What do we know about Rohrbach?

Rohrbach

(Russian name: Novoswetlovka/Новосветловка, Ukrainian name: Novoswitlivka/Новосвітлівка)

Beresan District, Odessa/ Black Sea Region, New South Russia (Ukraine)

General Information

Founded:         1808

First Settlers:   1809

Location: Rohrbach is located 90 versts or approximately 61 miles northeast of the city of Odessa (a port city on the Black Sea and now part of the Ukraine) or 130 versts or 86 miles northwest of Kherson which served as the center of District Government for the Beresan German Russian Colonies. The Beresan District lies between the Bug River and the Tiligul River and is bordered on the south by the north shore of the Black Sea. Its closest neighbor is the village of Worms located six versts or 4 miles from Worms. See the map below. Worms is located 4 miles northwest of Rohrbach. Rohrbach is number 26 on the map below. Worms is number 25.

http://rohrbachrussia.ancestryhost.org/rgeneral.htm

Most of the German Colonists of this region came to Russia to seek economic and religious freedom and to escape the devastation that was raging in Western Europe as the result of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Most of the western German states bordering on the Rhine River were overrun by French occupation forces and German youth were being conscripted into the French Army. Taxation to support Napoleon's exploits was extreme. As political boundaries shifted as the result of military invasions these oppressed people were eager to leave western Europe. They were offered free land, freedom of religion and exemption from military service in New South Russia (the Ukraine) which had been acquired from the Ottoman Turkish Empire through a series of wars with Imperial Russia. There were numerous German villages all along the north shore of the Black Sea.

What village did my ancestors live in?

Between 1830s and 1860s the Schochenmaiers had lived at the village called in German ROHRBACH.

You can find on the following map, it's above Odessa, abbreviated as Rohrb.

http://www.elke-rehder.de/Antiquariat/dekorative-Grafik-Varia/Deutsche-Kolonien-Slawien.htm

What region did my ancestors live in?

As we know for sure they had come to the Beresan district, Odessa region.

 It's highlighted with lightskyblue:

http://library.ndsu.edu/grhc/articles/magazines/articles/ndrvossler.html

In the USA a regional interest group concerning this region is to be found under: http://www.grhs.org/chapters/bdo/ 

and partly on the website Black Sea German Research: http://www.blackseagr.org/learn_odessa.html

or at the Odessa Office for Foreign Settlers in Southern Russia: http://www.archives.gov.ua/Eng/guides-Odessa.php 

Here is another map of those villages:

http://www.auswanderung-rlp.de/auswanderung-nachosteuropa/russland/auswanderung-ans-schwarze-meer.html

How did my ancestors get there?

It seems to be that my/our ancestors had come to the so-called "South Russia" as Bessarabian Germans did. The latter in their majority had travalled from the Southwestern Germany and settled around Odessa.

 

http://www.migrazioni.altervista.org/deu/3deutsche_in_russland/2.11_auswanderung_odessa.html

It had been like that:

http://www.migrazioni.altervista.org/deu/2ostsiedlung/8.6_ostsiedlung18.html

or like that:

http://www.radiobremen.de/kultur/kino/die-andere-heimat100.html       

Other possibilities look like that:

http://www.bessarabien.de/auswanderung.php

Why did my ancestors come to the Black Sea ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_Germans

If you see in the documents that some Russian Germans were bon in the "South Russia", it often means the Region of the Black Sea or Ukraine. At that time, Ukraine had been the part of the Russian Empire.

The Black Sea Germans (German: Schwarzmeerdeutsche; Russian: Черноморские немцы; Ukrainian: Чорноморські німці) or Ukrainian Germans are ethnic Germans and that left their homelands in the 18th and 19th centuries, and settled in territories off the north coast of the Black Sea, mostly in southern Ukraine.

Included in the category of Black Sea Germans are the following groups from the Black Sea area: the Bessarabia Germans, Dobrujan Germans, and the Russian Mennonites.

The Black Sea Germans are distinct from the Volga Germans, who were separate both geographically and culturally, although both groups moved to the Russian Empire at about the same time and for the same reasons.

The Germans settled in southern Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula, both of which were part of the Russian Empire at the time. This land was annexed by the Russian Empire by Catherine the Great through her two wars with the Ottoman Empire (1768–1774) and from the annexation of the Crimean Khanate (1783). The area of settlement was not settled as compactly as that of the Volga territory; rather it was home to a chain of colonies. The first German settlers arrived in 1787, first from West Prussia, then later from Western and Southwestern Germany and Alsace, France, as well as from the Warsaw area. Catholics, Lutherans, and Mennonites were all known as capable farmers; Empress Catherine herself sent them a personal invitation to immigrate to the Russian Empire.

http://www.migrazioni.altervista.org/deu/3deutsche_in_russland/2.11_auswanderung_odessa.html

The majority of Black Sea Germans were resettled in Greater Germany in 1940 as a part of Hitler's Heim ins Reich policy. My great great grandfather Wilchelm Schochenma/eir had been among that fortunate souls. He waited out the WWII in the Switzerland and in 1946 he settled down for good in Radolfzell on the Lake Constance.

