Metadata: Trustee Committee for Foreign Settlers in the Southern Territory of Russia; Odessa, Kherson Province
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- State Archive of the Odessa Region
- Holding institution (official language):
- Державний архів Одеської області; Государственный архив Одесской области
- Postal address:
- 65026, Украина, г. Одесcа, ул. Жуковского, 18, тел.: +380 (48) 722-9365, тел./факс: +380 (48) 722-8025, e-mail: DAOO@ukr.net http://archive.odessa.gov.ua/
- Reference number:
- F. 6
- Title:
- Trustee Committee for Foreign Settlers in the Southern Territory of Russia; Odessa, Kherson Province
- Title (official language):
- Попечительный комитет об иностранных поселенцах Южного края России, г. Одесса Херсонской губ.; Опікунський комітет щодо іноземних поселенців Південного краю Росії, м. Одеса Херсонської губ.
- Creator/accumulator:
- Trustee Committee for Foreign Settlers in the Southern Territory of Russia; Odessa, Kherson Province
- Date(s):
- 1800/1877
- Language:
- Russian
- Hebrew
- Extent:
- (15,227 files)
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
[Another small fonds with the same title is housed in the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine (Kyiv) – f. 443, 1 file for 1874-78.] Materials housed in the fonds (op. 1-1а, 2-4) contain information on the history of the colonisation of the Novorossiia territory, including on the founding and development of Jewish colonies in the Ekaterinoslav and Kherson provinces (Bobrovyi Kut, Dobraia, Efingar’, Izluchistaia, Izraelevka, Kamenka, L’vovo, Bol’shoi and Malyi Nagartav, etc.); on implementation of a government plan to recruit Jews to agricultural labour on the model of the well-organised German farms in this region; on mutual relations between Jewish and Mennonite colonies, particularly on Mennonites’ construction of buildings for newly-arrived Jews in the colony of Nechaevka; on appointing Mennonite stewards for Jewish settlements (including D. Hertz in the colony of L’vovo); on resettling Mennonites to reside permanently in Jewish colonies to serve as “model stewards” and “village directors,” and permitting them to build mills there; on establishing mixed settlements (the colony of Iudenplan on the island of Khortitsa); on Mariupol’ Mennonites’ allocation of wheat to Jewish colonies; on Jews’ purchase orders for agricultural equipment and seeds from Molotschna Mennonites; etc.
Correspondence of the Trustee Committee includes discussion of the course of Jewish settlement and measures to adjust this process (including suspending migration from the Mogilev province in 1822); the construction of houses of worship and synagogues in colonies, and donations toward same, and the organisation of Jewish schools; an audit of Jewish colonists occasioned by their being “absent without leave from being occupied in farming”; barring Jewish farmers from engaging in crafts in Odessa (1853-56); providing information on Jews engaged in the state service (1828) and who were in possession of “medals bestowed by His Majesty” (1836); a judgment rendered by residents of the Jewish colonies Novovitebsk, Novopodol’sk, and Novokovno that Rabbi B. Kniazhik be awarded a gold medal “for zealous service” (1863-66); assigning persons to the farmer estate, and expelling persons therefrom and turning them over for military service for vagrancy, negligent stewardship, and “misbehaviour”; incidents in Jewish colonies (the appearance of locusts; fires; etc.); remunerating colonists for buildings destroyed in fires; complaints filed by Jews (regarding other Jews, or against officials); etc.
The largest group of documents consists of reports, records, and accounts of area boards and overseers of Jewish colonies on their condition and population (from 1807 on), and in particular, on Jewish colonies of the Ekaterinoslav settlement (1814) and the number of colonists who wished to settle therein (1812-22); statistical data on the number of births, marriages, and deaths (including a notification by the Office for the Guardianship of Foreign Settlers of the Novorossiia Territory in response to an inquiry by the Ministry of Internal Affairs as to the reasons for the high mortality rate among Jewish settlers in 1811); on the wellbeing and household provisioning of Jewish colony residents (with indications of numbers of persons and quantities of livestock and agricultural equipment); records on sowings and harvests in Jewish colonies of Kherson and Elisavetgrad counties (1816); lists of Jews who had resettled to the Novorossiia territory (1822); a listing of rabbis in Jewish colonies of the 1st and 2nd areas (Bobrovyi Kut, Efingar’, Bol’shoi and Malyi Nagartav, Izrailevka, Ingulets, Kamenka, Izluchistaia, [Bol’shaia] Seidemenukha) for 1836; etc.
