In 1863 a total of 816 Chortitza Colony families received loans of grain. These loans came from grain stored by the Colony and were the consequence of a poor harvest due to heavy snow cover in the preceding year. The details are found in the records of the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Settlers in South Russia, which have been preserved, in part, by the Odessa State Archives. The names of the family heads, their village and their land-owning status (Wirte = landowner, Anwohner = landless) are found in Fond 6, Inventory 4, file #21164. I have transcribed the list and arranged it by family name and village:
Chortitza 1863 Grain list by Surname
Chortitza 1863 Grain list by Village
This file also contains the signatures of the heads of households agreeing to this loan and promising to replace the grain taken from that stored by the Colony after the first “blessed harvest”. I have transcribed these and arranged them by family name and village:
Chortitza 1863 Signatures by Surname
Chortitza 1863 Signatures by Village
Please note that I have standardized the family names and given names in order to make searching easier. For example de Veer, Fehr, Veer etc. are listed as Fehr and Bernd, Berend, Borend, etc. are listed as Bernhard.
Inventory 4 also contains a numerical (no names) census of people in the Chortitza Colony for April 1863 (file #21197). The census shows that there were a total of 972 families. I would say that between the list of those receiving loans and the list of signatures nearly every family in the colony are counted.
These lists are particularly useful for those whose ancestors moved to Canada in the 1870’s since it predates the establishment of the Fürstenland colony, and therefore should include nearly every family that moved to Canada from the Chortitza or Fürstenland colonies.
I would like to thank Tim Janzen for correcting the many errors and omissions I made in transcribing these lists from rather poor photocopies and for providing a transcription of a sample the preamble that introduced each village list of signatures.
Glenn Penner
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