
nations of the empire.”
Kuban Mennonite Settlement
“The Kuban settlement was established in the
early 1860s in the Northern Caucasus district of Russia, on the Kuban
River. With the organization of the
Mennonite Brethren Church in 1860, and because of the difficult time members of
the new church were experiencing in the Chortitza and Molotschna colonies,
Johann Claassen petitioned the government to allow establishment of a new
colony. Official permission was granted
in 1864.”
Mennonite Historical Atlas[5]
Russia considered the Kuban
and the entire Caucasus region essential to its interests. Replacing the original inhabitants of the
land with people loyal to the Russian Empire was a primary “pacification”
strategy. Mennonites, non-violent farmers with a
reputation as excellent agriculturalists, suited
their purposes nicely. The opening up of
the Kuban to settlement suited Mennonite needs as well. By 1860 over 60 percent of Molotschna and 50
percent of Chortitsa Mennonites were without land.[6] The Mennonite colonies were also troubled by religious
dissent that resulted in the formation of what became the Mennonite Brethren
Church. When leaders in the colonies
learned that Russia had land just opening for settlement, they were quick to
respond. Their request was granted, the
Russian government allowing them 17,500 acres.
Wohldemfürst, the village
where my great-grandfather Heinrich was born, began its life in 1862, two years
before official surrender by Circassian leaders. Heinrich was born in 1866, just two years
after the official end of the Causcasian War.
His parents must have been among the original settlers, the Mennonite
settlement still in its own difficult infancy when they arrived and tried to
establish a home. The Mennonite Encyclopedia article on the
Kuban written in 1958 that is quoted below not only provides information about
the Mennonite settlement, it also gives a glimpse of Mennonite perceptions of
the original inhabitants of the Kuban. They are simply “neighboring natives” with
primitive farming methods. There is no
evidence of any awareness that these native people had been forcibly relocated
from their original home in the mountains onto the steppe land along the Kuban
River. There is no evidence of any awareness
of their suffering. What this piece does
reveal is the reason why Mennonite settlers were so valuable to the Russian
government:
“The early settlement was
confronted with serious difficulties.
Only 67 of the 100 families for whom land had been granted settled there
by 1866. In part the difficulties were internal…. there were also economic difficulties. From the neighboring natives (Tatar,
Circassians) with their primitive methods, they could get no help in
agriculture. They had to learn by trial
and error; gradually cattle raising and fruit culture proved most
successful. There was a ready market for
the Mennonite bred Red cow; and horses were bought by the army.”
Mennonite stubbornness paid off, and the
Kuban settlement began to prosper:
“Fruit
culture was brought to [to a high] state of development. Well-developed nurseries distributed millions
of improved strains of fruit trees, berries, and ornamental trees. Industry related to these occupations was
also thriving: there were two factories which made farm implements, mills of
various kinds, and stores. There was a
cooperative for cheese making and grape growers (since 1890), a credit union, a
grain storage elevator, and an association of consumers. …
“Intellectual
and spiritual life were also maintained on a high level. Their schools, with eight-year courses (ages
7-15) and excellent teachers, were unique for their high standards even among
the Mennonites. In addition there was a
music club, which owned a hall, and a library club. …
“The
settlement achieved great prosperity.
The outstanding success of the Mennonites in the Kuban in the fields of
pedagogy and agriculture was repeatedly given recognition by the Czarist
government, even to the extent of granting titles of personal nobility, more
than in any other Mennonite settlement.”[7]
Heinrich Zimmermann’s parents, however, did not enjoy the
prosperity the Kuban Mennonite settlement eventually achieved. They arrived when the land was untamed, the
settlers ignorant of its demands. The Zimmermann family experience was one of
death and defeat.
“I … lost my father early for I was only four
months old.”
Heinrich Zimmermann says that he
was only four months old when his father died.
He says that in the opening sentence of his letter. It is the second fact about his life that he
gives. But that is the only thing he
says about his father. No first name is
given; no mention is made about Zimmermann grandparents or other
relatives. The father is never mentioned
again. He exists only as absence, a
gaping void in the life of the little family he left behind.
