Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta

1863 Molotschna Colony Grain Loan Lists
Odessa Archives, Fund 6, Inventory 4, File 21178

Extracted by Tim Janzen

This set of web pages makes available an extraction I have done of a list of heads of households in the Molotschna Colony in South Russia in 1863.  The original document from which the list has been extracted is located in File #21178 in Fund 6, Inventory 4 in the Odessa State Archives in Odessa, Ukraine.

Due to a poor harvest secondary to heavy snow the previous year the Mennonites in the Molotschna Colony were in need of loans of grain.  These loans came from grain stored by the colony.  There were typically loans of both winter wheat and summer wheat.

The documents in the file are arranged by village.  For each village there was a list of heads of households who received grain loans as well as a corresponding list of heads of households who signed the document.  Those who signed the document appear to all have been landowners in the village.  Those who received grain loans were in some cases landowners and in other cases were landless (Anwohner or Einwohner).  In some cases almost all of the landowners in the village also received loans (Kleefeld, Hutterthal, Johannesruh) whereas in other villages relatively few of the landowners received grain loans.

My extractions of these grain loan lists are available in several versions. In the original version (download #1) I have attempted to spell the names of the heads of households exactly as they appear in the original documents.  The villages are also in the same order in which they are found in the original file.  I have also created two modified versions.  In one modified version heads of households are sorted by village and then by surname (download #2).  In the other modified version the entire list is sorted alphabetically by surname (download #3).  In both modified versions I have standardized spellings of the surnames to more typical spellings for certain given names and surnames. There are 8 columns in each list.

1. In the 1st column the name of the village is given. 
2. The 2nd column includes a number that was given next to those who received grain loans if such a number was recorded in the original document.  A comparison of these numbers to the household numbers given in the 1861-1862 Molotschna School Registers reveals that these numbers were the homestead number were the person lived with the exception of the village of Halbstadt.  If the person had a homestead number included in the list then they were very likely a landowner. 
3. The 3rd and 4th columns give the first name and surname of the people found in the lists. 
4. The 5th column heading is called “Status”.  If the person only received a grain loan, but was not a signer of the document then they have the entry “grain loan”.  If the person only signed the document but did not receive a grain loan then they have the entry “signer”.  If they both received a grain loan and were a signer of the document then they have the entry “both” in the two merged versions.  It is possible that as I merged the people who signed the document with those that received the grain loans that two different people were incorrectly merged into one.  However, this is likely to have been the case in a relatively small number of the merges.
5. In the 6th column I have added any comments that were written next to those who received grain loans.  I have translated “Wirte” as “landowner”, “Ahnohner” as “resident”, and “Einwohner” as “inhabitant”. 
6. In the 7th column I have added the frame number on the microfilm where the person’s name is given.  If they were both a signer of the document and a recipient of a grain loan then in most cases two different frame numbers are given. 
7. In the 8th column the date the document was written is given.  The dates fall between September 30, 1863 and November 1, 1863 with the most common date being around October 22, 1863.

There are a total of 1,958 heads of households listed in the merged versions and 2,352 heads of households listed in the original version.  There are lists for 47 villages in the Molotschna Colony, as well as the two nearby Hutterite villages, Johannesruh and Hutterthal.  The 47 villages in the Molotschna Colony for which there are lists are as follows:

No data is given for the following villages in the Moloschna Colony:

In addition, there are three village lists that were created between January 31, 1863 and February 12, 1863 that are also included in the beginning of File 21178.  These lists are for the villages of Alexanderkrone, Hierschau, and Rueckenau.  The lists are included on this web site as separate files in an original version as the data appears in the original documents (download #4) and as a modified version (download #5) in which the data is sorted by surname after the names were standardized.  There are 70 people included in these 3 lists.

File 21178 is among a large group of files from Fund 6, Inventory 4 which were microfilmed in 2002 at the Odessa State Archives.  Microfilms of this material are available at the following Mennonite Archives:

• The Center for M. B. Studies in Fresno, California
• The Center for M. B. Studies at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas
• The Mennonite Historical Society of British Columbia in Abbotsford, B. C.
• The Mennonite Heritage Center in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
  

If you have any questions about this material feel free to contact me:

© 2011 Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta
Last Updated 29 Apr 2011

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