Why did my ancestors come to Russia as Protestants?

German immigration was motivated in part by religious intolerance and warfare in central Europe as well as by frequently difficult economic conditions. Catherine II's declaration freed German immigrants from military service (imposed on native Russians) and from most taxes. It placed the new arrivals outside of Russia's feudal hierarchy and granted them considerable internal autonomy. Moving to Russia gave German immigrants political rights that they would not have possessed in their own lands.

http://www.migrazioni.altervista.org/deu/2ostsiedlung/8.6_ostsiedlung18.html

Religious minorities found these terms very agreeable, particularly Mennonites from the Vistula River valley. Their unwillingness to participate in military service, and their long tradition of dissent from mainstream Lutheranism and Calvinism, made life under the Prussians very difficult for them. Nearly all of the Prussian Mennonites emigrated to Russia over the following century, leaving no more than a handful in Prussia.

http://lexikon.freenet.de/Mennoniten

Other German minority churches took advantage of Catherine II's offer as well, particularly Evangelical Christians like the Baptists.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Baptisten

Although Catherine's declaration forbade them from proselytising among members of the Orthodox church, they could evangelize Russia's Muslim and other non-Christian minorities.
German colonization was most intense in the Lower Volga, but other areas also saw an influx. The area around the Black Sea received many German immigrants, and the Mennonites favoured the lower Dniepr river area, around Ekaterinaslav (now Dnepropetrovsk) and Aleksandrovsk (now Zaporizhzhia).

As far as I know, my ancestors had been Mennonites and they had come to the area around the Black Sea in the 1st part of the 19th century.

German Immigration to the Russian Empire

http://volgagermanbrit.us/showmedia.php?mediaID=128

Germans' Settling in the Russian Empire between 1700's and 1800's

http://www.rollintl.com/roll/grsettle.htm

Germans from Russia: Wolgaheimat Legacy

Why did my ancestors come to Russia?

Tsarina Catherine II was a German, born in Stettin in Pomerania, now Szczecin in Poland.

http://georgianaduchessofdevonshire.blogspot.de/2011/02/immortal-companion-catherine-great.html

She proclaimed open immigration for foreigners wishing to live in the Russian Empire on July 22, 1763, marking the beginning of a much larger presence for Germans in the Empire.

http://www.migrazioni.altervista.org/deu/3deutsche_in_russland/05_18jahrhundert/3.2_katharina_2.html



It had attracted thousands of colonists from Germany, largely because of the following incentives:

▹ Free transportation to Russia
▹ Large tracts of free land, plenty of water, free timber
▹ The free exercise of religion
▹ Interest-free loans for purchasing equipment
▹ Freedom from taxes for ten to thirty years, depending on the area of settlement
▹ Exemption from military service for themselves and their descendants
▹ Local self-government in colonies

http://www.vira-ev.de/aktuelles.htm

First known Schochenmaier's generation

On the basis of St. Petersburg Lutheran Evangelical Archives (http://russiangenes.com/2011/02/central-state-historical-archive-of-st-petersburg/) at the Family History Center (Salt Lake City, Utah), we may reconstruct who were the first Schochenmaier who had come to Russia from Germany.

Any (GOTTLIEB) SCHOCHENMAIER, who had been born about 1800 and apparently not in Russia, had got the children as follows:

• GOTTLIEB SCHOCHENMAIER, born about 1828.
• LUDWIG SCHOCHENMAIER, born about 1830, Kamenka (?); died 18 Feb 1856, Rohrbach, Beresan, Odessa, Russia.
• CHRISTIAN SCHOCHENMAIER, born about 1833.
• AUGUST SCHOCHENMAIER, born about 1835; died 10 Jul 1855, Worms, Beresan, Odessa, Russia; married to MARGARETHE OCHSNER (31 May 1854, Rohrbach, Beresan, Odessa, Russia).
• KATHARINA SCHOCHENMAIER, born about 1836; died 24 Mar 1856, Rohrbach, Beresan, Odessa, Russia.

So, we may conclude that the family of Schochenmaiers had moved from Germany to Russia between 1810 and 1828.

Let's get started!

Long before I intented to carry out the research on my own surname: SHOKHENMAYER.

The actual "Shokhenmayer" is the translitteration from Russian "ШОХЕНМА(Й)ЕР". I was told that in various documents of my family in the beginning of the XXth century two German versions are to be found:

Schochenmeier

and

Schochenmaier.

Theoretically, there could be more:

Schochenmeyer 

Schochenmayer

Schockenmeier

Schockenmaier

Schockenmeyer

Schockenmayer

Schochenmayr

Schochenmair

Schochenmeir

Schockenmayr

Schockenmair

Schockenmeir

Post by post I will present everything I found in the archives, documents, maps and on the Internet. If you have some ideas, your help will be appriciated a lot!!!