Place:Bergthal, Aleksandrovsk, Ekaterinoslav, Russia

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The Bergthal Colony is a former Russian Mennonite settlement in what is now Ukraine.

The colony consisted of five villages—Schoenfeld, Heuboden, Bergthal, Schoenthal, and Friedrichsthal—which were settled during the years 1836 to 1852 by 149 landless families from the Chortitza Colony. The settlement was located on the Bodni, a small tributary of the Berda River about 200 km southeast of Zaporizhia. During the 1870s, their leader, Bishop Gerhard Wiebe, persuaded the entire colony, consisting of about 500 families, to emigrate to Manitoba, Canada. The most conservative factions of the Bergthal Colony later established new colonies in Mexico, Paraguay, and Bolivia, while the remainder spread out through Western Canada and the Midwestern United States. Some descendants of the colony, particularly those in Mexico, continue to be known as Bergthaler, but most have dropped the Bergthaler identity.

The current names of the five villages are: Ksenivka, Serhiivka, Respublica, Novoromanivka, and Fedorivka. The central village of Respublica is located at 47.251528 latitude and 37.198849 longitude.

Research Tips

Information about the families who lived in the Bergthal Colony (names, dates, relationships, immigration to Canada) can be found in the Bergthal Gemeinde Buch, which includes a transcription of the original congregation family books, with additional information and commentary in English.

By 1876, virtually all members of the Bergthal Colony had emigrated to Canada, and only a few families remained in Russia (source: Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online: Bergthal Mennonite Settlement (Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine), by Cornelius Krahn, 1953). (Note that as of 2013, the area where the Bergthal Colony was located is part of the Donetsk Oblast, according to Google Maps.)