Coming to America: Part I The Decision to Go

One hundred fifty years ago this summer, my great-great-grandparents, Jacob and Elisabeth Fast, left their village of Lichtfelde in the Russian Empire (now Hrushivka in occupied Ukraine) to board a train to Hamburg, Germany. In Hamburg they boarded the S.S. Teutonia, along with a thousand other emigrants, to sail to New York City. By October 1874, they had arrived on the American frontier near Henderson, Nebraska, where they quickly settled into railroad immigrant sheds for the winter.

Jacob and Elisabeth were 43 and 42 years old. They were poor and tired and with seven children in tow, including my 16-year-old great-grandfather David. Although they lived in a farming community, they owned only a small farm plot. Jacob was a carpenter, who made furniture and wooden water buckets, shovels, and spoons. Elisabeth was a domestic servant.

After spending their first four years of married life in a rented cottage, Jacob had borrowed 200 rubles to build a house. For the next 18 years, he was only able to pay the interest on that loan. Decades later, their son David recalled gathering Russian thistles and tumbleweeds to feed the livestock. He remembered how sad he was when his father was forced to trade two beautiful foals for twelve bushels of rye. Despite back-breaking manual labor, they were only barely able to survive. For poor farmers, the promise of cheap land in a bountiful New World was a powerful attraction.

But Jacob and Elisabeth did not emigrate alone. They were Mennonites; and in 1870, the Russian emperor Aleksandr II had canceled their “eternal” exemption from military service, along with the right to educate their children in German. As a result, 15,000 Mennonites emigrated from the Russian Empire to the United States and Canada over the next decade in search of religious freedom.

Jacob and Elisabeth were members of the Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church, and the church had decided that it was the Christian duty of all members to leave Russia for the New World. The church even collected a loan fund so that all of its 1,500 members would be able to leave.

In 1874, Jacob and Elisabeth sold their house, little farm, livestock, and farm equipment to repay their debts. But they had no money left for traveling expenses, so they borrowed 125 rubles from their church’s fund to finance their trip. Because 1,500 church members were traveling together, the church had rented five trains to carry them to the Russian border, through Germany, to the port of Hamburg.

At the train station, they bid their earthly farewells to his parents Gerhard and Elisabeth Fast, who were in their 80s. Gerhard and Elisabeth each handed a letter of remembrance to their son Jacob to guide him and his family as they would establish their lives in the New World.