Mennonites and Slavery

[Ernie]

"Mennonites and Slavery" by Edsel Burdge, November 5, 2023

[Neto]

Re: the desire to see one's own causes reflected in one's ancestral past:
When I was involved in the MCC Peace Section type of activist-pacivist position, the smaller group in which I was involved at least also had other "positions" that fit the modern views we were supportive of, like charismatic practices and the involvement of women in leadership positions. So we looked for evidences in the old documents and stories that seemed (to those who wanted to find these things) to support those viewpoints. (There actually were, of course, women who gave moving testimonies in the face of their impending executions, but it does not follow that they then had to have been ministers. It was, perhaps on the contrary, simply a remarkable evidence of deep general knowledge of the Scripture, and the deep conviction that should accompany that knowledge, true of probably most of those who willingly accepted the cross of Jesus in that time period. In that sense, it forms an even greater injunction to us today, not to, in a bid to "reinvent Scripture", seek to validate "women in the ministry", but to urge, encourage, and invoke that same deep knowledge and conviction in our congregations now - in ourselves.)

[Grace]

"Mennonites and Slavery" by Edsel Burdge, November 5, 2023

I began listening to talk by Edsel Burdge.

Interesting that he claims this well known story from the Ephrata Cloister is all a myth. I have heard this story told many times, but I did do a little research and Mr Burdge might be right, it seems to be full of holes.

https://www.lancasterhistory.org/images ... 118632.pdf

[Ken]

"Mennonites and Slavery" by Edsel Burdge, November 5, 2023

I began listening to talk by Edsel Burdge.

Interesting that he claims this well known story from the Ephrata Cloister is all a myth. I have heard this story told many times, but I did do a little research and Mr Burdge might be right, it seems to be full of holes.

https://www.lancasterhistory.org/images ... 118632.pdf

The story does not hold water. Only 30 people have ever been convicted of treason in the entire history of the US and the first person in American history to be executed for treason was abolitionist John Brown who instigated a violent slave revolt that killed at least 23 people and injured many others in 1859.

The only people who were convicted of treason and pardoned by George Washington were Philip Vigil and John Mitchell who were convicted for their participation in the Whisky Rebellion in 1790. They were both sentenced to hang for leading attacks on federal officers and troops but pardoned by Washington for the sake of national unity. https://decastroverdelaw.com/blog/nevad ... f-treason/

Both treason convictions and presidential pardons are very big deal. And both would leave a historical record as we have detailed records of such judicial and presidential actions going back all the way to the beginning of the country.

In any event, expressing one's opinion as described in the article is not now nor has ever been treason. Treason has always been defined as levying war against the United States or directly giving aid and comfort to the enemy (such as spying for a foreign country). Not shooting your mouth off.

[ken_sylvania]

"Mennonites and Slavery" by Edsel Burdge, November 5, 2023

I began listening to talk by Edsel Burdge.

Interesting that he claims this well known story from the Ephrata Cloister is all a myth. I have heard this story told many times, but I did do a little research and Mr Burdge might be right, it seems to be full of holes.

https://www.lancasterhistory.org/images ... 118632.pdf

The story does not hold water. Only 30 people have ever been convicted of treason in the entire history of the US and the first person in American history to be executed for treason was abolitionist John Brown who instigated a violent slave revolt that killed at least 23 people and injured many others in 1859.

The only people who were convicted of treason and pardoned by George Washington were Philip Vigil and John Mitchell who were convicted for their participation in the Whisky Rebellion in 1790. They were both sentenced to hang for leading attacks on federal officers and troops but pardoned by Washington for the sake of national unity. https://decastroverdelaw.com/blog/nevad ... f-treason/

Both treason convictions and presidential pardons are very big deal. And both would leave a historical record as we have detailed records of such judicial and presidential actions going back all the way to the beginning of the country.

In any event, expressing one's opinion as described in the article is not now nor has ever been treason. Treason has always been defined as levying war against the United States or directly giving aid and comfort to the enemy (such as spying for a foreign country). Not shooting your mouth off.

It certainly would have been a very big deal if the President of the United States had issued a pardon for treason in 1779 or 1780.