Heinrich was born 29 March 1866,
which means that his father’s death date was also in 1866. Given the Mennonite practice of naming the first
son after the father it is almost certain that Heinrich’s father’s name was
also Heinrich Zimmermann. The
surname “Zimmermann” was not a common name among the Mennonites in South
Russia; however, immigration records do list a Heinrich Zimmermann born in
1817 in Elbing, Prussia who migrated to the Molotschna, South Russia in
1845, and this Heinrich Zimmermann had a son, also named Heinrich, born 10 January 1843 in Arnsdorf, Prussia. Heinrich Zimmermann born in 1843 would have
been 23 in 1866, the year my great-grandfather Zimmermann was born. He could very well be HHZ’s father, my
great-great-grandfather.[8]
Another interesting bit of
information in that immigration record is that the elder Heinrich (b. 1817)
died 1889 in Prussia. This family evidently returned to Prussia,
which would explain why there is no mention of Zimmermann relatives in my
great-grandfather’s short autobiography.
Dever/Defehr
“When I was 5 years old we were
driven by an Uncle Gade to the Molotshna to the home of my grandparents Jakob
Dever.”
“Heinrich H. Zimmermann, our dear
husband and father, was born 29 March, 1866 on the Kuban, Russia. … He himself writes in his notes that his
father died in 1866 and that his mother moved when he was four years old to Prangenau on the Molotschna.”
Zionsbote, 12 September 1934[9]
Heinrich never mentions his
mother’s first name. However, he does
talk about an older sister named Anna.
Since Russian Mennonite naming practice was to give the mother’s name to
the first born daughter, Anna was
very likely his mother’s first name as well.
Heinrich also gives the name of her father, Jakob Dever. Dever is
one of the spellings of the name Dever/Devehr/Defehr/DeFehr. The 1858 Census for the Molotschna Colony
lists a Jacob Devehr of Prangenau,
and the Molotschna School Records for 1853-1855 lists an Anna, daughter of Jacob DeFehr of
Prangenau, age 11 who missed 23 days in the summer of 1854. This Anna
DeFehr would have been born sometime during the year 1843. She would have been around 23 when Heinrich
was born in 1866—the same age of the Heinrich Zimmermann (b.1843) found in the
Immigration Records. Again, the dates
fit.
Another interesting record that
fits this family is found in the “”1864 List of Families Intending to Settle
in the Kuban Colony.” Entry #55 is
“Jacob Devehr, age 46, and wife
Aganetha, age 56 from Prangenau.”
This almost surely is the father of the Anna of the Molotschna School
Records. The tie to the Kuban Colony is evidence
that this is HHZ’s mother’s family. This
entry also gives interesting financial information about Jacob Devehr and his
wife—that they have a “non-landowners
house together with a blacksmith’s shop.”
Their total assets were valued at 635 rubles (38 out of the 73
families had less, some had nothing).[10]
Jacob Devehr and his wife
Aganetha, however, are not listed on the 1869 Census. This fits with HHZ’s statement about moving
to his grandparents Jakob Dever in the Molotschna when he was five. Did Heinrich’s parents take up the Jacob and
Aganetha Devehr grant?
Heinrich’s
story, the early years
“We were
there at my grandparents’ about 4 ½ years, until there was a break. We had to leave my grandparents’ home because
everything was being sold. We moved to
Klippenfeld by Regehren into the small bedroom.
It was pretty crowded. We had
lived there about 3 months when my Momma married Abraham Penner from
Serjegevka. Things went well for us for
the first two years, but then the bad time began. After five years it pleased the dear Lord to
fetch my mother home. She died in the
clear consciousness that it was the Lord who called her. Now we were also free and we went to the
Kuban to our friends. We stayed there
three years. My sister Anna got married
during that time to David Panretz and I went back to Serjegevka in order to
work there in the factory.”
Heinrich’s father’s death left his widow with
two small children living in a land that has been described as wild and
dangerous. Whether from accident or
illness the death of the young husband and father left the young mother in a
terrible fix. It takes little
imagination to feel the fear and despair she must have felt. That loss was the overwhelming fact of
Heinrich’s childhood and youth. It meant
being dependent on relatives; it meant a life of being a burden, of being
shuttled from one place to another.
Reading what he wrote about his childhood one feels the sense of his
knowing that others are thinking and saying to each other, “What’s to become of
them? What are we going to do about
them?” Exactly where the widow and her
children lived in the Kuban—their own house or with relatives—is not mentioned
in HHZ’s letter. Those years are a
blank.
