ukrainian seeds, american roots
A man I recently interviewed for a No Dull Life book traces his family back to the very part of Europe on which many of us have recently been focused. His ancestors may have felt some of the same fear and sorrow that today’s refugees are facing:
In the winter of 1874, a group of Russian Mennonites seeking religious freedom arrived by ship in Philadelphia. They came from Volynia, a region of Russia in the northwestern part of present-day Ukraine. The Mennonites were pacifists, followers of the Dutch priest-turned-Anabaptist reformer Menno Simons. Their numbers had grown despite religious prosecution throughout Europe that forced them to move frequently. In the late 1770s they had been welcomed into Russia from Germany by Catherine the Great, who had promised them land and the ability to preserve their culture through self-rule. In 1874, however, czar Alexander II implemented universal military service with no exemptions for the Mennonites, forcing them to find a new home in order to remain faithful to their beliefs.
Ultimately, about ten thousand Russian Mennonites came to the United States. After landing in Philadelphia, some went to North Dakota and some went to Canada, but most took a train as far west as they could go—eventually landing in the small towns of Cimarron and Greensburg, Kansas. They had sold their farming equipment to fund the journey, so they arrived with few material goods and almost no money. Many had no place to go and survived the cold winter by living in boxcars.
One of these Mennonite farmers was George. He came over with his wife, but she died shortly after arriving in Kansas. George remarried another immigrant named Susie, with whom he eventually had eleven children.
Another man in the community was named Abraham. Abraham was the son of a Mennonite preacher, but he eventually rebelled against the strict ways of the church in favor of a more worldly life. Abraham married Matilda, a Lutheran who had immigrated to the United States in 1907 (from the same area populated by the Mennonites who had left for Kansas several decades earlier) in search of land to farm.
Matilda’s journey out of Russia with her father and her brother was harrowing. A border guard who hadn’t been paid off shot at her family and the small group with which they were traveling from Russia into Germany. In the melee, she dropped the precious seeds that she had been entrusted to carry to the new world. After a couple of weeks of ocean travel, Matilda’s group got to the United States and made its way to Kansas, where her family settled on a parcel of land adjacent to that owned by the Abraham’s.
George and Susie and Abraham and Matilda. These were the immigrant grandparents of a bright, sensitive boy named D who would grow up with a uniquely American experience. It is easy to think they would have considered his life and accomplishments—earning a doctorate degree, raising three successful children, and dedicating his life to improving education, especially for the underserved—to be some fulfillment of their American dream.
Do you think about your ancestors’ journeys? Now seems like a good time to reflect on those who came before us, who risked everything to ensure that we could live in freedom.