Joseph Anton and his family emigrated to southern Russia. We do not know the reasons for this in detail; they were certainly similar to those of other families who moved to Russia at that time.
According to research by Alois Amann in Pforzheim-Hohenwart, Joseph Anton Volck emigrated to Russia together with his wife and six children in a group of several families in the spring of 1817. What were the names of the other families?
The land register of the municipality of Neuhausen states under
B 9 (1810-1822) page 235/236: 28.02.1817 The local citizen Joseph Anton Volk is determined to have all his lying assets publicly auctioned off to the highest bidder:... Land register B 9 page 260: 23.04.1817 Josef Hochstein buys from his brother-in-law Josef Volck, who wants to move to Russia, his own house, barns, farmyard and garden up in the village,..., which describes 1/2 quarter 6 ruthen in size.
The document in the Kishinev Archive File 134-2-689 states that he arrived in the colony of Baden on Nov. 18, 1817.
It is not (yet) known exactly how and when Josef Anton Volk traveled to southern Russia. The period can be narrowed down on the basis of the dates of the house sale and his arrival in the Baden colony: house sale at the end of April, arrival in Baden/Odessa on November 18. The journey took around 80 days, plus the quarantine period.
From May 7 to August 7, 1817, over 5000 people made their way to the Caucasus in nine transports. The Harmonies consisted not only of separatists, many other people joined them. The report of the Russian ambassador in Stuttgart mentions 10 harmonies, which were formed into 29 columns consisting of 963 families.
The journey of Josef Anton Volks could have taken place with a travel group that left Ulm at the beginning of July and arrived in the Odessa region at the end of October/beginning of November 1817.
1. we were taken back on a ship together with our luggage, where we were taken across the Dniester, which is 2 hours wide in this area, and were quartered in a barracks in Ovidiopol, where we had to spend another 3 days in quarantine.
5. we were again driven and taken 4 hours further to Josefstal and billeted with a farmer, which is actually the end of our 133-day journey.
For more information, see Letters and Travel Descriptions (1817) Friedrich Schwarz.
After smaller groups set off for Transcaucasia in 1816 and at the beginning of 1817 and settled near the then provincial capital of Tbilisi, around 1400 to 1500 mainly Swabian families from the Württemberg region set off in late spring 1817 in the direction of present-day Georgia and Azerbaijan, citing various sources. Driven by various interests and for different reasons, they set off from Ulm on wooden boats, the so-called "Ulmer Schachteln", on the Danube towards the Black Sea. They were kept together in so-called "harmonies", detachments which were then grouped into columns.
Their journey via Vienna and Bratislava to Galatz (Galati/Romania) was relatively unproblematic.
Due to the poor harvest back home over the past three years, some families abandoned the journey and tried to settle in the fertile countryside. Unfortunately, the overcrowding of the boats and the changing climate also led to the first deaths. In Galatz, the border point with the Ottoman Empire, the authorities imposed a quarantine of around 40 days on the emigrants. In this climate and under the hygienic conditions on the boats, 48 people had to pay for this with their lives and found their graves in Galatz. However, the mainly Swabian emigrants, who followed the religious views of Pietism and Chiliasm, were not deterred by such setbacks in their unbending determination to reach the mountains of the Caucasus. On the waterway further down the Danube to the Black Sea, deaths were again recorded and many a family decided to return or settle in this area. At the border point with the Russian Empire in Ismail/Ismajil (Ukraine), the remaining German emigrants had to endure several weeks of quarantine ordered by the Russian border authorities. While waiting to continue their journey, more than 1,300 people had to pay for this with death due to the hygienic conditions and the warm season.
Largely by land, they reached the fortress city of Odessa on the Black Sea in the fall of 1817. The planned wintering in and near Odessa was refused by the Russian authorities. Instead, they ordered a 20-day quarantine. This quarantine also resulted in numerous human casualties. The remaining 500 or so German families were able to spend the winter in the villages of the Swabian Germans who had been living here for up to 10 years. Over 100 families then decided to remain in the area. Almost the same number of families from the German villages joined the emigrants on their way to the South Caucasus.
Autor:
Eduard Volk, Neuwied, DE-RP
March 2024