The Chortitzer Mennonite Church Books (1878-1907)

Church Records of the Chortitzer Mennonite Church

Copyright 2023 by Barry Teichroeb. All Rights Reserved.

The first Mennonite settlement in South Russia (present day Ukraine) was established in 1788-1789 on the west bank of the Dnieper River 110 km. north of the city of Melitopol. It was named the Chortitza Settlement. In the beginning it was populated by 228 families. Over time the population expanded, partly through further immigration and partly through organic growth. The settlement prospered. However, by the 1830s the successful, burgeoning Chortitza Settlement was running out of land.

The community found a solution. They acquired land offered by the Russian government in an area northwest of Mariupol, a coastal city on the Sea of Asov. This new settlement, 200 kilometers southeast of Chortitza, was referred to as the Bergthal Settlement by its new residents, naming it after the central village in the area, Bergthal.¹ In the years after 1836 approximately 150 landless families moved to this new settlement.²

The Dutch Mennonite Church had been fragmented for years, dating back to the earliest days of the Anabaptist movement. The divisions were not really based on fundamental aspects of their faith but on the practical application of their principles in everyday life, surrounded by Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists and ruled by state governments. The main two Mennonite Churches were the Flemish and the Frisian congregations. The Flemish group was the most conservative in outlook and the most resistant to compromising religious and cultural principles. Most of the early settlers in the Old Colony of Chortitza were members of the Flemish congregation and consequently most of the settlers in Bergthal had these roots. This resulted in the Bergthal settlement being biased toward a more conservative world view.

In addition, the Bergthal Settlement was isolated from the Old Colony of Chortitza by distance. Isolation had the effect of crystallizing social and religious views in Bergthal that had been common at the end of the 1830s but were not necessarily consistent with more progressive views that evolved over later decades in Chortitza and the larger Mennonite settlement of Molotschna. Consequently, their views on community, society and governmental interference in daily life remained relatively conservative as time passed.

Until the 1870s each Mennonite community had control over the education of their children. In the 1870s this changed. The Russian government took control of education and brought in reforms, to the great concern of all Mennonite settlements. Even more alarming was the introduction of mandatory military conscription, in direct repudiation of the privileges granted by the Tsar that all Mennonites valued so highly.

The general response to these changes throughout the Mennonite communities was protestation and intense governmental lobbying to develop acceptable compromises. The Bergthalers, on the other hand, were not prepared to compromise. Beginning in 1874 there began a surge of emigration to North America that only ended in 1876 when all the land in the Bergthal settlement had been sold and the colony evacuated.³

The Canadian government set aside a large reserve of land on the east side of the Red River in southern Manitoba in anticipation of the wave of Mennonite settlers from the Bergthal community in Ukraine. There, in the East Reserve, the Bergthal community reconstituted its church, naming it the Mennonite Church at Chortitz after one of the villages on the Reserve.⁴

Some records survive from the Chortitzer Church. I obtained copies of three books from Loren Koehler, all with partial English transcriptions of the contents. Links to these records for 1878, 1887 and 1907 follow.

1878:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8wwc784qac3rt4o/C1878.pdf?dl=0

1887:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uvqn4g4ey72fpmj/C1887.pdf?dl=0

1907:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7wvz2vmo6puxw0c/C1907.pdf?dl=0

Endnotes

1. James Urry, None But Saints (Winnipeg: Hyperion Press Limited, 1989), 147.

2. Krahn, Cornelius, "Bergthal Mennonite Settlement (Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine).", Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1953.

3. Ibid.

4. John Dyck (Editor), Bergthal Gemeinde Buch (Steinbach: The Hanover Steinbach Historical Society Inc., 1993), 9.