Toward a Political Economy of Inheritance: Community and Household among the Mennonites Author(s): Jeffrey Longhofer Source: Theory and Society, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Jun., 1993), pp. 337-362 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/657737 Accessed: 28/08/2010 20:52 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=springer. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
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Toward a political economy of inheritance: Community and household among the Mennonites JEFFREY LONGHOFER University of Missouri - Kansas City
Exasperated, the Marion County, Kansas, Registrar of Deeds said, "You'll never figure those people out. Their land records are a nightmare, a crazy quilt, a maze." She was standing beside a large plat map of the County and the land records of the Alexanderwohl Mennonites. Together, we examined section twenty-two in West Branch township, which consisted of seven twenty-acre plots, a forty-acre, a sixty-acre, and five eighty-acre plots. Indeed, the several townships inhabited by Mennonites looked like a patchwork. I was at first tempted to infer, as others in anthropology and sociology have, that they were merely applying a "traditional ... partible inheritance model as a means of transferring property between generations."' After all, the aggregate data showed that the number of land divisions was increasing over time and the size of the holdings was decreasing. But one problem remained. A more careful scrutiny of the land maps and census and interview data showed that some farms were not being divided. With notebook and land maps in hand, I returned to the field, looking for some inheritance rules, for some logic governing the devolution of property among the Mennonites.2 For a month, I conducted interviews among the oldest members of the community.3 Over and over again, no one could articulate a rule. One person seemed ignorant of the pattern. Another was surprised that I would see the pattern as important. Ministers, young and old, could point to no precept articulating inheritance rules.4 On the face of it, then, the data suggested two differing modes of devolving property: partibility and impartibility. In examining the historical record, I discovered that Mennonites had not always adopted the strictly privatized household as the unit of production. For a short time in the United States and for nearly one hundred years in Russia, they had organized household production in Theory and Society 22: 337-362, 1993. ? 1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
338 articulation with village social organization. My inquiry revealed that both impartible and particle inheritance practices were also utilized in Russia. I wondered whether or not Mennonites had been transferring property by means of analogous practices under historically dissimilar conditions of production. In this article, I demonstrate that similar inheritance practices were found within two different social formations: one with a mixture of feudal and capitalist social relations (Russia), and the other strictly capitalist (United States). And, I argue that even though partible and impartible practices were found in both, Mennonite devolution of property reproduced different types of social formations: villages and households. I have theorized inheritance in a way that avoids the characterization of these practices as mere carryovers of traditions without relationship to the broader political economy. In the literature on North American and European agrarian communities, scholars have shown that within different societies and within distinct historical epochs of one society the devolution of property is influenced by numerous variables.5 Household wealth, productivity, land availability, type and strength of land tenure, open fields, closed fields, land use, strong lords, weak lords, marriage, degree of market participation, and a host of demographic pressures have all been found, in varying ways, to be associated with particular strategies of devolving property within different social formations.6 In their study of two Alpine villages, Cole and Wolf found that strong community ties were associated with impartibility.7 Toby Ditz, in a comparative study of Colonial and nineteenth-century inheritance practices in Connecticut, showed that partibility was practiced in conjunction with strong extended kinship ties, which bound households together.8 Yet, Salamon and Roger's German-American community practiced partibility where extradomestic ties were insignificant.9 Moreover, in drawing a straight line from the nineteenth-century to the present, Rogers and Salamon show that "...some of the influence of inheritance ideologies on demographic behavior observed by (Habakkuk) in preindustrial Europe has persisted in both the American and French settings today.""' Thus, similar inheritance practices have been found in association with a diverse array of social formations. Likewise, dissimilar practices have been found in association with similar social formations. Many in this literature have struggled with the lack of historical sensitivity of the concepts." The facts have often shown that no single practice dominates.'2 Though not his intention, Habakkuk addressed this in his now classic study where he argued that nineteenth-century
339 "peasant families of Western Europe had two conflicting aims: to keep the family property intact and to provide for the younger children."13 Others, attracted to this argument, have called this conflict the "unity and provision dilemma."'4 They have used this conceptualization extensively in formulating research questions and as an organizing framework for the investigation of inheritance practices.'5 Taking the family and household as the irreducible unit of analysis, it has been argued that families struggle to resolve this one dilemma, regardless of the historical epoch or social formation: "Partible inheritance always leaves open a wide range of strategies for each individual family, depending on their personal, economic and demographic situation.""6 Inheritance practices shift back and forth from partible to impartible, from primogeniture to ultimogeniture, from including only male heirs to including all siblings, and so on as a response to this one essential tension. Those confronted with commercialization resolve this tension in certain ways, while those faced with land shortage deal with the problem in still other ways.'7 The availability of wage employment led to different resolutions. Those with limited resources were forced to devolve the property to a single heir but with obligations to assure support in retirement for aged parents, assure financial support to unmarried siblings, or to provide a dowry. Thus, to the extent that one discovers shifts from partibility to impartibility (or vice versa) across time and differing social formations, this was explained by the household's assertion of their options, which were constrained, in turn, by unspecified but interacting features of the household and environment. In my attempt to understand inheritance practices among the Mennonites, it became increasingly clear that no single set of categories and oppositions - partibility, impartibility, unity, and provision - could explain their analogous practices in two dissimilar political-economies, nor could one necessarily assume the household to be the most meaningful unit of analysis.18 I explain Mennonite inheritance practices by demonstrating how the devolution of property acted to reproduce community and household units of production: when their unit of production shifted from the community to the household, inheritance practices changed accordingly.
