Mennonite villages in Neumark

John D. Richert recently forwarded to me maps of the three primary Mennonite villages that were located in Neumark.  These three villages, Brenkenhoffswalde, Franzthal, and Neu Dessau, were located in the marshes along the Netze River near the town of Driesen (today Drezdenko).  This area is sometimes called the Netzebruch.  These villages were not in the area known as Royal Prussia; rather, they were located in Brandenburg which was part of the Kingdom of Prussia.  After the Partitions of Poland were completed, the Kingdom of Prussia took over most of the area of Royal Prussia.

The villages in the Neumark formed a congregation which is normally referred to as the Brenkenhoffswalde congregation.  These villages were formed in 1763-65 by villagers coming from Przechowka and Jeziorka, near the Vistula River in Prussian Poland.  As such, villagers here were Groningen Old-Flemish Mennonites. 

The Low German Mennonites of Volhynia had a very special connection to these Neumark Mennonites.  In the very late 1700s, some of these Neumark Mennonites left Brenkenhoffswalde, Franzthal, and Neu Dessau, and headed southeast into the area of Ukraine known as Volhynia.  Some of these settled on scattered estates in western Volhynia and others settled in the Mennonite village of Michalin, near Makhnowka.  Eventually, most of these Volhynians from the Neumark ended up living in the Low German Mennonite village of Karolswalde.  Indeed, the Karolswalde church records are said to have listed the Neumark villages as the ancestral home for its congregants.  Likewise, church records for the Emmanuel Mennonite Church in Canton, Kansas, also listed the Neumark villages as the home of its congregants although most of those folks probably actually came from Jeziorka.


The villagers in the Neumark kept in regular contact with their close relatives at Przechowka.  There is evidence that messengers regularly made the 135 mile trip carrying correspondence, religious books, and other news.  Most of the Low Mennonites of Przechowka left for the Molotschna Colony in 1819-21, to form the village of Alexanderwohl.  Likewise, the Neumark villagers came to the Molotschna in 1834-5 and formed the village of Gnadenfeld.