“The history of family is in part the history of a place.”
– Allison Light in Common People: In Pursuit of My Ancestors
Our Kliewer ancestors of the late 18th and 19th centuries can be traced back to what is now central Poland. As Mennonites, they were part of a community of believers with distinct ethnic and cultural characteristics defined in part by their native language Plattdeutsch (Low German), their “strong inward ties” to family and community, and their desire to remain exempt from military service (Magdalena Lica-Kaczan, ed., 12). Wishing to maintain these aspects of their collective identity, they were not averse to pulling up ties and relocating as family groups and communities, which they did numerous times in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The 1860s and 1870s were characterized by increasing geopolitical uncertainty and disorder in what is now Poland and southern Ukraine, which threatened their religious lifestyle and led to a great migration of about 18,000 Mennonites to the United States and Canada. My great-great grandparents, David and Maria Kliewer, and their two children, Franz and Eva, were part of this great migration, leaving central Poland for Kansas in the spring of 1876. They traveled to the port city of Hamburg, then sailed to Hull, England, where they caught a train to Liverpool, and then sailed for Castle Garden, New York, where they arrived on May 28, 1876. They traveled with dozens of other familiar Mennonite families, including my other great-great grandparents, Peter and Anna Funk.
In October 2023, I had the opportunity to visit Poland with my husband Jack. We set aside a day to explore the back roads along the Vistula River between Warsaw and Płock. I was particularly interested in visiting the former Mennonite communities of Deutsch Kazuń (today Nowy Kazuń) and Deutsch Wymyśle (today Nowe Wymyśle). These are the places where the Kliewers and Funks said their goodbyes to loved ones as they set out on their long journey to the U.S. in the spring of 1876. During my visit nearly 150 years later, I hoped to find witness buildings and familiar names in old cemeteries as a way to connect. Jack and I left Warsaw first thing in the morning on October 17, 2023, traveled alongside the Vistula River, and ended our day in Płock.
Our day exploring is captured in the videos posted below.
Sarah J. Martin 