Toward a political economy of inheritance An adequate explanation of inheritance practices requires the establishment not only of the regular associations among forms of devolving
340 property, forms of social organization, and behavior, but also of the structures which produce these regular relations - when they occur. A convincing explanation, moreover, demands that we not only describe the process, but also, it should entail a theory capable of explaining the events responsible for the process. To do so requires a knowledge of the structures and mechanisms that produce these events.19In order to make sense of inheritance practices, and the devolution of property more generally, one must examine more than what first meets the eye. It is necessary to understand the structure of the formations (household, community, and social) within which these practices are formed, codified, and contested.2" Throughout this essay, I call the social totalities within which Mennonites are located "formations."The use of "society" to denote such entities is avoided on the grounds that it is incapable of capturing the complexity and multiplicity of social arrangements characteristic of any empirical case. A formation, on the other hand, refers to a spatialtemporal entity within which individuals materially and ideologically reproduce themselves. Every formation, as a totality, consists of one or more modes of production; only one mode, however, is dominant at any given time, and the formation is identified by its dominant mode. A mode of production is defined as an articulated combination of a material base and an ideological superstructure. The former contains the structured relations of production and distribution, while the latter represents the shared ideas which provide a rationale for the existing organization of the economy as well as the social relations among its members. Within each formation, the material forces of production are defined as the elements of production (land, instruments, and labor power) whose combined presence is necessary for production. The relations of production, on the other hand, are defined as the relations of distribution. Indeed, the manner in which the elements of production are distributed among people corresponds to the way in which the products are distributed among the formation's members.21 The mode of production consists of more than "forces"and "relations." Ideology, polity, and economy (structured relations of production and distribution) form an inseparable organic unity, a totality. To reiterate, by totality I mean an organic and dialectical unity of base and superstructure; ideology, in other words, is embodied in the material structure just as the material structure is embodied in ideology. The rules that govern inheritance and property are, therefore, both ideological and material. Any separation of the two is done for analytical reasons
341 and for these reasons alone.22 Formations constitute totalities with different scopes and are differentiated by the adjectives attached to them: household, community, and social. Any formation may establish relations with others, with the same or different scopes, but as long as these relations do not dissolve its structure, it remains distinct. This argument leads me to conclude that: 1) the reproduction of individuals takes place predominantly within one formation; 2) formations are located within totalities of larger scope; 3) every formation provides the context for reproduction of the smaller formation, and, in combination with the internal structure of the latter, determines its conditions of reproduction; and, finally, 4) formations have their own reproduction requirements that are historically specific and cannot be known a priori. Inheritance rules and practices are social mechanisms that contribute to the reproduction of a formation; therefore, I argue that one should first understand the economic, political and ideological components of the formation's structure and then look for the inheritance rules that support the formation's reproduction. One cannot theorize from the rule to the structure, as Habakkuk did when he claimed that partible rules led to industrialization.23 I show that inheritance and the rules that govern it cannot be understood in a social vacuum. I argue, then, that because a (social, community, or household) formation's structure sets the limits and possibilities for the range of inheritance practices, it is necessary to be precise about the unit of production. I demonstrate that as Alexanderwohl community production and distribution (nineteenth-century Russia) shifted downward to the household (twentieth-century United States), so did their inheritance practices.
Historical background Sixteenth-century Anabaptists faced the combined and hostile forces of feudalism, emerging capitalism, and the Roman Catholic Church.24 Unlike mainstream reformers, however, Anabaptists rejected the state church and often held radically divergent views on the nature and purpose of private property. Collectively, they formed independent congregational communities,25 each of which claimed to represent a "true"Christian way of life.26 Mennonites took their name from an important Frisian leader, a former priest, Menno Simons. On the matter of property, he sought to
342 distance himself and Anabaptism in the Netherlands from the more radical, often militant, Anabaptism of the groups who had supported the seizure of cities, communal ownership, and the establishment of utopian communities.27 Although he equivocated and his statements were not always clear, Simons defended the notion of private property.28 Followers were admonished to limit voluntarily their private property insofar as it undermined the common aims, faith, and practices of the community; individual self-interest was to remain subordinate to the interests of the community. The objects of this world belonged to God, and accordingly, it was one's brotherly duty to share. Through baptism, adults made a voluntary commitment not only to the church, but also to a closed community of believers.29 By making individuals subordinate to community interest, the ideological boundary of the Mennonite community was strictly drawn and given real as well as symbolic significance through the threat of being banned, strict rules of endogamy, control of language, regulation of dress, and related social practices. Without membership in the community, individuals or households could be excluded from access to productive resources.3' It was, moreover, through compliance with the norms of the community that an individual was assured a position within the kingdom of God anyone who broke the rules of the "closed order" could be forever banned. In spite of Simon's ambivalent defense of private property, the community was to be homogeneous; within the community, one should find little difference in dress, wealth, and belief. James Urry has captured the essence of what the closed community was to be: No man knew better than his neighbor, no man claimed to be saved, no man criticized his brother for he knew not his own worth in the eye of the Lord, and no man exceeded the wealth of his fellow brethren. What was created was a communal egalitarianism in which all were equal, but all had freely chosen this equality denying another existence. The ideal life was the farming life, and pursuit of rewards beyond those ordained by community, rewards of wealth, office or greater knowledge was forbidden.3
Hence, between the household and the community there were conflicting and contradictory rights and obligations regarding property; on the one hand, one was obligated to subordinate his material interests to those of the community, and on the other hand, the community could not make a claim to household property. Though they were to have a community of interest, they were never to hold all things in common. Indeed, much of the history of Anabaptism (Hutterites, Amish and
343 Mennonite) can be written as the search for accommodating social formations within which this contradictory relation between the community and household could be reproduced.32 A violent ideological backlash and the resulting persecution, combined with the rapidly emerging capitalist economy, led many to flee early in the history of the movement.33 And for nearly three centuries (15251800), in the shifting political contours of East Prussia, Poland (Royal Prussia), or West Prussia (after 1790), Anabaptist refugees negotiated with feudal lords for usufruct rights to land, religious freedom, and various kinds of exemptions.34 The history of the Alexanderwohl Mennonites has been punctuated by migration from one region to another and by profound political and economic change. First, they saw the transformation of the Netherlands' economy, violent political upheaval, the Protestant Reformation, and the genesis of their religious ideology. Next, they established community formations in Poland and Prussia (ca. 1550), where for nearly three centuries they wrested religious and economic privileges from feudal lords. Dramatic economic and political changes in Prussia led the Alexanderwohl Mennonites to abandon the region. During the winter of 1820, twenty-one families left the Prussian village of Prezchovka and sought still another compatible site for the reconstitution of their community, looking eastward, toward Russia, and away from advancing capitalism.
