A lecture by Eduard Volk, Neuwied
held on 18 September 2016 in Urmitz am Rhein
at the Main Annual Meeting of the Association of Bessarabian Germans of the Provincial Section for Rheinland-Pfalz

The village of Orzechowin in Poland played an important role in the history of the Krasna colony, one of 24 German mother colonies in Bessarabia. ¹⁾.

The people of Krasna called Orzechowin the place of origin of their ancestors from the Duchy of Warsaw,²⁾ who had immigrated to southern Russia upon invitation of the Tsar in 1814.

Image 1: The areas of settlement of the later Krasna population in the Duchy of Warsaw.
1. South Prussia: the Posen region (Orzechowo), the Warsaw region
2. New East Prussia: the Ostrow region (Mecklenburg, Wilhelmsdorf, Königshuld)
3. Galicia: the Zamosc region (Sitaniec and others)

In the report of the Krasna municipality of 1848,³⁾ which was written by the teacher Kaspar Matery, it is stated: “…. Pursuant to the call of the Tsar, the following-named settlers – 1814 families in poor and dire circumstances, but joyfully looking for a better future, departed from their Polish settlements Orschokowin and Schitonitz in 1814 under the leadership of Mattheis Müller and Peter Becker, partly in their own shabby carts, partly in rented wagons.”

In the past, there were frequent attempts made to find the location of Schitonitz and Orschokowin. But invain! As Florian Müller writes as early as 1981 in his book about the Dobrudja: ⁴⁾ “… there is little hope that one will find these emigration sites in Poland, because the place-names Orschowkowin and Schitonitz no longer exist ….” “. As is evident today, this view is not correct. Where Schitonitz is, this we have known for some time,⁵⁾5 and where Orzechowin is located, this I will now demonstrate.⁶⁾

By chance I came across a Polish databank⁷⁾ which contained marriage records of the Catholic parish of Czeszewo (Września), which contains family names which also appear in Krasna. There are names like Baldus, Dressler, Müller, Heidrich, Hein, Hartmann, and Wagner.

As I mentioned above, Müller was one of the two migration leaders who in 1814 led the colonists from Poland to Krasna. Other married couples and witnesses also appear in Krasna. In a village near Orzechowo, in Dębno, in the year 1801, Martinus Drezler married Catharina Chartowna/Hartmann; witness: Mathias Müller. In addition to the marriages listed in Table 1, there were in the Databank Poznan-Project several more with family names which appear in Krasna.

In the same place, there are several names that appear in Krasna! That surprised me, and made me curious.

I found the church register for Czeszewo.⁸⁾ It contains, beginning with 1800, a separate section for a colony Orzechowo. And behold! In it appear, row upon row, baptisms of children with Krasna family names. Here are some examples: Baldus, Becker, Dressler, Müller, Heidrich, Hein, Hartmann, Ressler, Schulz, Stein, Wagner (there are perhaps more, but not all the names are legible). See Figure 3.

Other German names rarely appear in the colony. In the entries, there is almost always the notation: “Origin Nassau.” From the year 1814 on, there are very few entries with the location name of “Colonia Orzechowo,” and among those there are practically no more German names. After 1814, no names were found that appeared in Krasna.

We must keep in mind that the people of Krasna left Poland in the spring or summer of 1814, and only arrived in Bessarabia in the fall of 1814. In a declaration of 29 November 1813, Tsar Alexander I had offered colonists from Poland (the so-called Warsaw colonists) the opportunity to settle in the Bessarabia that he had seized from the Ottoman Empire, and promised them a number of privileges.

A further note: We must assume that the locality in the municipal report of Krasna mentioned at the beginning referred to as “Orschokowin” has been passed down to us as it was pronounced, which naturally makes the search for it difficult, because the correct written form deviates from it.
In the church register of Czeszewo the village Orzechowo, probably due to grammatical requirements and/or the mood of the priest as he records the name in Latin, can also be written, e.g., as follows:

• Deserta Orzechowiensia;
• Neo colonia Orzechowienes;
• Neo Coloni Orzechowien.

These do sound very much like Orschekowin.

I have found more than 10 localities in Poland, that are named Orzechowo or by a similar name. Except for the parish registers of Czeszowo, I could find no other name in localities in which there were names like those of the people of Krasna, indeed, almost no German names at all.

I asked myself ‘where is this place and can it be that people of Krasna lived there before their migration to Krasna or are the corresponding family names and years only coincidental’?

My research has brought the following to light: The area in which we have to search belonged temporarily, from 1793 to 1807, after the Second Partition of Poland, to the former Prussian province of Südpreußen (South Prussia.) ⁹⁾

Czeszewo is situated near Wreschen (Polish: Września), not far from Posen (Polish: Poznań).
Orzechowo is about 4 km southwest of Czeszewo.

(By way of comparison, the other place of origin named in the above-mentioned municipal report, Schitonitz/Sitaniec, is a full 500 km. farther to the southeast, and at that time belonged to Austria.)

