“Bogus Mennonite Monument” in Florence, Kansas

This is a “bogus Mennonite monument” at Hillcrest Cemetery in Florence, Kansas. According to the Mennonite Library and Archives (MLA) at Bethel College, this monument tells of an event that never happened.

Inscribed on the monument are the words: “This is the gravesite of over three hundred Russian Mennonites who died during a smallpox epidemic in 1874-1875.” But there is no record of 300 smallpox deaths in Florence that winter.

The monument also has a quote from a letter written by the Mennonite Board of Guardians in the spring of 1875:

“We work with one goal in mind, namely that of helping each other so that we may be worthy of God’s call and not hinder his work. We hope that a burning fire of love will be our protection and a strength for unity.”

Set within the monument is a small gravestone with a lamb on top of it. The gravestone was carved for Lelah M. Kirgan, and she is presented as one of the Russian Mennonite smallpox victims — but she wasn’t a Russian Mennonite and her family had no association to this group.

This monument was a project of the Florence Historical Society. They wanted to fulfill a wish of their former historian, the late Mae Evelyn Kolodziejczak: to mark a mass grave of Mennonite smallpox victims.

What exactly Mae Evelyn found that made her think there is a mass grave here for 300 smallpox victims isn’t clear, but the money was raised and the monument was placed in 1987 to fulfill Mae Evelyn’s dream.

Experts at the MLA say that the memorial promotes an “alternate universe event in Mennonite history.”

Mennonite Struggles in Florence

After the Russian government stated intentions to end special privileges to German-speaking Dutch-born Mennonite colonists, the Mennonites decided to come to America. On December 26, 1874, the SS Vaderland landed on American soil with almost 700 members of the Alexanderwohl community from the Russian village of Antonovka, and they were headed straight for Kansas. Other ships brought more Mennonites, and they settled in Great Bend, Newton, and Halstead, but most of the Vaderland passengers gathered in a large, single room building in Florence. No living arrangements had been made for the Mennonites in Florence, and coupled with an historically cold winter, “an emergency on the part of the Mennonite Board of Guardians” was suddenly apparent.

“The temporary home of the Russian Mennonites” filled two pages in the March 20, 1875 edition of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Source

The illustration above makes Russian Mennonite settler life in Florence look almost pleasant, but Rev. Christian Krehbiel was in Florence during the winter of 1875 when the “wretched company of immigrants stranded” on the prairie were experiencing their worst hardship as a group. He documented what he saw.

“Based on reports I had heard, I pictured the situation of these unfortunates as being frightful enough; but what I found was ten times as bad as I had imagined.

“The only indoor quarters of this multitude of about one hundred families with children was a store about 80 by 30. It was a veritable pesthole. The doors and the few windows and gables were kept closed, the center aisle was crowded with persons of all ages. Standing about, on either side of this center aisle lay sick and exhausted men, women, and children on straw sacks midst cooking and eating utensils. No fresh air! for, like most Europeans, they thought fresh air harmful.

“You can picture the conditions in this drafty hall, packed with human creatures, many of them sick, without proper ventilation in a pest-laden air charged with coal gas, meager food, little soap or water, no facilities for bodily cleanliness, no privacy — a terrible scene!” Source

The conditions sound horrifying, and people definitely died. In his book The Helpless Poles, Abe Unruh wrote that one man “died enroute to America,” and that once they were in Florence, “the death rate was high among them, it is reported a child passed away every other night” during the winter.

There were around 600 Mennonites in Florence that winter. If we take Unruh literally, that a child passed away every other night during the winter, that’s about 45 dead children, not 300. He doesn’t mention smallpox deaths or a mass grave of Mennonites in Florence.

Christian Krehbiel was a personal witness to the struggles of the Mennonites in Florence, and he did not mention a mass death among the unfortunate families, nor did he mention a mass grave of over half of the multitude he was tasked with caring for.

If 300 people had died, this would have been a death rate of at least 50%, maybe as much as 60% [of the Russian Mennonites in Florence]. Source

I searched the GRanDMA OnLine (GMOL) database, and out of all of the confirmed SS Vaderland passengers, I counted less than 50 that died in Kansas in 1874 and during the entire year of 1875.

Another ship arrived around the same time as this group, the SS Abbotsford, and it carried some of the remaining inhabitants of the Russian village of Antonovka who did not board the Vaderland. Small pox did break out on this ship, and eight children got sick and were quarantined. But all them (whose names are known) reportedly recuperated well enough to travel that same month.

The arrival of Russian Mennonites in Kansas was news. Locals were curious about the Russian Mennonites because they were different, and the news obliged by reporting bits of news and gossip about them.

For the most part, the group seemed healthy. The younger ones would “carry wood on their backs two miles” and journalists wrote that carrying heavy loads of timber against the wind was “only sport for them.”