Heinrch says that when he was five,
which would have been 1871, “an
Uncle Gade” drove the small family to his Dever grandparents’
home in the Molotschna Colony. That was
a long trip, about three days according to accounts in letters written by early
settlers. Traveling by wagon, the
family had to head north about 250 miles to get around the Sea of Azov before
heading west and traveling another 200 miles to the Molotchna .
For the next 4½ years, Heinrich,
his mother and sister Anna lived in his grandparents’ house. Then, he says,
there was some kind of “break.” Everything
at his grandparents’ place was being sold.
The small family was forced to move again, this time to “Klippenfeld by Regehren”, (Molotschna
Colony), where Heinrich, his mother and sister moved “into the small
bedroom.” HHZ says that “it was pretty
crowded.” Heinrich would have been about
nine in 1875, the year the move to Klippenfeld took place.
The family stayed only a very short
time in the crowded house in Klippenfeld.
About three months after the move Heinrich’s mother remarried, her new
husband, an “Abraham Penner from Serjegevka.” The family moved again, from Molotschna to
the village of Sergeyevka in the Fuerstenland Colony, a distance of about a
hundred miles. For two years “things went well.” “But
then the bad time began.”
HHZ doesn’t give details about that bad time, but his comment later in
his letter that he was apprehensive about seeking a wife because “I knew how
things had gone at home” hints that there was trouble in his mother’s
marriage to Abraham Penner. It also
sounds like his mother’s health deteriorated and was part of that “bad time.” Her death came as a release, an end to her struggle
and unhappiness. Her death also brought
freedom for Heinrich and his sister Anna.
Anna and Heinrich
did not hang around their stepfather’s home in Sergeyevka after their mother’s death. Although Heinrich was only about 15, and Anna
probably not much older, they picked up and traveled over 400 miles back to
their friends in the Kuban. They may not
have traveled by wagon this time. The
railroad came to the Kuban while they were living in the Molotchna. The line to Vladikavkaz in the Caucasus Mountains, which went by the Mennonite
settlement, was finished in 1875. The
year the brother and sister returned to the Kuban would have been 1881, and
they may have had enough money from their mother’s estate to pay the rail
fare.
According to
Mennonite inheritance practice, enforceable by law, half of a married couple’s
property belonged to the wife. When a
married woman died, guardians were appointed to represent the interest of her
children. Her husband was then required
to draw up an inventory of the couple’s property in consultation with village
and church officials. Half of the
property was then distributed to her children.
The Orphans’ Administration would have overseen all of these
proceedings. I doubt Heinrich’s mother
had much of an estate, but it might have been enough to help Heinrich and Anna
act on their new freedom.
Anna married a man named David Panretz soon
after the return to the Kuban. Heinrich
stayed in the Kuban three years. Soon after
his sister’s marriage, he decided to go back to Sergeyevka “in order to work
there in a factory.” The year he
returned would have been 1884. Heinrich
turned eighteen March of that year.
Heinrich’s letter makes no further
mention of his sister Anna’s life in the Kuban.
She may well have spent the rest of her life there. If she lived long enough, she would have seen
the destruction of the “great prosperity” the settlement achieved before war
and the Soviets destroyed it. HHZ’s last
reference to his sister comes at the end of his letter to the Zionsbote. He concludes by saying, “I ask Uncle
Kornelius Fehr to give these lines to my sister to read and to send me news.”
Return Sergeyevka
Sometime around the year 1884, Heinrich
Zimmermann left the Kuban where he had been living with friends and returned to
the village of Sergeyevka in the Fuerstenland, the village where he and his
sister Anna had lived with their mother and step-father until their mother’s
death three years previously. Fuerstenland
was one of the daughter colonies of Chortitza, the original place of Mennonite
settlement in South Russia. It was
created in the 1860s to ease the problem of landlessness in the old colony, to
provide farms for its surplus population.
But the colony had more than just critically important farmland. It had another valuable resource—access to
the Dnieper River, the major shipping route between the Black Sea and Russia
proper, critically important for the factories that made their appearance in
the later part of the nineteenth century.
The Mennonite Historical Atlas[11]
article on the Fuerstenland mentions a Niebuhr factory, which made farm
machinery, as well as two flour mills, “one of which was in Sergeyevka.” It was
because of the work available in the industries in the village that Heinrich
Zimmermann moved to Sergeyevka, work that would allow him to support a wife and
children.
Maria Dyck Zimmermann (1861-1905)
“[The Lord] gave me a wife, namely Maria Dyck from Rosenbach. She was pious and lived in the fear of God,
but was also unschooled and also was afraid of those who had learning.” H H. Z (Zionsbote
7 May 1905)
“Her mother
was a very good natured person, I know that.