[Ken]

I began listening to talk by Edsel Burdge.

Interesting that he claims this well known story from the Ephrata Cloister is all a myth. I have heard this story told many times, but I did do a little research and Mr Burdge might be right, it seems to be full of holes.

https://www.lancasterhistory.org/images ... 118632.pdf

The story does not hold water. Only 30 people have ever been convicted of treason in the entire history of the US and the first person in American history to be executed for treason was abolitionist John Brown who instigated a violent slave revolt that killed at least 23 people and injured many others in 1859.

The only people who were convicted of treason and pardoned by George Washington were Philip Vigil and John Mitchell who were convicted for their participation in the Whisky Rebellion in 1790. They were both sentenced to hang for leading attacks on federal officers and troops but pardoned by Washington for the sake of national unity. https://decastroverdelaw.com/blog/nevad ... f-treason/

Both treason convictions and presidential pardons are very big deal. And both would leave a historical record as we have detailed records of such judicial and presidential actions going back all the way to the beginning of the country.

In any event, expressing one's opinion as described in the article is not now nor has ever been treason. Treason has always been defined as levying war against the United States or directly giving aid and comfort to the enemy (such as spying for a foreign country). Not shooting your mouth off.

It certainly would have been a very big deal if the President of the United States had issued a pardon for treason in 1779 or 1780.

Well there is that too. During the revolutionary war prior to establishment of the United States, the authority in power to theoretically grant pardons would have been the Continental Congress and not General Washington. The colonial states were not military dictatorships and generals were not involved in civilian affairs of justice. Washington would have had authority over soldiers for things like desertion. But not crimes by civilians. In fact, pardon power did not exist until it was put into the Constitution at the urging of Alexander Hamilton in 1989.

[Josh]

I didn’t realise the musical Hamilton was about current events. In any case, that explains why Reagan didn’t pardon Ollie North.

[Ken]

I didn’t realise the musical Hamilton was about current events. In any case, that explains why Reagan didn’t pardon Ollie North.

touche. Too late to fix that typo.

[AndersonD]

"Mennonites and Slavery" by Edsel Burdge, November 5, 2023

Nice talk. Thank you for posting.

[Neto]

How would you all distinguish between 'slavery' and 'inescapible servitude'? I was reminded of this thread when I read the article below, about the landless problem in the colonies in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine).

Landlessness and casket painting in the Colonies, by Arnold Neufeldt-Fast 11-06-2023