Mennonites in Russia With the annexation of south Russia between 1774 and 1783, Russia incorporated a vast, virgin, unsettled grassland once inhabited by pastoralists. With these acquisitions Russia had by the eighteenth-century expanded to include six-and-one-half million square miles. To safeguard and develop the region, emissaries were sent (1762) on classified missions throughout Europe in search of suitable settlers. Between 1765 and 1790, Catherine II's administration settled 75,000 colonists on more than one-and-one-half million desiatini;35 by the mid-nineteenth century, 450,000 foreigners occupied nearly six million acres. Among the mostly German-speaking colonists in southern Russia were the Mennonites from the Vistula region of West Prussia.36 Russian officials had formalized their arrangements with the Menno-
344 nites in a Privilegium (1800), which provided for religious freedom, military exemptions, trade and industry incentives, as well as land. Among these privileges, and perhaps the most important, was their right to limited self-government.37 From the beginning, the Russian feudal state specified and designated rights to property, both common and household. These were, in turn, specific and contingent upon other rights governing the politics within and between the villages, and within the colony, as well as commercial life more generally.38 Settling in two colonies, Molochnaia and Khortitsa, Russian officials and Russian-appointed Mennonite representatives promoted the Strassendorf settlement pattern and a non-commodity, usufruct relationship to land. Dividing the village into halves, households faced one another along a single street. Each was allocated approximately 175 acres (65 desiatini), and arable land for grains was divided into strips and scattered along the perimeter of common pastures. In the state's specification of the household's relation to land it was clear that it was to be granted in "...incontestable and perpetually inheritable possession, not personally to any one colonist, but to each colony as a whole, with every family merely enjoying the use of its allotted portion in perpetuity."39 Although land was distributed to individual households, the colony and villages were to supervise its distribution and, in significant ways, its use. Adjacent rivers, wasteland, forest, and lakes were assigned to the villages and colony. The colonies were to set aside "surplus" and "reserve"lands that were to be given to future immigrant and landless families. Moreover, craftsmen (Handwerker) were provisioned with land for a home and garden site as well as rights to the community pasture. Occasionally, village officials reallocated land to compensate for unequal access and differential fertility. Villages were governed by an elected council (Dorfsamt) and mayor (Schulze). Above them was the district office (Gebietsamt), headed by an Oberschulze.4" The Mennonites reestablished in Russia their congregational communities which were based upon diverse religious affiliations: Old Groningen Flemish (Alexanderwohl Mennonites), Flemish, and Frisian. These affiliations provided each congregation with a sense of autonomy and prevented the development of a politically centralized hierarchy. It was through the policies of the Russian state, however, that Mennonites adopted common institutions across congregations. One of the distinctively Mennonite institutions was the Waisenamt Widows and Orphans Office - which played an important role in routinizing their inheritance practices.41
345 Understanding village and domestic life in Russia requires that one examines the social relationships that linked not only households to the local community, but also to the social formation. The household in Russia was indissolubly bound to the social formation through a complex web of village self-government, the church and the Waisenamt. Outside of this web, households could not reproduce themselves. The village council, for example, taxed and reallocated land, administered community pastures, built roads and schools, managed a granary, and controlled the movement of labor. The household's dependence upon the community in matters such as access to land, the deployment of labor, and inheritance, created the conditions for its articulation with a community formation: an articulation that the Alexanderwohl Mennonites had known for nearly two centuries. Inheritance practices among the Mennonites are comprehensible only against this backdrop.
The community formation and inheritance Although Mennonites were granted use-rights to a full farm (or Wirtschaft) the Russian state stipulated an impartible rule of inheritance, which was contrary to their partible practices. In an official policy (Ukaz) issued in 1764, the state attempted to regularize relations to the land among otherwise diverse immigrant groups with potentially disruptive and conflicting inheritance rules. In some areas, the state imposed the mir (repartitional tenure), and among the Mennonites they promoted hereditary household tenure. The Ukaz also stipulated a rule of ultimogeniture, established the type and amount of land allotments, rules for distribution of chattel, and provisions for the care of widows and unmarried daughters.42 In a strongly worded defense of their inheritance practices, the Molochnaia colonists wrote that: We are unable to depart in the least detail from our rules regarding inheritance. On the one hand these regulations are closely connected with our religious beliefs and are even based on them. On the basis of the Letter of Privileges, we view our entitlement to our own inheritance rules as a definite right. We wish to maintain these rules in the future and are not inclined to alter them in the slighest detail. Every departure from these rules undermines the very basis of our unity and contentment. This would rob us of material and moral well-being and destroy our existence here.43
Among the responsibilities of the Dorfsamt and Waisenamt was the administration of the inheritance rules. Though the Mennonites were allowed to follow their practice of dividing the estate equally among
346 children, they were forbidden to divide the usufruct rights to the original Wirtschaft(the full farm along with the web of use-rights). The latter rule of impartibility had been mandated by the Russian state. The Waisenamtbecame the institution which mediated differences between the state and the Mennonite communities. The Mennonites in south Russia established the Waisenamt,an institution charged with the care of orphans and widows, and the pre- and post-mortem division of movable and immovable property. More than a collection of inheritance rules, however, the institution was far more wide-ranging in its work. Elected by the baptized males, several men were ordained as Waisenvorsteher.Regularly they met to manage the assets of the orphans, to arrange for the loaning of money from these accounts, and to maintain the records.44 The unsupervised division of land, the home, and associated farm buildings among heirs was prohibited. Movable property, in some cases, was distinguished, and could be distributed among heirs. Some movable property, however, could not be distributed: a surviving father, for example, was allowed to keep a horse, and a mother a cow.45 Soon after a death, the village head convened relatives and witnesses to establish the value of the estate and to identify liabilities. After debts were paid, the property was then divided between the remaining parent and offspring: the surviving parent received one-half the value of the estate, while the remainder of the estate was divided among the children. In the absence of an heir, the Waisenamtstipulated the eligible beneficiaries in precise detail. Once the value of an estate was established, a contract was signed and a report forwarded to the Waisenvorsteher.Adult beneficiaries, according to the rules, were to receive their inheritance one year after the death. When a single parent survived and continued farming, a minor child's inheritance could be withheld with the promise that it be paid into the Waisenamtfund at a later date, without interest. H. B. Friesen, a Mennonite farmer who left an extensive diary, describes how this worked in actual practice. 'After my father died, a change was made in my parent's land."How had the property of H. B.'s parents been put together? At his last marriage, H. B.'s father married a widow who occupied and controlled a full farm; before that, the father had never had an opportunity to purchase or inherit a Wirtschaft.It was not practical, according to the impartibility restriction (this seems to be
348 men, the heirs, guardians of children and those with power of attorney. About forty men....47
Friesen goes on to describe that the proceedings did not go smoothly. Records in the Waisenamt office had been lost, participants were dissatisfied and the proceeding "... took a different course than they had expected.... The discussion became quite heated so that when dinner was announced some did not want to eat with us."48 If this remedy failed, the administrators of the Waisenamt intervened. And as a last resort, discontented parties appealed to the clergy, whose decision was binding. The activities of the Waisenamt,however, did not end with the planning and final disposition of property. Through the control of property, they assured that the mentally and physically handicapped were adequately cared for;49 the financially insecure elderly were properly provisioned; and that orphans were appointed guardians not only to oversee the devolution of their property but to supervise their upbringing.5"With its far-reaching influence, the Waisenamt could even remove a child from the household of a surviving parent if it ruled the care and supervision inadequate.5' Friesen describes the events surrounding the death of his mother in 1846 when the children were removed from the home. The father, too poor to care for his children alone, allowed the Waisenamt to place them among "strangers." Jacob Martens, from Blumenort, took Helena, who stayed there until she was married. My brother David stayed at home. Grandmother had kept Justina already so she stayed with her for awhile. Later, sister Justina went to live with minister Epp and his wife in Blumenort. Afterwards, she had to serve as a cook in several places until she was married. Marie was taken by Gerhard Driedgers in Blumenort, but that was not a suitable place so after a few years she was taken into the home of Jacob Miraus in Gnadenheim, where she remained until she got married. Bernard was taken by Peter Loewens, Altonau, where he stayed until he was of age.:2
Even remarriage of a surviving spouse was regulated and confined to the period following disbursement of property. Otherwise, special permission had to be granted by the church and the Waisenamt. The Waisenamt,together with the church and the Russian state (which legitimized it), distributed land and controlled labor through the movement of orphans and dependents from one domestic unit to another. In among the Russian state, the community, household, and the individual, stood village and church officials with the authority to intervene
349 in daily affairs and reorder domestic life in significant ways. Individuals were not allowed to dispose freely of their immovable property, especially the use-rights to land. The village allocation of scattered arable lands and the common pasture created conditions which made the unmediated, free disposition of use-rights a threat to the village elements of production. The Alexanderwohl community had been granted land by the Russian state; it could not reproduce itself as a village if a villager at the time of death could freely sell or devolve the right to pasture. To avoid this, the community supervised the disposition of land. Mennonite inheritance practices had to account for the state's requirement to keep the farm intact while providing at the same time for the household's need to distribute the estate equally among children and a surviving parent. The Alexanderwohl community formation had reproduction requirements that necessitated an institution like the Waisenamt to mediate individual, community, and state interests. These specific conditions of reproduction, therefore, resulted in their unique combination of impartible and partible practices. Were these inheritance rules, however, simply transplanted to the United States? Below, I show that new conditions of production led to new practices.