She told me several times I looked a lot like her mother, because her
mother had a high forehead.”
Mary Willems Davis
“Well, she said that her grandmother came
from Prussia and she was a feisty thing.”
Rosella Willems Noble
I know even less about Maria Dyck’s
family. My aunts Rosie and Mary remember
my grandmother saying that her mother came from Prussia, but family records
give no names for Maria Dyck’s parents.
However, the Dinuba Mennonite Brethren Church membership records, under
the entry for Heinrich Zimmerman, states that Maria’s father’s name was Johan Dyck. I have not yet been able to find the name
of Maria’s “feisty” mother, though it may well have been either Maria or
Helena since Mennonites in Russia usually gave the name of the mother to
the first daughter and the name of the grandmother to the second daughter.
What little else I know about Maria
Dyck Zimmermann comes from the l905 letter to the Zionsbote written by
her husband, Heinrich Zimmermann. In
that letter, Heinrich states that his wife was from Rosenbach. The map
of Fuerstenland Colony in the Mennonite Historical Atlas shows a village
named Rosenbach on the upper Rogachik River about 13 miles inland from
the village of Sergeyevka. Rosenbach was
one of the six original villages in the colony, which was established between
1864 and 1870. Maria’s family may have
been one of the original families to settle there, but since she was born in
1861—a date that precedes the founding of the colony—she was probably born in
the mother colony, Chortitza. Heinrich
also says that Maria was “pious” and “unschooled”. Her lack of schooling and fear of learned
people may well have been the result of poverty. I would guess that her family was at the
lower end of the economic and social ladder.
Mary: “I think, really, they were quite well to
do in Russia. Her dad worked in a –what
was it? I thought maybe it was a
foundry, but Jack seems to think it was construction. I wouldn’t be surprised because he did that
kind of work, making things.”
HHZ’s letter does not mention what
kind of factory he went to work for in Sergeyevka. Mary remembers my father saying that he
thought that their grandfather Zimmerman worked in construction in Russia. Construction work would fit with Mary’s and
Rosie’s memories of their Grandpa Zimmerman working as a carpenter when he
lived in Reedley. They said he built
fine cabinets and painted flowers on them, so he may have worked in a furniture
factory.
However, Mary also thought it might
have been a foundry where her grandfather Zimmerman worked in Russia, and I
have found a reference to a foundry in Sergeyevka. An article on Herman Abram Neufeld (1860-1931) in the online Mennonite
Encyclopedia states that Neufeld worked at a foundry in Sergeyevka
from 1883 till 1890, at which time he became an itinerant MB minister
eventually becoming “one of the outstanding leaders of the MB conference in
Russia.” That connection between the
foundry and the Mennonite Brethren Church fits with a section of HHZ’s letter
in which he tells of the events that led to his marriage to Maria and the
conversion experience that resulted in their joining the Mennonite Brethren.
Conversion
“For several years then I wandered
the paths of sin. I also joined the
Mennonite church at that time, but I was not dead. The spirit of God always tormented me and
wanted to convert me, but I did not have the power to overcome. Then I was thinking of marriage. That seemed very difficult, for I knew how
things had gone at home. I knew no other council than to take refuge in the
Lord, for he could help me, and he did, too, and gave me a wife, namely Maria
Dyck from Rosenbach. She was pious and
lived in the fear of God, but was also unschooled and also was afraid of those
who had learning and wouldn’t come along to meetings. That was a great blow for me. Then the dear Lord took hold of my
master Johann Martens to the extent that he could not be silent, had to [“abbitten”?] us, his workers, but I
was hard and didn’t want to believe him.
That was in the morning. By noon
I was conquered by the strong man and I had no appetite. My dear wife wouldn’t give up until I told
her that Martens wanted to be saved and [I asked her] whether we didn’t also
want to. She said yes right away and so
we began to pray, she at home and we in the factory. There were other souls who began to cry out
to God and the Lord and it was a joy for the dear brothers and sisters to help
us and to pray for us.
“In
particular there was a Brother Jacob Janzen there, of whom I am still very
fond. It is too bad that he no longer
writes. He taught us a lot and prayed
with us much and it pleased the Lord to make us poor sinners rich and he gave
us peace and forgiveness and then we were baptized in the year 1892 and taken
into the community of the Lord. We lived through many blessed times, but also
storms, and yet the Lord knew ways and means to keep us as his children. We lived 11 years in faith in Serjegevka.”
