AR Gustav Rempel family

The Gustav Rempel Family

In recounting the story of my great grandfather’s emigration from Koenigsberg, East Prussia to settle in the new village of Gnadenfeld in the Molochnaya of the Ukraine, I referred to his eldest son, Aron, who as a boy accompanied his father on this long trek. There I also told about the circumstances under which this Aron Rempel, my own grandfather, came to marry Anna Goerz of Rudnerweide, another Mennonite village not far from Gnadenfeld. The Aron Rempels were a successful farmer family whose homestead was located near the west end of the village. There they raised a family of ten children: Aron, Anna, Abraham, Johannes, Gustav, Dietrich, Marrgarethe, Elisabeth, Hermann and Katarina. The fifth, Gustav, born on the 10th of August 1868, was my father.

Upon returning from Sumatra in 1881, Missionary Dirks settled his family in Gnadenfeld where he became the Elder of the Mennonite church.

Throughout their teens, Gustav Aronov Rempel and Elisabeth Elektra Dirks, each a member of a prominent family of the church and of the village, had ample opportunity to meet and get acquainted. As Gustav grew into manhood and Elisabeth matured into womanhood, these two people fell in love. On the 8th of May, 1890, they were married in the Gnadenfeld Mennonite Church by Elisabeth’s father, Elder Heinrich Dirks.

Gustav Rempel was trained to be a teacher and in 1890 began his teaching career in the village of Klippenfeld, where the couple lived during their first year of marriage and where Gustsv, their first child, was born. But little Gustav lived for only four hours and was buried in the cemetery at Gnadenfeld. During the next eleven years, the Gustav Rempels resided in Konteniusfeld, a smaller village a very short distance east of Gnadenfeld, where he was the teacher and administrator of the village school. It was in Konteniusfeld where Agnethe was born on December 19, 1891, Anna on July 7, 1893, Heinrich on May 10, 1895, Evangeline on January 13, 1898, Margarethe on March 10, 1900 and Herman on March 26, 1902.

All dates indicated in this paper referring to events in pre-revolutionary Russia relate to the Julian calendar of the Russian Empire and the Russian Orthodox Church, which continues to adhere to this calendar to this day. To correct for corresponding dates of the Gregorian calendar in use in Western Europe and America, it is necessary to add twelve days before the year 1900 and thirteen days during the 20th century.

During the summer of 1902, Aron and Anna Rempel gathered all their children, except Dietrich who lived too far away in the Caucasus area, together with their sons’ and daughter's spouses, for a great family reunion at their Gnadenfeld homestead. There an all inclusive family picture was taken by the side of the great hay barn. Some years ago, I was able to obtain copies of this photograph through the kindness of my cousin Aron Janzen of British Columbia.

After eleven years as a teacher in Konteniusfeld, my father accepted a governmental position as the director of the forestry establishment at Veliky Anadol, or Great Anadol. At this time, during the early years of the 20th century, the Tsarist government still partially honored the promise of military exemption in perpetuity that was made to the Mennonite settlers before their departure from Germany. Now, however, the young men of the military were required to render several years of non-combative alternative government service, and Veliky Anadol was the location of the forestry establishment where synch service could be rendered.

The Gustav Rempels moved to Veliky Anadol in 1902 and continued to reside there until 1906. Son Dietrich was born there on January 30, 1904 and Franz, or Frank, was born on the 10th of January 1908. On October 30, 1904, the family had suffered the death of 11-year-old Anna of scarlet fever.

After leaving his government position at Veliky Anadol in 1906, Gustav Rempel accepted the position of manager of the Marienskay agricultural estate belonging to his wealthy brother-in-law, Heinrich Klassen (Bob’s great grandfather), who had married his wife’s sister, Margarethe Dirks.

Marienskaya was located about 120 miles northeast of Gnadenfeld and the Molochnaya colony, near the railway station of Grishnino. It was also located on the Byk River, a branch of the Samara River, which in turn flowed into the Dnieper River at Dnepropetrovsk, then called Ekaterinoslav. The estate had an area of well over 6000 acres, over half of which was dedicated to grain growing, mostly wheat. The rest of the estate was primarily grazing land where a fair number of brood mares and other horses, about twenty Holstein dairy cattle, about 70 white Russian work oxen and some 3000 Merinowoll were grazed. This land also yielded a bountiful crop of meadow hay for feed, seeing the livestock through the winter. Nearer headquarters, there was a poultry yard with chickens, geese and turkeys, vegetable gardens and melon patches, fruit orchards and wood lots of pine and other trees. A beautiful garden lane, flanked by weeping birches and horse chestnuts, as well as by other ornamental trees and flowers, extended to the gardens, orchards and woodlots and to the cemetery. And not far from the cemetery on the sides of a sandy depression were a number of grape vines. Living as though wild and free were beautiful peacocks and peahens who brought their broods of chicks to the vicinity of the main house where we lived. Not very far from our residence were stables for coach horses, and shelter for various kinds of wagons. In another direction was the dairy barn and farther away the swine house. Large granaries and wool-packing accommodations, a huge sheep-shearing barn, a woodworking and a blacksmith shop, a machine yard for harvesters and locomotive-like steam engines for threshing, and housing accommodations for the permanent employees who worked on the estate, all contributed to making the estate a self-sufficient, highly productive enterprise.

Over the hill, beyond the lands of the estate, was the Russian or Ukrainian village of Krivorozhye (“Crokedhorn”), named for the bend in the river. From this village came the Russian laborers who hired out to the estate, especially at the time of the grain harvest.

On this estate, our family lived from 1906 until the turmoil of the Bolshevik revolution forced our departure in the autumn of 1918. During these years, our family continued to grow and also suffered death. Little Paul was born on December 4, 1908, but lived only for two weeks. Just one year and five months later, it was my turn to come into the world. I, Arthur or Artur, was born on December 23, 1909. Thus it was that at Christmas time in 1908 the family grieved the loss of little Paul and one year later, my cradle, with me in it, stood beneath the branches of the Christmas tree.

One more child joined the family three years later. Little Rudolf (Rudi) was  born on October 30, 1912. He passed away at the age of nine on June 2, 1922, curing the famine that raged after the revolutionary war and well after our family had left the Marienskaya estate and had returned to my parent’s ancestral village of Gnadenfeld.