On the move again Increasingly, Mennonites were drawn along with Russia into the international economy.3 No longer able to compete with the more cheaply produced wool from overseas beginning in the 1840s, the Mennonite colonies turned rapidly to the more profitable production of wheat. In 1841 Molochnaia farmers were grazing 107,895 sheep; by 1855 this number had decreased by thirty-four percent and never again reached the 1841 level. More and more farmers devoted their acreage to grain: in 1841, between thirteen and twenty acres; in 1850, about fifty-six acres; in 1865, nearly sixty-eight acres, and in 1875, approximately ninety acres. "Only during the late thirties and forties when arable farming began to supplant stock-breeding was most of this land divided into plots of varying sizes and each farmer given his share of good and bad, near and distant land."54 Just as quickly, they also faced stubborn social, political, and economic problems. Among them was landlessness - roughly six of ten were without land by 1865.55 Already in Russia, though not uniformly, the
350 shift to private farming was under way. Three years before the Alexanderwohl migration in 1874, the land was transformed into a commodity and the status of Mennonites changed from "Settler Proprietor" to private farmer.56In his discussion of the changes and reforms (compulsory Russian education, language, military conscription, changes in land tenure) that followed the Crimean war and the 1861 emancipation, James Urry has argued that the very notion of what he calls "congregational community" among the Mennonites was in jeopardy. Though thousands remained in Russia and prospered during the period of the Mennonite Commonwealth, others sought to reproduce their community formations in North and South America.57 Along with other railroads, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe, desperate to meet its payroll, dispatched agents around the world to recruit farmers.58But not just any farmers. The A.T.&S.F. had just completed a railroad to nowhere, and they needed capable pioneers with experience in grain production and cash. Zealously they courted the Mennonites. And after intense negotiations and competition with the Burlington Northern, the A.T.&S.F. succeeded. Ninety-eight Alexanderwohl families arrived in south central Kansas during the fall of 1874. In eight villages of eight to ten families they created common pastures with scattered fields distributed among residents. Even though households received title to land, they built their houses on and farmed land that they did not own. The villagers had committed themselves to something much greater than private, simple commodity production - they had committed themselves not just to the allocation of land, but to a comunity formation, one based upon community productive and distributive activities.59 Already by 1880 there were signs of a struggle to p -eserve the villages. Increasingly, Alexanderwohl was placing greate emphasis on the private, owner-operator, household producer.6a Ey 1882, a flurry of land transactions at the Marion County courthlouse indicate that villagers were rethinking the matter of land allocation and on the verge of entering a dramatically different period in their history, a period in which, increasingly, the private household was to play the dominant role in virtually every aspect of production and distribution.6'
351 Household and inheritance In less than ten years the Alexanderwohl Mennonites transplanted their entire community to the Great Plains of North America, established eight villages, and dismantled those villages as well as their regulatory institution, the Waisenamt. In a profoundly competitive agricultural economy, they privatized production, purchased up-to-date agricultural equipment, and began the expansion of their farms. And as the political and economic winds in North America shifted, they sought accommodation - never again were they to call upon the strength and resources of the-community formation to undertake emigration. Theirs was a final commitment to the private, independent, family farm. To understand inheritance practices in this period of their history, there was no place to turn but to the private household and its articulation with a capitalist economy. The Marion County Registrar of Deed's intuition about the radical subdivision of land was corroborated by an analysis of the land records. West Branch township in 1885 had an average number of divisions per section of 4.8; but by 1933, that number had dramatically increased - by sixty-nine percent - to an average of 8.1.62 But land records don't tell the whole story. To establish how this actually worked, I followed thirty-nine of the eighty-seven founding Alexanderwohl households through the federal and state population enumerations (1875-1930). I discovered that upon their arrival the majority of these were in the middle phase of their developmental cycles. The average age of the household head was forty years and the mean acres per household was 226, which steadily declined to half that size at retirement. Those households established between 1875 and 1885 (twenty-five households) were followed through their respective life courses. Their land holdings peaked and then sharply declined from a high of approximately 261 acres. The typical cycle, then, was characterized by efforts to enlarge the estate in the middle phase and then to reduce holdings near the end. Interview data showed that households differed widely, both in the relative importance attached to the often conflicting aims of keeping the farm intact (unity) and provision - "fair to all the kids" and in the strategies used to accomplish them. At one extreme, land and cash descended in equal parts to each child. At the other, no land or cash was available to reconstitute viable enterprises or reproduce non-agricultural households.
