Preservings $20 Issue No. 26, 2006 - Home at Plett Foundation

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we will see you again soon. I hope with all my heart that I will find you and the children all in good health and good spirits. If I find it so then with various other circumstances I will be moved to praise and honour you. That will be a great joy to me, and my sincere love for you remains as always. God’s best to you always! Your faithful husband Johann Bartsch The three-man delegation arrived in Danzig on a Saturday, 30 October/10 November, a market day just before Martini (St. Martin’s Day),i. e. 31 October /11 November 1787, which was a Sunday. The trip had taken them one year and eleven days. The three men now headed straight for the Russian consulate on Langgarten Street and were warmly welcomed there. People generally were astonished to see the delegation again, many having doubted that they would in fact return. Interest in emigration was significantly heightened at once, and people came from near and far to discuss the future of the move. Trappe set about immediately to report to the consulate and then also to the Mennonites themselves. The Russian consulate quickly gave the green light to proceed with the emigration. Trappe now prepared a report to the churches with a further invitation to become part of the move, noting especially the land grant feature of the terms of settlement. He also invited all interested parties to gather at the Russian consulate on 8/19 January 1788 at nine o’clock in the morning, to receive the original documents of the Charter of Privileges and the supreme imperial cabinet resolutions, as well as other information pertinent to the emigration. Trappe then distributed this report in the two Mennonite congregations of Danzig and other locations on 21 December/1 January 1788. Johann found his family had managed quite well in his absence, their great longing to have him back notwithstanding. Susanna had milked their cows daily and had it picked up for delivery to the city several miles away. They may have had help from neighbours and others to get by. By all accounts her needs had been well met. No doubt they now spent hours discussing The Danzig Mennonite Church worship house (19th century). Photo credit: H.G. Mannhardt, Die Danziger Mennonitengemeinde: Ihre Entstehung und ihre Geschichte, 1919). Frontispiece. Johann’s experiences, and hearing him share many stories about the trip which the letters had not included. Most certainly they thanked God again that he had been given a safe trip, a journey of much longer than expected duration, and not without various difficulties along the way. They now needed to look at the question of emigration themselves. What all their own family reasons were for going is not specifically known. The remuneration and rights promised by Trappe to him and Hoeppner assumed the move. Nothing Johann had seen or heard had seemingly dissuaded him from joining other Danzig and Prussian Mennonite families who would be planning, as they saw it now, to move to the Berislav area of New Russia, under the rule of Vice Regent Grigorii Alexandrovich Potemkin and Tsarina Catherine II, and establish a new home there. Significance of the letters The four letters Bartsch wrote to Susanna in 1786-87 did not provide her with very much information about what the delegates experienced on the trip, or about the discussions they had with officials and others as they went along. There would obviously have been a great deal to say – a book could have been written about that year plus some days, as journalists and other writers would look at it today. There is some oral evidence that Hoeppner may have kept a travel diary, although a manuscript of this kind had not surfaced for research so far. We may assume that Trappe will have reported to the authorities at Kremenchug or St. Petersburg, or both. Perhaps Hoeppner wrote to people back home and filled that information gap, but again, we have no letters from this trip showing that he did. There could have been other letters by Bartsch which too did not survive. He did write a good deal when the emigration got underway and later, it would appear. These four seem to have been designed to be more or less personal letters which could reassure Susanna that all was going well on the trip, and that he himself was in good hands, namely in Trappe’s and Hoeppner’s – and that wherever they stopped provisions were at hand. That would have meant a great deal to Susanna. Perhaps this was what she was most interested in, as seemingly Bartsch surmised. That the correspondence could be undertaken does speak of a postal system that functioned well enough to get the four letters through. We are not aware that Hoeppner wrote to his family, and the community, as Bartsch did. There may A scene from Alt Schottland, a Danzig suburb inhabited by Mennonites, around 1688. Photo credit: Kurt Kauenhowen, ed., Mitteilungen des Sippenverbandes der Danziger Mennoniten-Familien Epp-Kauenhowen-Zimmermann III (Dezember 1937) Heft 6, 202. in fact have been personal couriers who could take mail with them alongside the regular mailing system. The 7 October 1787 letter