The following maps 4 and 5 show Poland with South and New East Prussia, as well as West Galicia, and in addition the location of Orzechowo.

At the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th, some later Krasna families moved to Poland:

Image 2: South and New East Prussia, West Galicia
1. to South Prussia and
2. to New East Prussia, Polish regions that for a period of time were Prussian;
3. to Western Galicia, which at that time belonged to Austria.

Image 3: The location of Orzechowo/Czeszewo in South Prussia. Orzechowo and Czeszewo are approximately here.

Now the question arises: did the Prussians settle colonists in Czeszowo/Orzechowo? If so, where did they come from? When did they arrive?

Beginning in 1800, Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia settled more than 13,000 persons in South Prussia on government estates and on expropriated Polish properties. In the region around Posen and south of there, e.g., Lodz, the Prussians established many colonies with German colonists. But our people of Krasna were not among those colonists settled by the state, at least not those from Orzechowo.

In addition to colonies established by the state, the Prussian government also promoted the settlement of people by the owners of private estates. One of these was Wilhelm Friedrich, heir to the throne of Nassau-Oranien. ¹⁰⁾ He was related to the rulers of Prussia, and was supported by the Prussian king. In 1793, he purchased the domains of Kiebel and Widczin in South Prussia. In 1798, he acquired all the properties that Prince Joblonowky in the Treasury Department of Posen owned, among other property the estate of Czeszewo (District of Wreschen) with the villages and farms of Mikuszewo, Chlebowo, Radzitowko and Orzechowo.

He wanted to settle colonists from his native region of Nassau on his properties. His efforts to realize this began in 1797. He negotiated with the Prussian government in Berlin and the government of Nassau in Dillenburg.

With this information, I had found a trace that led me into the Duchy of Nassau. The princes of Nassau ¹¹⁾ had many estates on the left and right banks of the Lahn (primarily in the Westerwald as far as Siegen and in the Taunus as far as Wiesbaden). In the period of time that is of interest to us, i.e., around 1790/1800, the greatest part of the territory of Nassau was in the possession of the princes of Nassau-Oranien, whose seat of government was in Dillenburg. Later, after 1815, as the map in Image 5 shows, the entire area was unified under one government, with its seat in Wiesbaden.

Image 4: The location of the Westerwald region, from which several Krasna families came. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westerwald

Image 5: The Duchy of Nassau
Duchy of Nassau - 1815-1866
Its location in the German Federation
F = Free City of Frankfurt
KP = Kingdom of Prussia
LHH = Landgraviate of Hessen-Homburg

It was mainly from this area that the ancestors of the people of Krasna immigrated to South Prussia in 1799.

In 1799, many families from the area of Siegen, Dillenburg, Marienberg, Westerburg, and Hadamar responded to the call of the crown prince for emigration to South Prussia. At that time, great hardship prevailed in the upper Westerwald.

There are lists with the names of those who volunteered in 1799 for immigration to Poland.¹²⁾ I examined them in the Main State Archive in Wiesbaden. Again, I found the family names of the people of Krasna.

Table 3: Emigrants from the Westerwald who immigrated to South Prussia in 1799 (Family names similar to those occurring in Krasna)

Up to now I have been able to only make use of some relevant parish registers and family histories in the Westerwald. But I have identified Baldus, Heidrich, and Müller in Rotenhain near Bad Marienburg, Hartmann in a small village Langendernbach in the present-day district of Limburg-Weilburg.
Not in every case, but in connection with some emigrants, I have found references in the parish registers or in other documents from sites in the Westerwald to their emigration to Poland. We know with certainty about at least one emigrant from the Principality of Nassau who went to Orzechowo. In the Main State Archive in Wiesbaden there is a document that states that Mathias Müller from Büdingen immigrated to there¹³⁾.

Image 6: Mathias Müller from Büdingen, while in Orzechowo, received an inheritance from his homeland.

In the winter/spring of 1800, the colonists were assigned to the estates of the crown prince in South Prussia. Not all of them were settled in Orzechowo. As I said, the crown prince owned a number of other properties around Posen that did not belong to the parish of Czeszewo.
Many of those who immigrated to Poland in 1799 returned after a few years (by 1805/1806) to the Westerwald, disappointed and impoverished. A tenacious group of 80 families remained for a longer period of time. Even a few with names that appear in Krasna held out.

Image 7: Bitte um Aufschub von Zins-/Steuerzahlungen

There is a document from the year 1808 that proves this (Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu 53/4823/0/3.15/280 Acta der Fürstlichen Oranien-Nassau-Fuldaschen General Administration betreffend die Orzechower Kolonisten 1808-1811).

The colonists

• Georg Wagner (at that time he was the village mayor in Orzechowo),
• the widow Heidrich,
• Mathias Baldus,
• Mathias Müller,
• Peter Becker

request deferral of their interest and tax payments to the royal administration.