~ ~ ~
~
Mennonite records show that HHZ
was baptized twice—the first time on 29 May 1890 when he joined the
Fuerstenland Mennonite church and the second time on 31 March 1892 when he and
Maria joined the Mennonite Brethren.
This event in their lives set the family on the path that led to the
marriage between Helena Zimmerman and Jacob C. Willems, my grandparents, but
that is a future story.
Memories of Russia
____: What do you remember Grandma saying about her
early life?
Mary: “Well, the story about her being buried in the
sand to get rid of her
rheumatic fever.”
Mary: “She would
say how beautiful Russia looked, and they never thought of moving—they loved it
there, but when this trouble arose, then they realized they better get
out. …
And then her mother was
sick. And she was the oldest girl. She
had to do a lot of work.”
Both my aunts Rosie and Mary remember
Grandma saying how beautiful it was in South Russia. I have seen copies of old photographs taken
in the Mennonite colonies that show charming villages, rolling hills. A couple of photos show people picnicking in
a pretty, rocky ravine sheltered by oak trees.
But what most gives me a sense of the beauty of that land are the
paintings of Chortitza by a Mennonite man, Henry Pauls, who was born in the
Chortitza Colony in 1904 and lived there till he emigrated to Canada in
1923. One of those paintings is
reproduced on the cover of James Urry’s book, None But Saints: The
Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia 1789-1889. The painting shows a large, two story white
stucco church with a red tile roof set in a dense grove of deciduous
trees. A tall white masonry fence defines the front of the church
yard from the dirt roadway. The sky is
blue and the colors vivid. Another
painting reproduced in the book shows the huge, 700 year old Chortitza oak tree
surrounded by flowers and a white picket fence, a white stucco house with a red
tile roof and shutters at the window in the background. It is the addition of color that makes the
difference, I think, but it is also the artist’s style. These are memory paintings, paintings of a
much- loved place and time, an attempt to preserve a valued past that no longer
exists.
Sergeyevka,
Grandma’s village, was about 50 miles southwest of the Chortitza Colony. It, too, was on the Dnieper River, and the
land around her village may well have looked much like it did around Chortitza
with rolling hills and tree-filled ravines.
The river where Grandma saw men and women bathing naked was either the
Dnieper or the Rogachik, which entered the Dnieper at Sergeyevka. That confluence of rivers likely built up the
sand in which Grandma was buried when she had rheumatic fever.
[We] experienced many difficult hours because
of illness and death, for we had to bury five children in that time, of whom
two were very ill; my [dear] wife was also very ill, she especially suffered in
her lungs, but the very good doctor Johann Braun was there who gave her
medicine and God added his blessing, so that she could live.”
H H. Z (Zionsbote 7 May 1905)
South
Russia may have been beautiful and well loved, but life there was also hard at
times. Mary and Rosie both mention that
Grandma’s mother was very sick with tuberculosis and that Grandma herself had
rheumatic fever when she was a young girl.
But those two illnesses were just a fraction of the “difficult hours”
the family knew. Grandma’s father,
Heinrich, in his 1905 letter to the Zionsbote, states that they had to bury
five children in Russia. That is
a fearsome toll. Heinrich says that he
and Maria had a total of ten children, only five of whom survived. That is a 50% mortality rate.
Below is a list of the names and
dates of birth/death that was among the information Aunt Mary gave me. Those with an asterisk beside their name had
their name “reused,” given to the next baby of the same sex born after a
child’s death as was common among the Mennonites of South Russia. However, only three children who died are
included on the list. The other two
births were likely infants who died soon after birth.
The Children of Heinrich and Maria Dyck Zimmermann
Marie* born
January 6, 1892 --died
March 17, 1899
Helena born
February 5, 1893
Anna
born April 25, 1894
Henry
born December 4, 1895
Katherine*
born February 22, 1897 —died
January 29, 1899
Marie
born June 25, 1899
Jacob*
born
June 25, 1899 —died
February 11, 1900
Jacob
born May 21, 1901
The family suffered two deaths
early in 1899—Katherine on January 29 and Marie on March 17. Two births are listed for June 25,
1899. Evidently, Marie, Grandma’s
youngest sister was born a twin. This is
the first instance of twins I’ve heard of in my family.