seems to suggest that. We do become better acquainted with the personal piety and spirituality of Bartsch, perhaps more than through anything else that he wrote. A great deal of Christian concern is reflected in the writing, and his love for Susanna and his family is amply documented there. It is still a good question to ask: How was it that Bartsch, with three small children, and still a young man, had the courage and readiness to undertake this venture? Material rewards alone? Hardly. Bartsch’s counsel to his wife may seem somewhat patronizing to readers today, and some may wonder if she was given to frivolity, or at least that there was some reason for him to worry that she might not be up to be head of the home during his absence. Or again, his patronizing tone may be due to the style of male headship as understood and practiced in those days. It has even been suggested that the “very young son” mentioned in at least one of the letters may not have been a child of Susanna and Johann, but only his. One can ponder these questions but in the available documents there is silence on them so far. The letters also offer some orientation to the time line of the venture, and give the first indications of what would become the transit route to the settlement site in the next two years. The delegates blazed the trail, as it were, for many families who would come later – 228 in the first wave of the emigration. Bartsch himself would lead one of the emigrating family groups in late fall of 1788. To study the emigration, we need now to look at other writings of Bartsch, which are also translated for non-German readers. Perhaps future articles on this topic will widen our perspective on the Prussian emigration to New Russia which this total corpus of extant writings offers to readers today 82 - Preservings No. 26, 2006
Preservings No. 26, 2006 - 83
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~ A Journal of the D. F. Plett Hist
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D.F. Plett Foundation Names Executi
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Interior of the church in Witmarsum
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An engraving of Menno Simons by Pie
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this first wave of persecution. Som
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The Frisian-Flemish Division Causes
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practice actually prevailed, such a
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Inter-church conversations with the
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concerning the Points of the Christ
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to their children, for all inherita
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Hamburg (after 1641 the Danish mona
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Dutch-Flemish Words in Mennonite Lo
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Henkel und Deckel. goblet, mug with
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According to definition, any means
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The history of Mennonites in Amster
Page 31 and 32: Rembrandt van Rijn 1606-1956 . Van
Page 33 and 34: Wife of Cornelis Claesz Anslo. Deta
Page 35 and 36: Some Rembrandts In America John F.
Page 37 and 38: Biographies Aeltester Johann Loeppk
Page 39 and 40: Old Colony delegates to Mexico in t
Page 41 and 42: Old Colony Mennonites departing to
Page 43 and 44: give heed first to the son, then th
Page 45 and 46: Tribute to Aeltester Herman J. Buec
Page 47 and 48: mass emigration. In 1872 Jansen pub
Page 49 and 50: me no de ole tit.’. . So this col
Page 51 and 52: was involved in confession before t
Page 53 and 54: Hamm Family Journals Translated by
Page 55 and 56: that was for a small one. Sugar is
Page 57 and 58: etter return until the parents agai
Page 59 and 60: The Wiebe Family. Grandmother came
Page 61 and 62: The Von Stauffenbergs and the Klass
Page 63 and 64: the rapid Allied advance. In total,
Page 65 and 66: Throughout his life, Mr. Froese’s
Page 67 and 68: time. Meanwhile, the Old Colony chu
Page 69 and 70: They also considered the US. Land a
Page 71 and 72: for those older teens who wanted to
Page 73 and 74: such a group, why we should raise o
Page 75 and 76: Teaching Staff of Barnaul School fo
Page 77 and 78: collectives continue to this day an
Page 79 and 80: were also assembling to travel at t
Page 81: different areas have such varied we
Page 85 and 86: Another Look at the Creation-Evolut
Page 87 and 88: Hutterite Life Hutterite Christmas
Page 89 and 90: Graduation Address At The Oak River
Page 91 and 92: Our Christmas Wonder by Linda Maend
Page 93 and 94: Mennonitische Forschungsstelle Gary
Page 95 and 96: For the 3,000 dead in the fall of t
Page 97 and 98: Material Culture Passing on the Com
Page 99 and 100: or Paraguay and again for safety in
Page 101 and 102: questions that deserve consideratio
Page 103 and 104: sadness. The first sadness is that
Page 105 and 106: sive collection of data. Trafford P
Page 107 and 108: “The Singel Mennonite Church, Ams
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