352 In addition to the differences in the extent of provision for offspring, there were also discrepancies in the form in which the provision was made. Often children took their shares only in land, which resulted in the radical subdividing of the land that you see on the plat maps. Other times, they took only cash. Sometimes they had a choice between the two, and often their decision was made for them according to parental discretion and market realities. In other cases, land was passed to a single heir and the remaining were given cash.63 Still others were provided only a dowry. The land records showed unusual subdivision. Life course data revealed that they built up estates and that their intent was not to keep it consolidated. But these data, like the land records, do not tell the whole story. Only intensive case studies revealed the process of devolution. I discovered through interviews with older members in the community that a rule did not govern their inheritance practices. Time and time again, respondents would say, at most, "my parents did what we are trying to do for our children; 'be fair to all of the kids."' That is, households did not uniformly specify a precise timing of the devolution, the heirs, or the nature of the property to be devolved. Individuals were at liberty to divide the estate according to the economic feasibility of doing so; the ability to raise settlements in forms other than land; the accessibility of non-agricultural employment; the preferred retirement strategies; the health and longevity of the senior generation; family size; the degree of ideological emphasis placed on the importance of agrarian life; and numerous related factors. The Mennonites had not known lawyers, wills, land registration, and probate courts. Recall that it was only in the early 1870s that the Mennonites enjoyed legal title to land in Russia. The state of Kansas had joined others (especially those becoming part of the union after 1850) in codifying the common law. In the United States, there had been several recent transformations in property and inheritance law. First, in the late eighteenth century, rules favoring primogeniture were abolished. In the nineteenth century, the position of married women as heirs and testators was considerably improved. After 1850, the majority of the states extended to married women the right to own and control all inherited or bequested property. They were finally free to "will to whom they chose and daughters could finally benefit from the intestacy laws that gave them a share equal to that of the eldest brother."64However, each state established different mechanisms for the property rights of women. In Kansas, where common law was
353 recognized, property accumulated after marriage went to the husband. More specifically, the intestacy law in Kansas stipulated in 1890 that where there was no will, the wife was to receive a half of the real and personal property. In the absence of children, she received all property. Before 1890, the Alexanderwohl Mennonites were neither probating wills nor following common law. After 1890, there were increasing numbers of wills with many and diverse solutions to the problem of inheritance.65 Consequently, the unmediated freedom to devolve immovable property in the United States was not (unlike in Russia where it threatened community production) contradictory to privatized, household production articulated with a capitalist social formation. As the unit of production shifted downward to the household, household heads need not concern themselves with the possible threat to village reproduction when devolving property. It was not surprising then to find that Mennonites radically subdivided the land. They were in effect asserting, for the first time in their history, their right to devolve property without an external demand (the state or community) to keep the land undivided. The patchwork of land distribution that I discovered in the United States did not mean, however, that the Alexanderwohl Mennonites practiced a strictly partible model of inheritance. They had, afterall, devolved farms intact to children and provided others with cash and gifts. Both impartible and partible models were present in the United States, which had also been true in Russia. Are we then to understand their inheritance practices in south central Kansas as merely transplanted traditions? I argue that the structures which produced these practices were very different; thus, the outcomes only appear to be the same.
Conclusion My initial inquiry led me to believe that the Mennonites had brought with them from Russia a rule of partible inheritance. I seemed to have all the ingredients for such an understanding: increasing numbers of divisions and decreasing size. I might have stopped my study at this point and reported the facts just as they appeared. The plat maps and land records were, however, misleading. Instead, I turned to the historical record and theorized inheritance as a mechanism that reproduces, or contradicts, the economic, political and social relations of specific social formations.6"
354 Recall that the Russian government had imposed limitations on Mennonite inheritance practices; the original land allotments could not be divided. The Mennonites, though reluctant, passed their immovable property to the next generation intact, but not according to a system that devolved the property to a single heir and deprived others. The Waisenamt,modified by the Mennonites in Russia, helped mediate the concerns of the Russian state and the community: to keep the Wirtschaft intact and provision the heirs. The Waisenamt's interventions, then, guaranteed that the scattered fields and common pasture of the village would not be subdivided among the children and a surviving parent and result in a patchwork land distribution pattern like that found in the United States. Inheritance practices under these conditions of production had to reproduce the structure of the Mennonite community within the Russian social formation. This accounts for their unique combination of partible and impartible practices. But, these practices, although similar in appearance, were not simply transplanted to the United States. First, the shift to the household as the unit of production along with its articulation with a capitalist social formation meant that individuals could independently assert, unlike in Russia, their rights to property. This is why the crazy quilt-like land distribution appeared on the plat maps in the United States. The Mennonites were fully asserting their private property rights in relationship to the distribution of land. This was a unique outcome of the disintegration of the community formation and the emergence of private household production, together with the assertion of the ideology of individualism and private property. With the shift to independent household production, a community institution need not concern itself with the affairs of inheritance, since the devolution of property no longer threatened community reproduction and the sometimes tenuous articulation with the Russian state. The household's reproduction was dependent upon its new articulation with the broader United States social formation. This set into motion its own logic of inheritance, one independent of the community. Second, in the United States the unity-provision problem, found also in Russia, was produced by totally different social realities. In the Russian case, the need for unity resulted from the combined forces of feudal economics (common pastures, scattered fields, community granaries) and the powerful state's requirement of impartibility.The need for provision resulted from the Mennonite ideological emphasis on private property and its byproduct: the freedom to provision property to any-
355 one. The Waisenamt mediated the competing tendencies produced by the specific reproduction requirements of a community articulated with a Russian social formation. In the United States, by contrast, the exclusive economic force of competition resulted in the need to keep the farm a viable economic enterprise, thus intact. The household's emphasis on private property, however, generated the need to provision all heirs - no institution mediated between the external (capitalist social formation) economic pressure to unify and the internal (household) need to provision. The radical subdivision of the land was possible only when the Russian state's demand to keep the land undivided ceased. In the United States, capitalist inheritance law and private household production combined to facilitate the use of both partibility and impartibility in devolving land. Mennonites combined aspects of both in Russia and the United States to create the appearance that they had simply transplanted old traditions. In reality their inheritance practices were reproducing very different social formations. This fact requires that one theorize inheritance practices within the formations they help to reproduce. Then, one can examine the relationship between inheritance and related variables: wealth, the rights of women, cash, demography, and labor mobility. These, among others, may facilitate or retard the reproduction of the concrete social formation in question. The power of the Mennonite community in Russia to implement its unique form of inheritance can be understood only after it is situated within the Russian political economy. In the United States, the community's power to enforce these rules was undermined by the logic of community within capitalism.
Notes 1. Jill Quadagno and John M. Janzen, "Old Age Security and the Family Life Course: A Case Study of Nineteenth-Century Mennonite Immigrants to Kansas," Journal of Aging Studies 1/1 (1987): 33-49. 2. I conducted intensive fieldwork in the Alexanderwohl community from 1979 to 1981 and intermittently thereafter. Later, state and federal census records were combined with survey data to reconstruct the histories of the founding households and villages. A modified version of the method of household reconstitution was used to map the life cycles of the founding households. Extensive collections of diaries, letters and family histories were used to supplement these materials. Thanks to the ever-present scribe, church records dating back to 1775 often contained invaluable economic and demographic information as well as important insight into politics and ideology. In reconstructing the relations to the land, probate court and County land records were combined with the A.T.&S.F. railroad
356
3.
4.
5.
