The village Frank (2)

The Village Frank Newsletter
Volume 22, Number 2
Spring 1993
Sherrie Stahl, editor

FRANK – A village Community in Russia
By M. Magdalene Lebsack

(MY NOTES: I owe a great deal of gratitude to Sherrie for the many years of dedication she has put into researching the Frank and Brunnental Volga Germans as well as many other villages and families. She has laid the groundwork for all of us and continues to help those searching their family ties. I am deeply indebted to her for her generosity.

This is an excellent description of Frank, continued from the previous post. Frank is the village from which most Brunnentalers originated. According to David Ehlenberger’s family bible, both his father, Jacob Oehlenberger, and his wife Katherine’s father, Johannes Wagner, were born in “Chrisdowou Buerack, Frank" also known as Medweditskij Krestowoj Bujerak.)

(Excerpted)
(Page 9)
The fields were located on the hillsides and in the lower places between the hills; in fact, they were everywhere where it was at all possible to do any sort of agricultural work. One plot was called a Sotnick. Each Sotnick was divided into four Desedien and Desedien was divided into five or more strips. The strips were not all the same size, but most of them were about seventy feet wide and three hundred and fifty feet long. In some instances these were further divided into strips two and three-four acres of land.

The meadow and pasture lands were located along the river and ditches. The cattle also fed upon the fallow land which was that land which had been used for agricultural purposes for two years and was at the time lying idle. The Born-Wiese was the meadow land which gave clear water with digging. This land was located upon the southeast side of the town. If the men were in the meadow and grew thirsty, all that was necessary for them to do to quench their thirst was scratch the earth with their hands and then lie on their faces. During the first years in which Frank was being populated, it is believed that there was a mill located here on the Born-Wiese which was run by water power; but after the land had drained to such a great extent, the mill was moved to another site.

About one-third of the land in the Colony was forest and of the remainder, one-tenth was pasture and meadow. There was much forest land which was private property but there was also that which belonged to the community. In the hills and along the Medwediza River were the forests.

The river varied in width. At the mill dam, it was four blocks wide, while at the bridge it was but one block wide. The bridge was about four hundred feet long and about sixteen feet wide, while the bridges crossing the ditch on the north and east sides were only about one hundred feet long and fourteen feet wide.

When the ice melted in the spring, the river rose so high that the blacksmith shops located along the banks became full of water and the men were not able to carry on their work. The ground, three Werst on either side of the river “swam” with water. At such a time, all the ditches had quite a little water in them.

During the winter, it was soo [sic] terribly cold that the people were either forced keep a fire in their animal sheds or bring the young and weaker animals into the house, if they wished to keep them from freezing. If anyone wished to look out of the window, he had to breathe a little peaking hole on the glass in order to be able to see through it.

That part of Frank upon which the homes were built was from twenty-five to thirty feet higher than the level of the river. The village seems to have been planned very carefully. The blocks which were longer ran north and south, and were approximately three hundred and thirty-six feet long and two hundred and ten feet wide (336’ x 210’). The streets were of two widths, the wide and the narrow streets. Through the center of the village running east and west was the widest street of the whole village; this being about seventy-feet in width. A few blocks north was another wide street. This street and two others located on the south end of town were about sixty feet wide. These four streets were the only wide street which went east and west through the village. The narrow streets were only twenty feet wide.

(To be continued…)