Who baptized Christian Schochenmaier?

In July 2019, we discovered the oldest record on Schochenmaiers in the Russian Empire, thanks to which we found out that Christian Schochenmaier, father of Michael (1859-1937) and Jacob (1861-1923) Schochenmaier, the Founding Fathers of the American and Canadian Schochenmaiers,

•  was called Christian Franz Samuel
•  was born on the 1st September 1837 
•  was baptized on the 1st October 1844 
•  lived in New Danzig (South Russia)

Today, I'd like to share with you who had baptized Christian Schochenmaier when he was 7 years old. In the records, we may find the name of the Pastor. His name was Johann(es) Doll. This person is well known in the Southern Ukraine among Protestants.



Pastor Johann Doll (1797–1857) was assigned to the Lutheran Church in Nikolayev in 1830. Prior to that, he had served as Pastor in Glückstal by Odessa since 1824. Nikolayev is an administrative center of the region where New Danzig was situated. In 1852, they built the Lutheran "Kirche" which still exists in the today's Ukraine.

Doll, a divisional preacher, made a great contribution to the development of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of the region by his long spiritual efforts, and during the last fifteen years of his activity he managed to collect several thousand silver rubles for church needs.

Johann Doll gave twenty-seven years of his life to the service of God, he was the first Lutheran pastor in the town. He entered the history by creation of the church. In 1857, Pastor Johann Doll died and was buried with honor at the Nikolaev cemetery.

Just imagine, you may see the grave stone of the person who had baptized father of Michael and Jacob Schochenmaiers in 1844.

Oldest record on Schochenmaiers in the Russian Empire ever found!

My dear relatives, the remote and close ones, after almost two years of posting solely on the historical Schochenmaiers from Germany, today, as I promised, I will show you the oldest record from the Russian Empire where the Schochenmaiers are mentioned. It's a new period, it's related directly to us and it's much more improtant for our Amercian and Canadian Schochenmaiers! I will explain why)

Here is the document from year 1844:

Previously, we could track the Schochenmaiers in the Russian Empire from the beginning of the 1850s.

For example, we could find out that:

Ludwig Schochenmaier (1830-1856, wheelwright) and Katharina Kuprian (Kuprijahn) (1833-1856) married on the 20 Dec 1851 (record from the church book in Worms / Beresan Colony / Odessa) and gave birth to their first daughter Margaretha (September 1852). All of them died during the cholera epidemy in 1856.

His brother August Schochenmaier (1825-1855, smith) married Maria Margaretha Ochsner (1834-1917) on 31 May 1854 (record from the church book in Rohrbach / Beresan Colony / Odessa). He died in July 10 1855 because of cholera.

Their brother Gottlieb Schochenmaier (about 1833, tailor) married Katharina Huber (1836-1856) on the 12 Oct 1854 ( from the church book in Lustdorf (please do not read it in English, it's German name - pronounce like "Loostdorf" / Grossliebental Colony / Odessa).

And, it seems to be that we have found the baptismal record of their forth brother -
Christian Schochenmaier. As you can see, he was born in 1837 but baptized in 1844. He was a cartwright. I suggest they worked together with Ludwig. In this context, it proves the theory of origin of the Schochenmaiers presented in the Memory Book of the Canada by Clarence Schochenmaier.

Why could he be so interesting for the Amercian and Canadian Schochenmaiers? The answer is short: according to our family tree, he was father of Michael (1859-1937) and Jacob (1861-1923) Schochenmaier, who had left for the New World. We never knew when he had been born, but now we do.

Additionally to that, we can see the names of his parents!!! And what a great news - maybe now we have found the names of all four brothers, namely of August, Ludwig, Gottlieb and Christian, from who we all descend (technically from Gottlieb and Christian only, for August and Ludwig either had no children or gave birth to girls only).

In the next post, we discuss names of the parents, what else can we find thanks to this new record and where was the church book from.

Schochenmaier's family tree on Black Sea German Research

http://www.blackseagr.org/

I am happy to inform you that info from our family tree has been published on Black Sea German Research. You may search through all members of our family































They found a program that would allow to convert the dates from Ancestry's to one format – European. They have uploaded our tree to their Black Sea German database. It is listed under Schochenmaier Family by Eugen Schochenmaier. Also, they have privatized our family tree to protect those who are still living.

What do we know about Rohrbach (part 2)

Rohrbach, located four miles southeast of Worms, was founded in 1809 as was Worms.

http://rohrbachrussia.ancestryhost.org/rg3.htm

A History and Description of the German Colony in the Ukraine, South Russia 1848 

(from here http://www.grhs.org/vr/vhistory/rohrbach.htm)

With complete confidence in the privileges promised by His Majesty, Alexander I of Russia, the German emigrants left their fatherland forever and came here with all they possessed, hoping to find permanent happiness for themselves and their descendants. The settlers of the colony of Rohrbach came to this uninhabited steppeland to come under the jurisdiction and patronage of His Excellency the Governor, Duke of Richelieu. In the fall of 1809, 25 families arrived, and in 1810, 68 families arrived. On their arrival they received their status as colonists, founded the colony and proceeded to build houses for themselves.

The colony is located on the almost level steppe on the east side of the Zerigul Valley, 20 versts1 (13 miles) southwest of the Teligul, 10 miles north of the Tschitschekle and 26 miles west of the Bug River. It is about 86 miles from Cherson, the capital city of the government, and 66 miles from Odessa, the administrative center of the district. To Landau, the administrative center of the area, it is 13 miles.

Opposite the main village, on the southwest eminence of the valley, lies Halbdorf (or Bergdorf) with its beautiful houses built ten years ago (1838X, now numbering some 36 houses. From Halbdorf, the entire colony of Rohrbach can be viewed.

All along the rear of the village of Rohrbach, above the threshing place, are located the vineyards, enclosed by stone walls. The village lies in a north-south direction, bending slightly to the southwest at its center, following the valley. The so-called valley of the Zerigul, which has no riverbed, has its source a little over a mile above the colony on the outskirts of Worms, which is located about four miles from here. The mouth of the Zerigul is at Ribowa on the Tilgul estuary, 17 miles from here. The wells of Rohrbach provide plenty of water with here and there excellent drinking waters. Despite the many dry years, the community has always been spared from a real shortage of water.

Viewed from the heights, the colony with its beautiful vegetable gardens and orchards of apple, pear, prune, plum, cherry, and apricot trees together with beautiful poplar, aspen, willow and acacia (locust} trees, in all some 4-5,000 trees, presents a wonderful sight. The accumulated earth in the valley from the dam always assures the industrious gardner a rich growth of vegetables. Less attractive, however, are the manure piles above the valley, in many places 15 to 18 feet high.

Our generally level steppe is well located, the surface throughout having from one to two feet of fertile soil mixed with some sand. Here and there, however, in the southern part, there are patches of saltpeter, which are productive only when rain is plentiful. When the weather is favorable, not only does the grass grow abundantly, but also all plants quickly grow to an unusual height. Since, however, it often doesn't rain for eight to ten weeks, the soil then becomes as dust and ashes from the heat and the dry winds, and the farmer can harvest barely enough for seed.

The subsoil is generally a chalky, red clay, hard to work, and the reason given that in our area the productive characteristics of the soil are short-lived. For this reason, the soil must invariably be refertilized. Woodlands are out of the question; even the vineyards are not of much consequence. The most of these have only 600 to 1,000 vines with the total for the entire village amounting to about 34,000.

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

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.