How can we be certain that the people of Orzechowo went to Krasna? To be sure, up to now there has been no direct written proof, but a number of plausible clues point to this:

• I have already pointed out above that the entries in the church register for Orzechowo with German family names come to a sudden stop after 1814. We have to take into account that at that time in Poland there was extreme hardship. After the defeat of Prussia in 1807, Napoleon had the country firmly in hand, and pressured it for the financing of his military campaigns (see the application for tax deferral).
  The municipal report of Krasna mentioned at the beginning states regarding the distress in 1813/14 Poland: “The military campaigns of the French across Poland to Russia, destroying everything, have deprived the colonists nearly of all their possessions.” That was of course a compelling reason to immigrate further into Russia.
• The names of the migration leaders Mathias Müller and Peter Becker show up in Orzechowo. In 1814, they were about 40 years old, i.e., at the right age for a leadership position. Their names, their ages, their wives and several children appear then again in documents in Krasna.
• In Orzechowo the families of Becker, Dressler, Müller, Heidrich, Hartmann, Wagner all intermarried and were godparents to their children. Families with these names in the first years in Krasna likewise served as godparents for one another's children.
• In a document that has been preserved to us (Figure 11) there is an indication that at least one Krasna family came from the Duchy of Nassau. In it, Gertrud and Johann Baldus confirm the receipt of money from an inheritance in Büdingen in the Duchy of Nassau. We can find both Gertrud as well as Johann in Büdingen, in Orzechowo, and in Krasna.
• As I will try to show by the list in Table 12, there is a further series of correspondences in the parish register of Czeszewo with the names, ages, marriages, and parents with people from Krasna.

Image 8: The Baldus inheritance

Table 4. Krasna Families who immigrated by way of Orzechowo

Baldus

In Orzechowo no children were born with the name Baldus; the Balduses appear only as wives and godparents.
Children in Krasna born in Büdingen in the Westerwald include: Gertrud, Mathias, Johannes.

Peter Becker

was married to Elisabeth Hartmann. Since their first child was born in October of 1801, it is very likely that he married her in 1800 or even earlier, when the couple had not yet arrived in Orzechowo.
He and his wife appear in Krasna.
The following children of the couple appear in Krasna:
Anna Katharina * 27. 12. 1803,
Friedrich * 01. 08. 1805,
Elisabeth * 04. 04. 1813.

Martin Dressler

was married to Catharina Hartmann. They were married on 22. 01. 1801 in Debno bei Czeszewo.
He and his wife appear in Krasna.
The following children of the couple appear in Krasna:
Elisabeth * 12. 07. 1807,
Anna Maria 20. 01. 1811.

Petrus Hartmann
(22 years old)

married Anna Catharina Baltus (18 years old) in Czeszewo on 22. November 1803.
The child of the couple appears in Krasna:
Anna Maria * 27. 10. 1805.
There is a Johannes Hartmann who appears in 1798, who is probably the brother of Petrus Hartmann.

Johann Heidrich

was married to Elisabeth Baldus. An entry of marriage was not found in the parish register of Czechowo. They may have married in Büdingen before emigrating.
The following children of the couple appear in Krasna:
Anna Catharina * 20. 03. 1801,
Christian * 04. 12. 1803.

Johannes Hein

married Margaretha Hartmann in Czeszewo on 30. January 1814. In Krasna, the couple in 1816 had a son Martin, for whom Martin Dressler was godparent.
Martin Dressler was also married to a Hartmann.

Johannes Hein

and his wife appear in Krasna, also Karl, the brother of Johannes Hein, who was the godfather of the latter's child Karl in Orzechowo.

Matthaeus Miller,
28 years old,

married Anna Heytrych, 20 years old, in Czeszewo on 05 October 1802.
The following children of the couple appear in Krasna:
Elisabeth * 26. 08. 1804,
Mathias * 08.09. 1807,
Anna Maria * 08. 07. 1810,
Rosina * 12. 05. 1812

Georg Wagner

was mayor in Orzechowo in 1808. He may have been married in a second marriage with Rosina Jakob.
He and his wife appear in Krasna.
The following children of the couple appear in Krasna:
Georg * 08. 02. 1810,
Elisabeth * 03. 01. 1813.

So much for my discoveries in the archives! Now it is to be hoped that interested persons will look for their ancestors in the former Nassau territories in Germany.

Whoever is looking for Baldus will find it relatively simply. Their ancestral house is in Bellingen, and I have the family tree with all its members before 1720.

The half-timbered house was built in the year 1637 and is a protected landmark.

Image 9: Ancestral home of the Baldus family in Bellingen/Westerwald.

The half-timbered house was built in the year 1637 and is a protected landmark.

Editor's note:

• GOV · Orschokowin,| Orzechowo,Miłosław,Wrzesńia,PL-WP
• OFB · List of individuals born in Orzechowo
• GRSL · Orschokowin,| Orzechowo,Miłosław,Wrzesńia,PL-WP

• GOV · Sitaniec,Powiat Zamość,PL-LU
• OFB · List of individuals born in Sitaniec,Powiat Zamość,PL-LU