After reading Andrew Unger’s review of the “highly anticipated Mennonite funeral thriller” on Prime, The Burial (note 1), I had to watch it. It is a great movie about the demise of Steinbach Mennonite business tycoon Ray Loewen and his funeral business empire (#122865). Loewen made me think of historian David G. Rempel’s apt description of the obscenely wealthy Molotschna landholder Peter Schmidt as “egotistical and unscrupulous” (see note 13 and yes, I have already had a congenial chat about Schmidt with a descendant who agrees).
This post is not about funeral directors but about landlessness (full disclosure: I had a landless ancestor who also painted caskets). If you have descendants in the Molotschna in the 1840s to 1860s, this context can waken their stories from the grave. I have touched on these themes before but I want to bring things together a little better (maybe a movie script can come of it, LOL!).
It is important to understand that these Mennonites were not citizens but “foreign colonists” with obligations and privileges that governed their sojourn in New Russia. For Mennonites the privileges of e.g., land and freedom from military conscription, were connected to the obligation of model farming. Mennonites were given one, and then later two districts of land for this purpose. Within their districts or colonies, villages were to be created in which families received equal allotments of land in perpetuity. Each village had between 20 and 30 farmsteads (Wirtschaften). These could not be divided or sold, but only inherited by the youngest son in perpetuity.
A district also had reserve land for future villages according to population growth, or to be rented, e.g., for sheep grazing. Every village was also required to set aside 1/6 of their land as surplus for other housing (e.g., the old and retired) and trades. Because older sons did not inherit a farm, a father was responsible to prepare them for other vocations needed to create whole communities.
Importantly, all land—surplus, reserve and ultimately each farmstead—belonged to the Mennonites as a whole, governed at the village and district levels.
Under Russian law governing foreign colonists (e.g., the Ukaz of March 1764; note 2), and within the more specific obligations and privileges of their unique charter (Privilegium), and as diligently directed and supported by the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Colonists to meet their obligations, farmers could flourish—or also forfeit their family’s farmstead.
A person unfit to farm and fulfill the mandate of the charter at a local level—i.e., as a model, flourishing farming community—would after much assistance and warning be removed from their farmstead and it would be given to another. Reasons varied: desire to farm, age, physical fitness, attitude, work ethic, willingness or ability to learn, etc. (examples, note 3).
The Guardianship Committee also could appoint special committees from within a colony with overriding authority in economic, agricultural or educational matters, e.g., directing exactly how and what to plant, how and what to build or teach for example. Johann Cornies was famously appointed as Chairman for Life of the Agricultural Society with overwhelming authority granted from the Guardianship Committee—which grew as his accomplishments and those of the Molotschna impressed authorities (note 4).
Decisions about surplus and reserve land and their rents were made locally, but policy, direction and pace were unclear from the start.
Only those with a farmstead could vote in village or district affairs. Items for decision might include use of reserve land in the village and surplus land for the district; the head-tax rate; contributions to communal grain stores (even by the landless), and imposed communal fines, labour or imprisonments—e.g., for inability of the landless to pay rent for grazing a cow on common pasture land (note 5).
Given the many children in a typical Mennonite family, villages soon had a significant minority (and by 1860 almost two-thirds) of residents who were not landholders and who could not vote.
Surplus lands were slow to be converted to new villages in part because they provided lucrative rental lands for farmers with wealth. Authorities were reticent to push the pace of conversion.
Cornies and others had a vision for commercial agriculture supported by labour-intensive cottage industries, which later included the establishment of the craftsmen’s village of Neu-Halbstadt in 1842; weavers, millers, blacksmiths, cartwrights, furniture-makers, carpenters, and cobblers were its largest categories of artisans (note 6).
By the 1840s as new markets developed, only few artisans kept pace economically with their siblings or cousins who inherited the farm. Arguably this led to the development of small manufacturing industries (especially Chortitza), but that was a minority, and soon there was a surplus of craftsmen as well (note 7).
Moreover, with the shift from sheep to grain farming, farms needed a pool of cheap local labourers, and it was to the benefit of voting landowners to keep this supply high. Because of the proximity of a new harbour at Berdjansk and the growing price for wheat across Europe, those with a farm became wealthy.