6.
land offence records. The A.T.&S.F. land records were a rich source of data on the amount of land purchased, the degree of indebtedness, and payment schedules. Using these records, it was possible to establish how the community involved itself in the purchase of land. Life histories, village histories, household reconstitution, surveys, and government records were then used to construct several detailed case studies. I draw heavily from a diary kept by a Molochnaia villager from Alexanderthal. Born in 1837, H. B. Friesen left an unusually rich record of everyday life through to the establishment of the Alexanderwohl community in central Kansas and his death at age ninety in 1926. Although he was not a member of the Alexanderwohl village in Russia, his observations include references to that village and relatives there. This material allows an unusual opportunity to examine the degree to which actual practices overlap with those stated in the Waisenverordnung(rules of inheritance). This diary, in particular, provides a clear picture of the importance of the Waisenamt - Orphans and Widows Office - in daily life and of the dominance of community institutions in the regulation of domestic activities. The initial research was funded by the National Institute of Aging (NIA AGO1646-03) and more recent work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (FE-23259) and a University of Missouri Faculty Research Fellowship. In my previous work, I'd reconstructed the formation and disintegration of the Alexanderwohl community's production and distribution activities, beginning with the Netherlands' Radical Reformation of the sixteenth-century and ending in the United States during the early twentieth-century. Again, I knew that understanding this bewildering present, this patchwork of land distribution, required that I return to the past - not to discover some unchanging and immutable traditions but to see in these inheritance practices that the Alexanderwohl Mennonites were reshaping their past in the present, reformulating social practices: "their present as a rearrangement of their past and their past as a determinant of their present" - see Eric Wolf, "Aspects of Group Relations in a Complex Society: Mexico," in Teodor Shanin, editor, Peasants and Peasant Societies (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 46. A. H. Habakkuk, "Family Structure and Economic Change in Nineteenth-Century Europe," The Journal of Economic History 15/1 (1955): 1-12; John W. Cole and Eric R. Wolf, The Hidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley (New York: Academic Press, 1974), 181; Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson, Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Jack Goody, "Strategies of Heirship," Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. I I (1982): 3-20; Susan Carol Rogers and Sonya Salamon, "Inheritance and Social Organization Among Family Farmers," American Ethnologist 3/3 (1983): 529-550; Toby Ditz, Property and Kinship: Inheritance in Early Connecticut, 1750-1820 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). McCloskey, for example, has commented on the problems with correlating partible property devolution with open field systems, "In England the chief anomaly is that partible inheritance prevailed not in the heartland of the open fields, the Midlands, but in the very region where scattering was least severe, namely, the Southeast. Thirsk has suggested that partibility was more widespread than this at one time, and believes that at least in the East Midlands there is evidence of partibility causing scattering. Yet in the five counties of Oxfordshire to Essex, in all of which open fields occurred, David Roden finds 'no evidence,' even in the thirteenth century." See Donald McCloskey, "The Persistence of English Common fields," in
357
7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
12. 13.
14. 15.
William N. Parker and Eric L. Jones, editors, European Peasants and Their Markets: Essays in Agrarian Economic History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 104. See also Rosamund Faith, "Peasant Families and Inheritance Customs in Medieval England," The Agricultural History Review Vol. 14 (1966): 77-95; Philip J. Greven, Four Generations: Population, Land and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970); Jack Goody et al, Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800; Ellen Wiegandt, "Inheritance and Demography in the Swiss Alps," Ethnohistory, Vol. 24 (1977): 133-148; Robert McNetting, Balancing on an Alp: Ecological Change and Continuity in a Swiss Mountain Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Ruth Behar, Santa Maria del Monte: The Presence of the Past in a Spanish Village (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 83; Margaret H. Darrow, Revolution in the House: Family, Class, and Inheritance in Southern France, 1775-1825 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 69-85. John W. Cole and Eric R. Wolf, The Hidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley, 10. Toby Ditz, Property and Kinship: Inheritance in Early Connecticut, 1750-1820, 32. Susan Carol Rogers and Sonya Salamon, "Inheritance and Social Organization Among Family Farmers," 535. Ibid., 535. E. P. Thompson, "The Grid of Inheritance: A Comment," in Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson, editors, Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in WesternEurope, 1200-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 328360; Richard M. Smith, Land, Kinship and Life-cycle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). John W. Cole and Eric R. Wolf, The Hidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley, 179. A. H. Habakkuk, "Family Structure and Economic Change in Nineteenth-Century Europe," 1. In his landmark study of Western European inheritance practices, Habakkuk helped to set the terms for subsequent debates on European and, more generally, agrarian inheritance. Habakkuk took the family as his unit of analysis, and then correlated changes in its structure and behavior with patterns of land transfer. Where preference was given to partibility (division or provision of property among all heirs), he found low rates of celibacy, small family size, low migration, and early retirement. Where preference was given to single heirs (impartibility or unity), he found just the opposite. Habakkuk's conclusions were dramatic. He argued that inheritance practices ultimately affect, if not determine, the direction of development of industry: in partible areas, you find domestic industry, in impartible ones, industrialization and factories. Toby Ditz, Propertyand Kinship: Inheritance in Early Connecticut, 1750-1820, 26. In 1976 Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson assembled a sweeping collection of essays, Family and Inheritance, focusing on inheritance practices in Europe from 1200-1800. These scholars have set the tone and provided a new language for the current discussion. They have shown the myriad ways in which inheritance practices correspond to various types and features of social organization; Marvin Sussman, Judith N. Cates, and David T. Smith, The Family and Inheritance (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1970); Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, "Family Structures and Inheritance Customs in Sixteenth-Century France," in Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson, editors, Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
358
16.
17. 18.
19.
20.
21.
22. 23. 24.
25. 26.
1976), 43; Susan Carol Rogers and Sonya Salamon, "Inheritance and Social Organization Among Family Farmers," 529-550; Mark W. Friedberger, "Handing Down the Home Place: Farm Inheritance Strategies in Iowa," Annals of Iowa, Vol. 47 (1984), 539. Lutz Berkner, "Inheritance, Land Tenure and Peasant Family Structures: A German Regional Comparison," in Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson, editors, Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in WesternEurope, 1200-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 73. Toby Ditz, Property and Kinship: Inheritance in Early Connecticut, 1750-1820, 160-163. William Roseberry, Anthropologies and Histories: Essays in Culture, History, and Political Economy (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 30-31; 197232. Morteza Ardebili, "The Structure of Scientific Practice," Unpublished manuscript (1990); Russell Keat and John Urry, Social Theory as Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), 30; Roy Bhaskar, Reclaiming Reality: A Critical Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy (London: Verso, 1989); Ted Benton, Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977). William Roseberry, Anthropologies and Histories: Essays in Culture, History, and Political Economy, 197-232; Gavin Smith, Livelihood and Resistance: Peasants and the Politics of Land in Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 11-28. It should be noted at the outset that I depart in significant ways from the orthodox and often controversial understandings of modes of production. I do not believe it possible to reduce or limit the mode of production to the economic base, forces and relations of production. Societies are not mechanically erected on different economic bases; nor can they, in a similar fashion, be distinguished from one another; see Eric R. Wolf, Europe and The People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 76. Moreover, change does not result entirely from developments internal to the mode of production (i.e., the developing forces of production). Derek Sayer, The Violence of Abstraction: The Analytic Foundations of Historical Materialism (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 84. A. H. Habakkuk, "Family Structure and Economic Change in Nineteenth-Century Europe," 10. Jan de Vries, The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age, 1500-1700 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974); Lambert G. Jansma, "The Rise of the Anabaptist Movement and Societal Changes in the Netherlands," in Irvin Buckwalter Horst, editor, The Dutch Dissenters: A Critical Companion to Their History and Ideas (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986). This is a term that James Urry has used to describe their communities. From their beginnings, these various Anabaptist groups did not represent a consolidated effort. There were three centers: 1) a Zurich, Switzerland branch, 2) a North German-Dutch wing, and 3) a South German-Austrian contingent. See, Cornelius J. Dyck, An Introduction to Mennonite History (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1981); William R. Estep, The Anabaptist Story (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975); and James Stayer, Anabaptists and the Sword (Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1972). Views on the proper relations among the state, the church community, and private property varied according to where the offshoot found economic and political conditions
359
27. 28. 29. 30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35. 36.