There are also passports, tickets, and certificates issued to Jews interested in receiving the status of farmer (from 1808 on), and name lists of colonists, Mennonites and Jews, who were issued passports permitting them to engage in crafts or other employment (1812-15); files pertaining to Jews’ applications for permission to convert to Christianity; on leasing colonies’ “excess” lands on a quitrent basis; on issuing licenses to Jews for the right to conduct commerce and engage in distilling; on expelling “persons of various status” from Jewish colonies, and returning Jews without passports to the places where they were registered; etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
This was established in April 1800 as the Office for the Guardianship of Novorossiia’s Foreign Settlers in the city of Novorossiisk (the name from 1797-1802 of Ekaterinoslav, since 1926 called Dnipropetrovsk/Dnepropetrovsk). Pursuant to an edict of Alexander I, and due to the growing number of Novorossiia colonies (there were already eighty-four in December 1817) and the remoteness of many of them from Ekaterinoslav, the office was replaced on 22 March 1818 by the Trustee Committee on Colonists in the Southern Territory of Russia (this entity’s proper as opposed to traditional title). It was based in Kherson (1818), Ekaterinoslav (1819-20), Kishinev (1833), and Odessa (1833-71).
The Trustee Committee was in charge of issues pertaining to the settlement of southern Russia by foreign migrants and colonists “of whichever nation they may be,” and of administering all existing and newly-formed colonies there. Subordinate to it were three foreign settlers’ offices: in Ekaterinoslav [currently the Ekaterinoslav office’s fonds is housed in the State Archive of the Dnipropetrovsk/Dnepropetrovsk Region (f. 134); an annotated inventory thereof for 1781-1818 has been published: N. L. Iuzbasheva and D. Iu. Meshkov, eds., Fond ‘Kontora opekunstva novorossiiskikh inostrannykh poselentsev’. 1781-1847, vol. 1, Dnipropetrovsk; Kyiv, 1997]; Kishinev [the Bessarabia Foreign Settlers’ Office – the National Archive of the Republic of Moldova, f. 305]; and Odessa [materials of which are now housed in the State Archive of the Odessa Region, f. 252; see V. Iu. Alekseeva, ed., Odesskaia kontora inostrannykh poselentsev. 1805-1806, 1814-1833. Annotirovannyi perechen’ del, Odessa, 2003]; these offices were in operation until 1 January 1834, at which point all colonies were reapportioned by area, and administered by colony directors. Thus, Jewish colonies of the Kherson province (the first of which were organized in 1807), also under the jurisdiction of the Trustee Committee and formerly belonging to four areas, formed the 1st and 2nd Jewish areas. The Trustee Committee was under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs until 1837, at which point it was transferred to that of the Ministry of State Properties. It was liquidated by an edict of 4 June 1871, upon which its functions were transferred to “the jurisdiction of provincial, county, and local peasant-affairs institutions.”
- Access points: locations:
- Bobrovyi Kut
- Dobraia
- Ekaterinoslav
- Ekaterinoslav province
- Ingulets
- Izraelevka
- Kherson province
- Khortitsa
- L’vovo
- Mogilev province
- Novokovno
- Novovitebsk
- Odessa
- Ukraine
- Access points: persons/families:
- Hertz, D.
- Kniazhik, B.
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes nine inventories systematised according to the structural-chronological principle (op. 1, 1а, 2, 3, 4, 6) and chronologically (op. 5, 7, 8), with certain exceptions (and supplementary inventories by year). Op. 3 and 4 include separate sections titled “Jewish Departments,” and op. 1 includes “the Jewish Desk.” [Regarding op. 1, staff persons of the State Archive of the Odessa Region and the Institute for German and Eastern European Research in Göttingen, Germany have long been preparing publications describing materials included therein, currently numbering seven volumes; see O. V. Konovalov, ed., Popechitel’nyi komitet ob inostrannykh poselentsakh Iuzhnogo kraia Rossii. 1799-1876. Annotirovannaia opis’ del, vols. 1-7, Odessa, 1998-2010.]
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