Those without land could not easily leave the colony to find other land or a future in the cities of Berdjansk or Odessa; they required passports which were rarely granted, and they still remained under the governance of the Mennonite charter.
For years cheap land could be rented by the landless for grazing from the neighbouring Nogai, but in the early 1860s they left en masse for Turkey (note 8) and the Crown settled their land with emancipated Russian peasants and Bulgarian colonists.
Increasingly the smaller cottager village lots originally intended for the elderly were filled with younger families. [By the] early 1860s the Molotschna was on the brink of social collapse. Some criticized the craftsmen for their relative poverty—they should band together in societies or union, for example (note 9), and others [criticized] the labourers for an apparent lack of effort. Opinions were polarized, even among the Kleine Gemeinde (note 10).
“Only in 1866 when the quarrel over this question was at its height in the Mennonite colonies [villages] on the Molochnaia did it interpret the colonists’ system of land ownership as obliging the communities to purchase land for their landless people. For one reason or another the government [had] never enforced the provisions of the March [1764] Ukaz …” (Note 11)
After the death of “enlightened despot” Johann Cornies in 1848, and with the illness of his heir in that role, son-in-law Philip Wiebe (both very different from Ray Loewen!), “the control of the most important offices [of the colony] was now completely in the hands of the shortsighted, selfish men who in many instances could barely read and write” (note 12). David G. Rempel pulls no punches in his assessment of new leadership:
“The new chairman of the Agricultural Commission, Peter Schmidt, was as egotistic and unscrupulous an individual [see note] as David Friesen, the district head [he was removed from office]. Both treated the [landless] petitioners with contempt, telling them bluntly that they would not permit the unoccupied land to be distributed as desired by the landless, since that would deprive the landowners of their source of cheap labour.” (Note 13)
District Chair Friesen was removed on corruption charges; State Assessor Islavin saw evidence of a clientele system, in which the chairman and the landowners who alone could elect him benefitted financially from each other’s support.
Land ownership determined social status—a problem in a community defined in its charter as Mennonite, ostensibly with all the church mechanisms needed to level social disparaties (adult baptism for females and males; all baptized males could elect or be elected as ministers and elders and speak into church disciplinary matters including banning from Lord’s Supper and expulsion, etc.).
The landless sought assistance from ministers—who were mostly well-to-do (=no compensation for role); “but here, too, they found no better response to their grievances” (note 14).
Chortitza’s tensions around land were not as extreme, assisted in part by the early establishment of the Bergthal daughter colony and the Judenplan (note 15).
New villages were established on Molotschna reserve lands in the following years: 1851 Nikolaidorf, 1852 Paulsheim, 1854 Kleefeld, 1857 Alexanderkrone, Mariawohl, Friedensruh, and Steinfeld, 1862 Gnadental, and 1863 Hamberg and Klippenfeld (note 16). Yet the creation of new villages could hardly meet demand—190 weddings were celebrated in 1860 alone (note 17).
The state was compelled to intervene, and officials strongly condemned the Mennonite administration and landowners—though there were outliers, like Wiebe. Not only was all remaining surplus and reserve land to be reallocated to the landless, but smaller-sized farms, or “half farms,” were now possible as well (this reminds me of the movie!). Despite these moves, conflicts continued, e.g., about use of common grazing land.
In the 1870s daughter colonies became a defining characteristic of the Russian Mennonite story, though the legal and political situation (status of colonists as citizens and land ownership laws) had changed drastically with the Great Reforms (note 18). Again complaints of favouritism arose with the selection of settlers for new colonies (note 19). Over the next decades before the First World War, Chortitza and Molotschna would establish some fifty daughter colonies across Tsarist Russia, including in the Ukraine, the Caucasus, the Volga Region, Siberia and Central Asia (note 20).
Maybe there is something above for another Prime movie—like my ancestor in Rudnerweide who painted caskets to earn a few extra rubles—or at least a hook or two to bring your favourite Mennonites from the past into context and back to life.
---Notes---
Note 1: Andrew Unger, “Mennonite Funeral Movie ‘The Burial’ Shocks Audiences with Sheer Lack of Pickles,” https://www.ungerreview.com/mennonite-f ... ie-the.../.
Note 2: In the provisions of the Russian Land Ukas of March 19, 1764 concerning land tenure and inheritance for foreign colonists, families were given land as an inheritable possession but “not personally to any one colonist, but to each colony as a whole, with every family merely enjoying the use of its allotted portion in perpetuity” (David Rempel, “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia. A study of their settlement and economic development from 1789–1914,” PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1933), 105, https://archive.org/.../themennonitecol ... ewrussiaas....