37.
suited to its particular needs. See Peter James Klassen, The Economics of Anabaptism, 1525-1560 (London: Mouton and Co., 1964). The Alexanderwohl Mennonites originate with one of the more conservative of the Netherland's groups, the Old Groningen Flemish. See David C. Wedel, The Story of Alexanderwohl (North Newton, Kansas: Mennonite Press, Inc., 1974). George Hunston Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962). Menno Simons, The Complete Writingsof Menno Simons (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1974), 558. William Keeney, Dutch Anabaptist Thought and Practice, 1539-1654 (Nieuwkoop: B. de Graff, 1968), 149-150. In 1527, at Schleitheim, Switzerland, various factions of Anabaptist groups gathered to discuss theological differences. The "Brotherly Union," a document listing seven principles of agreement, was negotiated and underscored their unanimous decision to utilize the ban: "The BAN shall be employed with all those who have given themselves over to the lord to walk after him in his commandments. This shall be done before the breaking of bread so that we may all eat from one bread and drink from one cup." For a copy of the "Brotherly Union," see John Friesen, "Mennonites Through the Centuries: From the Netherlands to Canada" (Steinbach, Canada: Mennonite Village Museum, 1985). Still today among the Amish, Hutterite, and the more conservative Mennonites, the Ban figures prominently as a mechanism for social control. James Urry, "The Snares of Reason: Changing Mennonite Attitudes to 'Knowledge' in Nineteenth-Century Russia," Comparative Studies of Society and History 25/2 (1983): 311. This argument has been fully developed in an unpublished book manuscript by Jeffrey Longhofer, Morteza Ardebili, and Jerry Floersch, "Moving Backward Into the Future: Community Persistence and Disintegration Among the Mennonites." It is estimated that seventy percent of the Protestants who lost their lives in Flanders were Anabaptists, see Patricia Carson, The Fair Face of Flanders (Belgium: E. Story-Scientia, 1974), 166. Horst Penner, "The Anabaptists and Mennonites of East Prussia," Mennonite Quarterly Review 22/4 (1948): 212-225; and Horst Penner, "West Prussian Mennonites Through Four Centuries," Mennonite Quarterly Review 23/4 (1949): 232-245. One desiatina is equal to 2.7 acres. Catherine had tirelessly pursued the Mennonites, and by 1789, her agents had, with the promise of special privileges and exemptions, lured them to south Russia and established the exclusively Mennonite Khortitsa colony. See, David G. Rempel, "Mennonite Colonies in New Russia: A Study of Their Settlement and Economic Development from 1789-1914," Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, Stanford University, 25-32; and Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia: From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 482-483. In 1803, a second colony, Molochnaia, was founded; by 1811 it had nineteen villages. And by 1868, with many more villages, they registered in excess of 25,000 inhabitants, James Urry, None But Saints: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia, 1789-1889 (Canada: Hyperion Press Limited, 1989), 287. Roger P. Bartlett, Human Capital: The Settlement of Foreigners in Russia, 17621804 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 72-73; James Urry, None But Saints, 71-74.
360 38. See Robert McNetting's book, Balancing on an Alp for a similar description of how these social relations were negotiated and constrained throughout the history of an Alpine community. 39. David G. Rempel, "The Mennonite Commonwealth in Russia: A Sketch of its Founding and Endurance, 1789-1919," Mennonite Quarterly Review 48/1 (1974): 6; For descriptions of the settlement pattern see also J. A. Duerksen, "Przechowka and Alexanderwohl," Mennonite Life 10/2 (1955): 76-82; Adolf Ens, "Mennonite Education in Russia," in John Friesen, editor, Mennonites In Russia: Essays in Honor of Gerhard Lohrenz (Winnipeg, Canada: Canada Mennonite Bible College Publications, 1989), 75-99; Henry C. Smith, Smith's Story of the Mennonites (Newton, Kansas: Faith and Life Press, 1981), 262; Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 1789-1910 (Winnipeg, Canada: Christian Press, 1978), 183-186; and Mennonite Encyclopedia (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1955-1959), Vol. 1,24. 40. On village distribution of lands see, David G. Rempel, "The Mennonite colonies in New Russia: A Study of Their Settlement and Economic Development from 17891914," 111; and David G. Rempel, "The Mennonite Commonwealth in Russia: A Sketch of its Founding and Endurance, 1789-1919," 7. On village and colony administration see, James Urry, None But Saints, 71-74. 41. Jeffrey Longhofer and Jerry Floersch, "Old Age and Inheritance in Two Social Formations: The Alexanderwohl Mennonites in Russia and the United States," Journal of Aging Studies 6/2 (1992): 93-112. 42. On inheritance rules see, David G. Rempel, "The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia: A Study of Their Settlement and Economic Development from 17891914," 103-111; Roger P. Bartlett, Human Capital, 70-73; James Urry, None But Saints, 61; Jacob Peters, The Waisenamt: A History of Mennonite Inheritance Custom (Steinbach, Canada: Mennonite Village Museum, 1985); Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 377-385. 43. Jacob Peters, The Waisenamt, 6. 44. The Waisenamt paid interest into the accounts of orphans while loaning money to community members. 45. We are restrained by a lack of data (Mennonite) to broaden our inquiry to gender and account for why men received horses and women cows. 46. The information on H. B. Friesen is taken from The Diary and Recollections of H. B. Friesen, trans. John F. Schmidt (Newton, Kansas: Mennonite Library and Archives, 1974), 42-43. 47. H. B. Friesen, Diary, 57. 48. H. B. Friesen, Diary, 58. 49. The Theilungsverordnungfrom the Gnadenfeld village stipulates that, "If among the inheritors, there is an unfortunate one, not responsible for his will, e.g., one is feeble minded, blind, or cripple, etc., then it is the duty of the Waisenamt, the village head, the spokesman and Curators, to determine to what degree the unfortunate one is incapable of gaining his livelihood. If he is destined to lifelong incapacitation, he is entitled in advance to obtain a third of the parental estate, and then to inherit his equal share with the other heritors of the remainder; unless the estate is adequate to care for him without this provision. In this case it is to be determined, and announced in advance, what is his portion. At the same time, it is to be decided where and how his care is to be secured, so he does not become a burden to the congregation." From Theilungsverordnung 1850 (North Newton, Kansas: Mennonite Library and Archives), Article 7.