Leaving Russia
“She
would say how beautiful Russia looked, and they never thought of moving—they
loved it there, but when this trouble arose, then they realized they better get
out. …”
Mary Willems Davis
“Steadily the Mennonite commonwealth began to take the
shape of what would be spoken of as ‘a state within a state.’ This self-perception of a separate Mennonite
political order within the Russian state was shared—but with an increasingly
negative sense—by conservative sections of Russian society and contributed to
the sustained political attacks on Mennonites and other colonists from the late
1880s onwards.”
James Urry, Mennonite Politics and Peoplehood:
Europe-Russia-Canada 1525 to 1980[12]
To
pick up and move thousands of miles from one country to another is a huge
undertaking. It takes money, and it
takes initiative, enormous initiative, to leave all that is known and familiar
for a place that is unknown, never seen.
When the homeland is beautiful and beloved, the reasons for leaving have
to be very strong before people will leave it.
The
Mennonite colonies in South Russia had gone through great change in the quarter
century between 1875 and 1903.
Photographs taken around the turn of the century show beautiful brick
schools and churches, hospitals, a psychiatric institution, a nice looking
orphanage. These are big buildings, the
brick work elaborate. There are also
photos of large factories and mills.[13] Industrialization had come to South Russia,
and Mennonites were in the forefront of that development. They built huge mills to grind the wheat they
grew on their farms into flour; they developed and built farm machinery that
they shipped and sold throughout the wheat growing regions. They read newspapers and books. They knew what was going on in Russia and the
larger world, and they aggressively looked after the interests of the Russian
Mennonite world. The Mennonite colonies
in the 1890s—1900s were very prosperous, but that very prosperity brought
problems.
The
steppe land where Heinrich and Maria were born had undergone great change
during the course of their lives. Rich
seams of iron and coal had been discovered.
This discovery, along with the region’s proximity to the Black Sea, lead
to the development of heavy industry.
Migration into the area from other regions of the Russian Empire
combined with a high birth rate resulted in explosive population growth. New towns were built, not just farming
hamlets but manufacturing and administrative centers as well. The Zimmermann’s homeland had become “one of
the most rapidly modernizing regions of the Russian Empire.” This rapid change brought new economic
opportunities, but as James Urry notes, the increase in prosperity was “uneven,
even wrenching, and brought in its wake much instability and tension.”[14]
The
Zimmermans decided to leave Russia and move to North America a decade before
the start of WWI when Russia joined with England and France in their attack on
Germany. The Mennonite colonies were
still in the midst of what Mennonites came to see as a golden time, a time of
economic and cultural flourishing.
However, all was not golden. The
trouble that my aunt Mary Davis says that the Zimmermanns “smelled” was very
real. Not only was Mennonite prosperity
resented by people who did not share their charter of privileges, they were
resented because they were a people who insisted on remaining separate from the
surrounding society. And they were not
only resented, they began to look like a threat to national security. Their beloved, stubbornly retained German
language connected them to both Germany and the German language
Austro-Hungarian Empire, countries that began to look more and more like
potential enemy states, a darkening threat on Russia’s western border. Conservative newspapers began what became a
sustained attack on German speaking people living in Russian territory, including
the privileged and prosperous Mennonites, accusing them of disloyalty, insinuating that they “secretly pledged allegiance to the
German Kaiser and Reich.”[15]
~ ~ ~
The
Zimmerman’s left Russia in 1903. Eleven
years later, in 1914, the series of events began that destroyed the Mennonite
world in South Russia. War with Germany
was followed by the Communist Revolution and the reign of Stalin. The Mennonites of Russia suffered terribly in
those years. Famine and mass starvation
followed war. Crops and animals were
destroyed, people tortured and killed.
Then, in the 1930s came the deliberate dispersal of the Mennonite who
had survived. Families were deported to
Siberia and Central Asia; leaders were arrested and never seen again. If the Zimmerman’s had not “smelled
trouble”—if they had stayed Russia—they, too, would have been caught up in
those terrible times.
Canada: 1903-1905
“Toasted zwieback have a very long shelf
life. When properly toasted, they do not
turn rancid nor do they become moldy.
Consequently, they make excellent travel rations. Immigrant and refugee diaries are full of
references to travel baskets filled with toasted buns” (54).