Note 3: See previous post, Note 4: See previous post, https://www.facebook.com/groups/Mennoni ... 4515289216.
Note 5: Alexander Klaus, Unsere Kolonien: Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte und Statistik der ausländischen Kolonisation in Rußland, translated by J. Töws (Odessa: Odessaer Zeitung, 1887), 269-269, 271-272, http://pbc.gda.pl/dlibra/doccontent?id=16863; OR https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=Pis/KlausD.pdf.
Note 6: For complete statistics for 1844, cf. August von Haxthausen, Studien über die innern Zustände, das Volksleben und insbesondere die ländlichen Einrichtungen Rußlands, part II (Hannover: Hahn, 1847), 189, https://archive.org/details/studienberdiein03kosegoog/; and Friedrich Matthäi, Die deutschen Ansiedlungen in Rußland. Ihre Geschichte und volkswirthschaftliche Bedeutung (Leipzig: Fries, 1866), 200, https://archive.org/.../bub_gb.../page/n225/mode/2up.
Note 7: Rempel, “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia,” 184.
Note 8: See previous post, https://www.facebook.com/groups/Mennoni ... 7627763231.
Note 9: Samuel Kludt chastised the landless craftsmen for not banding in societies or unions to buy product, market, sell transport, for example, Mennonitische Rundschau 3, no. 14 (July 15, 1882), 1, https://archive.org/.../sim_die.../page/n1/mode/2up...; continued in MR 3, no. 15 (August 1, 1882), 2, https://archive.org/.../sim_die.../page/n1/mode/2up.
Note 10: Cf. Abraham Thiessen, Die Agrarwirren bei den Mennoniten in Süd-Rußland (Berlin: Wigankow, 1887), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/kb/thiess.pdf; idem, Die Lage der deutschen Kolonisten in Russland (Leipzig, 1876), https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/289_747_T344L.pdf; Also: Cornelius Krahn, “Abraham Thiessen: A Mennonite Revolutionary?,” Mennonite Life, 24 (1969), 73-77, https://mla.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/ ... 969apr.pdf; Delbert Plett, Storm and Triumph: the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde, 1850-1875 (Steinbach, MB: D.F.P Publications, 1986), chapter 8, https://www.mharchives.ca/download/1575/.
Note 11: Rempel, “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia,” 106f.
Note 12: Rempel, “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia,” 186.
Note 13: Rempel, “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia,” 186: “Schmidt's father had obtained from the Guardians Committee a long term lease to 4,600 desiatine of the district’s reserve land, for which the son kept on paying two kopeks per desiatin State rent, but leased most of it to the landless colonists for three to four rubles per desiatin.” By subletting land that belonged to the entire community to the landless, Schmidt (and others) could generate significant profits which did not return to the community treasury. The poor became poorer and the rich richer.
Note 14: Rempel, “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia,” 186.
Note 15: On the Bergthal Colony, cf. On the Judenplan, cf. https://www.facebook.com/groups/Mennoni ... 230376375/.
Note 16: Franz Isaac, Die Molotschnaer Mennoniten. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte derselben (Halbstadt, Taurien: H. J. Braun, 1908), 26, https://mla.bethelks.edu/books/Molotschnaer Mennoniten/; OR https://archive.org/.../die-molotschnaer-mennoniten...; English translation by Timothy Flaming and Glenn Penner, https://www.mharchives.ca/download/3573/.
Note 17: Mennonitische Blätter 8, no. 3 (May 1861), 34, https://mla.bethelks.edu/.../1854-1900/ ... CF0227.JPG.
Note 18: For this entire thematic, cf. James Urry, “Context, Cause and Consequence in Understanding the Molochna Land Crisis. A Response to John Staples,” Mennonite Life 62, no. 2 (Fall 2007), https://mla.bethelks.edu/ml-archive/2007fall/; and John Staples, “Putting ‘Russia’ back into Russian Mennonite History: The Crimean War, Emancipation, and the Molochna Mennonite Landlessness Crisis,” Mennonite Life 62, no. 1 (2007), https://mla.bethelks.edu/ml-archive/200 ... taples.php.
Note 19: “Etwas über Landankauf,” Mennonitische Rundschau 5, no. 2 (January 9, 1884), 1, https://archive.org/.../sim_die-mennoni ... ./mode/2up....
Note 20: Besides the sources already noted above, cf. also Jeffrey Longhofer, “Specifying the Commons: Mennonites, Intensive Agriculture, and Landlessness in Nineteenth-Century Russia,” Ethnohistory 40, no. 3 (Summer 1993), 384–409; and Dmytro Myeshkov, Die Schwarzmeerdeutschen und ihre Welten: 1781–1871 (Essen: Klartext, 2008), 116-127.
This post can be shared, downloaded or cited at: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/.../landless....

There are also photos with additional information that unfortunately I cannot copy in here. I suspect that most of my ancestors were of this landless class. So here you have it, an example from my people - one not to follow.

Sorry about the FB deletions. I attempted to remove those boxes, but it didn't work.