361 50. H. B. Friesen's sister died in 1872 and he was appointed guardian. He writes, "Soon after we were through sowing, G. Jantzen divided the property. I and his brother were the Guardians of the children. Since Gerhard was blind, he was given 100 Ruble extra and then also got an equal share with the other brothers and sisters," H. B. Friesen, Diary, 48. 51. In conducting fieldwork (1990) among the Kleine Gemeinde Mennonites in northern Belize, I discovered that the Waisenamt was being reconstituted in order to deal with a poor widow and her five children. Again, in a self-governing community, they were faced with having to arrange for the care of children. 52. H. B. Friesen, Diary, 7. 53. Cattle and horses dominated livestock production until they were replaced by sheep beginning in 1820: Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 182-185; James Urry, None But Saints, 88-89. The Crown, insisting upon the improvement of agricultural productivity in the colonies, assisted Mennonites in raising a quality of sheep that produced a superior wool. The government encouraged the colonists and the large estate owners to produce merino sheep. The results were dramatic; by 1846 there were 7.5 million merinos, the majority in just four provinces of New Russia: Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia, 340-342; James Urry, None But Saints, 83-89 and 104-116. As wheat replaced sheep, Molochnaia colonists in south Russia prospered, and soon the Mennonites were helping establish Russia as the breadbasket of the world (1870s). Repeal of the British Corn laws in 1846 had stimulated the production of grain for export: Peter I. Lyashchenko, History of the National Economy of Russia to the 1917 Revolution (New York: Macmillan Co., 1949), 367-377; M. E. Falkus, The Industrialization of Russia, 1700-1914 (New York: Macmillan Co., 1972), 37; From 1800 to 1850, Russian grain exports increased by fifteen times - from 2.38 million bushels to 35.7 million. And by mid-century, wheat was the most significant of the exports - sixtyone percent, Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 141. 54. David G. Rempel, "The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia: A Study of Their Settlement and Economic Development from 1789-1914," 110, 126, 242-243. 55. See, H. B. Friesen, Diary, 39; James Urry, None But Saints, 196-218; Harry Loewen, "A House Divided: Russian Mennonite Nonresistance and Emigration in the 1870s," in John Friesen, editor, Mennonites in Russia: Essays in Honor of Gerhard Lohrenz (Winnipeg, Canada: Canada Mennonite Bible College Publication, 1989), 127-136; Adolf Ens, "Mennonite Education in Russia," 75-81; Henry C. Smith, Smith's Story of the Mennonites, 265-266. 56. Each village was allowed to vote on how to consolidate the scattered strips and how to distribute, among the landless, the remaining colony-owned surplus lands. See James Urry, None But Saints, 208. 57. See James Urry, "The Russian State, The Mennonite World and the Causes of the 1870s Migrations from Russia to North America," unpublished manuscript (1990), 13. 58. The A.T.&S.F. was one among seven railroads granted ten million acres in Kansas, or one-fifth of the state's land: see Paul Gates, Fifty Million Acres (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1954), 252. Of the railroad lands, the A.T.&S.F. was granted three million acres. Nearly all of this (68%) was in south-central Kansas. The state's transfer of land to the A.T.&S.F. "... consisted of every alternate section of land, designated by odd numbers, for ten sections in width on each side of the line or 6,400 acres per mile." See Richard Sheridan, An Economic
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59.
60.
61.
62.
63. 64.
65.
66.
History, 1500-1900, Part IA, (School of Business-Bureau of Business Research: University of Kansas, 1956), 83, 85. In order to promote the sale of land, the railroads organized land-immigration offices around the world. Private agents were then hired to promote and negotiate the sale. Jeffrey Longhofer, "Land, Household, and Community: A Study of the Alexanderwohl Mennonites," Ph.D. dissertation. Department of Anthropology, University of Kansas (1986). It is not the purpose of this article to explain why the Alexanderwohl villages gave way to strictly household production in the United States. This has been done elsewhere and is not relevant to the objectives of this essay: See, forthcoming, Jeffrey Longhofer, "Communities Persisting and Disintegrating: Mennonites and Two Counterfactuals, Amish and Hutterite," Research in Economic Anthropology, Vol. 15 (1993). Hochfeld, Emmathal, Grunfeld, Springfield, Gnadenfeld, and Blumenfeld villages consolidated their scattered land holdings into private farms. By 1885, in the wake of privatization, more than half the founding families had moved from Gnadenfeld: See Jeffrey Longhofer, "Land, Household, and Community: A Study of the Alexanderwohl Mennonites," 134-162. Likewise, the increased subdividing was reflected in a thirty-seven percent decrease in their average size (from 145 acres to 92.3 acres). In 1885, section twenty-two contained six divisions and owners; by 1933, these had more than doubled to fourteen divisions and thirteen owners: See Jeffrey Longhofer, "Land, Household, and Community: A Study of the Alexanderwohl Mennonites," 165-170; Jeffrey Longhofer, "Partible Inheritance Practices and the Commercialization of Agriculture: The Alexanderwohl Mennonites," Paper presented at the 87th American Anthropological Association Meetings, Chicago, Illinois. See Jill Quadagno and John M. Janzen, "Old Age Security and the Family Life Course: A Case Study of Nineteenth-Century Mennonite Immigrants to Kansas." Carole Shammas, Marylynn Salmon, and Michel Dahlin, Inheritance in America from Colonial Times to the Present (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 83-84, 232-233. At present, we are examining wills to determine the extent to which the changing rights of women affected the division of land. In particular, we are looking for changing forms and amounts of provision. Even the discovery of randomness in inheritance practices does not suggest that they are without structural conditions or determination. Practices that often appear random or indeterminate are themselves determined by the structure of the formation in question. Let us contrast, for example, capitalist with feudal formations. Within the structure of capitalism, it is the ideology of individualism and the institution of private property that, in the final analysis, create the conditions for the individuals to assert their private wills. The farmer in capitalism is loosed from the web of use-rights and obligations that pertain to the devolution of property. In feudalism, where the household and individual are often subordinate and land tenure is normally determined by a set of proscribed political relations, inheritance practices may be highly uniform: See, E. P. Thompson, "The Grid of Inheritance." In different formations, then, inheritance practices are themselves determined by the manner in which the formation organizes property relations, and the latter is, in turn, determined by the formation's structure: See, Colin Creighton, "Family, Property and Relations of Production in Western Europe," Economy and Society 9/2 (1980): 139. Agrarian producers face very different structural conditions when devolving property, depending on the specificity of their formation and history.