Norma Jost Voth,
Mennonite Foods and Folkways from Russia, vol.1
Family
records state that the Zimmermann family “left Russia, 28 July 1903 and
arrived Halifax in August 1903.”
The Zimmermann’s were not part of a mass migration of Mennonites from
Russia to North America as were those who migrated a generation earlier. Migration continued throughout the
intervening years, but immigrants no longer traveled as part of a group taking
advantage of group rates and accommodations negotiated by the more worldly wise
members of the community. Migration
now took greater individual initiative.
However,
as the original Mennonite migration to North America slowed, migration from
Central Europe increased. By the time
the Zimmermann’s made the journey emigration had become standardized and
efficient. They would have been able to
obtain package deals that would take them from their home along the Dnieper all
the way to the German ports of Hamburg or Bremen where they would board the
ship that was to take them across the Atlantic.
The Zimmermanns may have been the only Mennonites on the train that took
them to their ship, but they would not have been the only immigrants from the
Dnieper River region. Ukrainian
immigration into the Canadian prairies was heavy. Below is historian Gerald Friesen’s
description of a scene the Zimmermann’s may well have witnessed and in part
experienced:
“As families of Ukrainians left their
villages in Galicia or Bukowina, a dance or parade and a church blessing would
mark their departure. A cart ride would
take them to the city and the railway.
As they passed through Germany in fourth-class train carriages, buttons
or ribbons affixed to their coats to distinguish their shipping line, they
found hawkers on the station platforms selling sandwiches and drinks. When they arrived at Hamburg, they learned
that entire streets of lodging-houses were ready to provide shelter in exchange
for their scarce cash. Bags roped shut, children
clutched firmly by hand, the families endured the line-ups for medical
inspection, vaccination certificates, baggage fumigation, and steamship places,
and then, finally, they were shepherded up the gangway to the ship.”
Steerage passengers in ships
carrying immigrants before 1890 slept in large lower-deck dormitories with
bunks lining the walls and long tables down the center. By the time the Zimmermanns made that trip,
however, there were “compartments for single men and women as well as family
cabins.” There were also separate dining
and public rooms. However, toilets and
washing areas still tended to be minimal—“primitive” and “unsavory.” Food was usually adequate, though plain and
not particularly appetizing. In general,
steerage class on the ships out of northern European ports was tolerable even
though cramped, smelly, and crowded.”
Travel by first and second class
was a completely different experience: “restaurants
offered linen and silver on the tables, as well as painted ceilings and
mahogany paneling; [passengers] listened to string orchestras in the lounges;
their staterooms, each equipped with a steward, featured carpet on the floor,
double beds, easy chairs, and discreet lighting; but, of course, such
accommodation was available only to a limited number of wealthy travelers, few
of whom were likely to be emigrants.”[16]
I have not been able to find the
name of the ship that carried the Zimmermann’s from Europe to Canada; however,
there is a tiny glimpse of it in my Aunt Rosie’s memory of her mother telling
her about a ballroom where she peeked at the people dancing—a ballroom with
dancing couples sounds like a regular passenger liner, one with first-class accommodations. Grandma’s family did not travel first-class,
I’m sure, but evidently they were not stuck somewhere deep in the hold. Her memory of watching the dancers is evidence
that she had freedom to move around and explore.
My
grandmother was ten years old when she and her family made that trip, old
enough to get out on her own and follow her curiosity, see what was going on in
the other parts of the ship. She
probably elicited no comment as she moved among the fine people on the upper
decks. She would not have looked like a foreign urchin to be shooed back down
into steerage. Young girls in photos of
Mennonites in South Russia taken in the 1890s and 1900s look no different from
those in photographs taken in North America during that same period—dresses are
prints and plaids with various decorative trimming, hair pulled back into
braids, heads uncovered. And in a school
photo I inherited from my father that was taken in Manitoba in 1904, my
grandmother looks very similar. Wearing
a white cardigan sweater over a grey dress, she looks neat and clean, nicely
dressed. The Mennonites in Russia had
not just become aware of ideas circulating in the larger European world, they
knew how the people who read those books and newspapers dressed. Russian Mennonites were no longer
peasants. They had begun to move into
the European middle-class.
Canada: Arrival
Maria’s
consoling words that the “dear brothers
and sisters” would continue to take care of Heinrich after she was gone
proved true. One year after Maria’s death Heinrich married my grandfather’s
mother, Elisabeth Boldt Willems, who was part of the Brotherfield congregation
near Waldheim, Saskatchewan, a marriage my family says was arranged by the
church. Heinrich became one of the
preachers (Prediger) in that
congregation as well as one of the ordained preachers of the South Reedley
(later Dinuba) MB church after his and Elisabeth’s move to California in 1926.
