Vistula River Lowlands: Świecie/Chełmno/Grudziądz (Schwetz/Kulm/Graudenz)

 Mennonites lived in a great number of the villages in the Vistula River valley lowlands - specifically those villages located in the river floodplain.  The map below shows the outline of many of the villages in the lowlands between Świecie, Chełmno, and Grudziądz (marked on the map by their German name equivalents, Schwetz, Kulm, and Graudenz).

The Vistula on this map is flowing towards the north east, thus the northwest (top left) side of the map shows the Left Bank while the southeast (bottom right) shows the Right Bank.

This map is from 1893 but the villages and their boundaries would have been practically the same a century earlier when Mennonites lived here.  Typically, villages were simply a collection of houses with a border drawn around them.  Borders may be based on waterways or other natural boundaries, but villages generally simply adjoined another.  For instance, Przechowko (here marked Wintersdorf) adjoined Klein Deutsch Konopat.  The border between the two villages was naturally marked by the low point between two gentle hills.

Mennonites inhabited most of the villages marked on the map and these were congregants at either Przechowko or one of the churches at Schoensee (two churches existed in Schoensee; one Frisian and one Old Flemish, which was associated with Przechowko).  Some of the Mennonites toward the northeast corner of the map could have also been congregants at Montau (Frisian) and we can even see Gruppe, directly across the river from Grudziądz - this village was very closely associated with Montau.

Based on the 1772-3 Prussian census, Przechowko was the only village marked that was exclusively inhabited by Mennonites.  In the other villages, Mennonites cohabitated with Lutherans or Catholics.  Even in Przechowko, the Mennonites could have employed Lutheran or Catholic farmhands so in that sense, the village was not exclusively Mennonite.  But the leaseholders in Przechowko were all Mennonite.

On this map, Przechowko is marked by its German name, Wintersdorf.  Certainly, the Mennonites would have never used this name.  This name came into use after 1871 and by that point all the Mennonites were gone from this area.

Also on this map we have the dikes marked in green.  Quite a network of dikes exist on the Right Bank.  On the Left Bank, southwest of Schwetz, the dike is quite rudimentary.  We can also see that no dike existed along the Schwartzwasser (Wda) River which basically bordered Przechowko to the northeast.  Thus the Przechowko villagers were always in danger of flooding from the northeast.  There are also canals or ditches cut through the area in various places.  For instance, an important ditch borders Przechowko/Deutsch Konopat/Wilhelmsmark (Dworzisko) to the south and this helped drain the meadows of these villages.

The cemeteries at Przechowko/Deutsch Konopat/Wilhelmsmark (Dworzisko) and Schoensee (Sosnowka) are marked with purple dots.  The Mennonite Cottage in Chrystkowo (Christfelde) is marked by a dark blue dot.