THE MENNONITE BROTHERHOOD IN RUSSIA (1789 - 1910), P. M. Friesen, 1911

reports follow on the churches of Don-Mariopol and Friedensfeld-Sagradovka, which became independent before January 6, 1885. Thus we note: 1) The affiliated group of Puchtin, presently reckoned as Gniden- Blumenfeld, in the Alexandrov District of the Province of Ekaterinoslav, formed by several land-owning families from the Molotschna Colony. We know nothing of this group and its origin, other than that it is often mentioned in the reports of itinerant preachers who visited the Mariopol Plan and stayed with these members and conducted meetings. 2) The affiliate in the Crimea was established by Br. Andreas Voth §229 500 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH (cf. document of organization and the voters’ list in the election of preachers, 1860) and some other members sometime after the 60s. We refer to the further report on the M.B. Chinch in Spat in the Crimea which follows. 3) The affiliate of Herzenberg, now Alexandrovka, in the vicinity of the district capital and railway station of Pavlograd in the Province of Ekaterinoslav, was established around 1880. Among others, the founders included the influential, active Br. Jakob Dirksen of Muensterberg, a minis ter and for lengthy periods an outstanding itinerant preacher in the Molotschna Church and the entire Mennonite Brethren conference, and Johann Kliewer, a deacon by God’s grace, a pious and earnest Christian and an active member in the intimate church fellowship as well as the conference, and a model in his secular vocation (first as the owner of a flourishing wagon factory and then as a farmer). §230 14. Until January 6, 1886, the twenty -fifth anniversary of the Molotschna M.B. Church, 1074 entries are listed in their baptismal records (not counting most of the entries at the Don, with Mariopol, those since 1864 at the Kuban, and for some time in Friedensfeld and Sagradovka). Counted by half -decades, those received into membership were as follows: 1860-1864: 260; 1865-1869: 127; 1870-1874: 178; 1875-1879: 190; 1880-1884: 319. We see that here, as in the Einlage Church, the first and the last five years of the first quarter century produced the greatest growth. The following year, 1885, the anniversary year, produced the greatest number of new members in any one year: 171. The years 1860/61 (baptism became a matter of the church only in 1861) recorded 107. The lowest numbers were recorded in the years 1869 and 1870: with 15 and 14 respectively. The weakest of the half-decades was the second: 1865-1869. The membership of the Molotschna Mennonite Brethren Church, in the narrower sense of the two areas: Halbstadt and Gnadenfeld, after the many small resettlements and the larger emigration to America, was around 400; including the small affiliated groups of Puchtin, Crimea and Herzenberg, it was around 500 of the total of ca. 1800 members of the entire M.B. conference. After the emigration to America, there were about 200 members left at the Mo