Maria’s
death was the last in the string of deaths among Heinrich’s loved ones. Maria bore ten children during the 14 years
of their marriage, all of whom were born in Russia. Five of those children died in Russia: all
five of those who made it to Canada lived to marry and have children of their
own. Heinrich did not have to bury any
more children. His own death did not
come until August 29, 1934. Elisabeth
Boldt Willems Zimmerman, the wife the church found for him wrote his Zionsbote obituary.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
[1] Obituary written by the
family and read at my grandmother’s funeral 1963 (my aunt Helen, the oldest
daughter, is the likely author).
[2] Linda Schelbitzki Pickle. Linda is the author of Contented Among Strangers: Rural German-Speaking Women and Their
Families in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest (University of Illinois Press),
1966. This book includes Linda’s
translations of journals and letters written by Mennonite women.
[3] Charles King in The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the
Caucasus (Oxford Univ.Press, 2008) gives an excellent treatment of the
history of that term in his section “On Words.”
[4] Walter
Richmond, The Circassian Genocide, Rutgers Univ. Press (2013), back cover. Oliver Bullough, Let Our Fame Be Great:
Journeys Among the Defiant People of the Caucusus. United Kingdom:
Allen Lane/Penquin Books,( 2010); United States: Basic Books/ Perseus Books
Group (2010), p. 8. A more balanced,
historically nuanced treatment is Charles King’s, The Ghost of Freedom, (see above).
[5] William Schroeder & Helmut
Huebert. Mennonite Historical Atlas, 2nd ed. Winnipeg: Springfield Publishers, 1996.
[6] James Urry. None
but Saints: The transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia 1789-1889 (Hyperion
Press, Ldt., 1989),p. 196.
[7] Theodor Block. “Kuban Mennonite Settlement (Northern
Caucasus, Russia).” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1058. Retrieved 01 February 2009.
[8] The Benjamin H. Unruh Immigration Records, Die niederlandisch-niederdeutsche
Hintergrunde der mennonitischen Ostwanderungen im 16., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, Selbstverlag,
Karlsruhe, 1955, p. 385.
[10] The information about the house and blacksmith shop
was found in the 1864 List of Families Intending to Settle in the Kuban
Colony, “as found in the records of
the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Settlers in Southern Russia (fund 6,
Inventory 5, File 278) in the Odessa Region State Archives, Odessa, Ukraine”
(translated by Tim Janzen).
[11] “Mennonite Historical Atlas, Fuerstenland Mennonite Settlement”: “Fuerstenland
was founded between 1864 and 1870 as a daughter colony of Chortitza. The land,
south-west of a bend of the Dniepr River, was rented from the Grand Duke
Michael Nikolaevitch, originally for one and a quarter, then gradually up to 14
rubles per dessiatine. Each of the
original six villages …had from 18 to 35 farms.
On or after 1874 a total of about 1,100 people emigrated to Manitoba,
settling in the West Reserve. In 1911
the Fuerstenland population was 1,800…“Besides
the usual agriculture, industry in Fuerstenland included two flour mills, one
of which was in Sergeyevka,
and a Niebuhr factory in Olgafeld.”
[12] James Urry, Mennonite Politics and Peoplehood:
Europe-Russia-Canada 1525 to 1980, University
of Manitoba Press, 2006, p. 106.
[13] Rudy P. Friesen, Building on the Past: Mennonite
Architecture, Landscapes and Settlement in Russia/Ukraine. Raduga Publications, 1996.
[14] Harvey L. Dyck.
A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp 1851-1880,
translated and edited with Introduction and Analysis by Harvey L. Dyck. University of Toronto Press, p. 7-8.
[15] “Conservative forces had been increasingly concerned with the negative
influence of non-Russian, non-Slavic, and non-Orthodox elements in the Empire’s
affairs, and such concerns also generated increased anti-Semitism against the
Empire’s Jewish populations” Urry,
p. 106.
[16] Gerald Friesen, The Canadian Prairies: A History
(University of Toronto Press, 1984), pp 252, 254.
[17] The Hiebert’s daughter lived next door to Aunt Rosie
when she lived on Maple Street in Selma, California.