One article mentioned Mennonite burial customs, how they “keep their dead for three days,” and that dead children are “wrapped up in a cloth and hung upon the wall, as a sack of flour, until the end of the three days.” Scores of dead children hanging from a warehouse wall in Florence, or diseased bodies hanging around for three days (during a time when burials for victims of disease were generally made quickly) surely would have made headlines.

The Junction City Weekly Union, Junction City, KS, Mar 27, 1875

By March 1875 the hardest part of the winter was over, and in that short time, the Mennonites built a hotel, dam, and grist mill in Halstead; had sunk a coal shaft in Marion county; constructed hundreds of homes; and a few of them married. If the Mennonites experienced the loss of 300 of their group, no one talked about it.

Smallpox Hoax?

There was a report that began making the rounds in January 1875 that said the Mennonites in Newton (about 30 miles from Florence) had smallpox.

Oskaloosa Sickle, Oskaloosa, KS, Jan 2, 1875

But just a few days later, newspapers were saying that the rumor wasn’t true; the Mennonites in Newton did not have smallpox.

Leavenworth Daily Commercial, Leavenworth, KS, Jan 5, 1875

Ellsworth Reporter, Ellsworth, KS, Jan 7, 1875

One report suggested that the smallpox rumor was started by an immigration agent in an attempt to lure the Mennonites elsewhere.

The Troy Bulletin, Troy, KS, Jan 16, 1875

A letter written by Mennonite Bernard Warkentin on January 20, 1875 confirms that there was smallpox in the group, but not anywhere near levels that would be considered an epidemic. Warkentin wrote of just one case of smallpox that ended in “four children dead from hunger fever and six others sick from various other causes.”

The research of Leslie B. Allison at Kansas State University (1965) suggests that the smallpox epidemic and mass grave was nothing more than a “local legend.” Allison believed that the legend grew from a letter written January 23, 1875:

“There is in Florence about three hundred Russians and they have got the smallpox.”

The legend likely did not come from this letter, since it’s dated after the newspapers announced that the Mennonites had smallpox. But this letter, and surely others, further promoted the idea of a smallpox epidemic among the Mennonites.

There are probably several graves around Florence for some people who died that winter, but there is no record of a mass grave for 300.

The Mennonites were apparently not plagued much by smallpox, but more by this “local legend” for 150 years and counting.

Article from Marion County Record, January 21, 1987, provided by Bethel College

It seems that the MLA is correct — the mass grave of 300 smallpox victims is an “alternate universe event in Mennonite history” concocted by the Florence Historical Society in the 1980’s.

Who is Lelah Kirgan?

Why the gravestone of Lelah Kirgan was embedded in this monument is also a mystery, and part of the constructed “alternate universe” by Florence historians.

Is this the marker with the “Russian Bear” on it that Leslie B. Allison identifies in 1965? Article from Marion County Record, January 21, 1987, provided by Bethel College

Kirgan is an Irish surname. There were no Kirgans on the SS Vaderland, and according to the GMOL database, there were no Kirgans on any ship carrying Russian Mennonites that arrived to America.

Given the extreme struggles of the Russian Mennonites when they arrived in Florence, it’s unlikely that they would have been able to afford a gravestone like this in 1874-1875.

From what I can tell, Lelah was the daughter of Liesette M. Schmitz and Leroy Allen Kirgan. The Kirgans came to Kansas from Ohio sometime after 1883, and Lelah was probably born here after that, about ten years or more after the Russian Mennonites first arrived in Florence. Unfortunately I did not find the Kirgan family on an 1885 census, but that could help pinpoint when Lelah was born.

Lelah was the “little daughter of L.A. Kergan” who was reported to have died in 1887 and was buried in the Florence cemetery. There is only one Kirgan (or Kergan) believed to be buried here, and it’s Lelah.

The Florence Herald, Florence, KS, Aug 20, 1887

Liesette and Leroy stayed in Kansas for a little while after Lelah died, and Leroy was a constable in Doyle Township for several years. They were back in Ohio by 1900, where they both later died and were buried.

Mennonite Successes in Florence

“The wheat that built Kansas” was brought here by the Russian Mennonites. Hard winter wheat, known as Turkey Red, was brought on the SS Vaderland in 1874 and was planted for the first time on American soil by immigrants.

Brudertal settlement near Florence. Source

Through the introduction of hard winter wheat, Russian Mennonites quickly transformed what wheat production looks like in Kansas. The way we farm in Kansas literally changed due to the success of this winter wheat introduced by immigrants.

Weidefeld settlement near Hillsboro. Source

Russian Mennonites are responsible for making Kansas the number one wheat producer in the United States, or “the breadbasket of the world.” We can thank them for making wheat a top producing crop for the United States.

“Bernard Warkentin was a German-Mennonite farmer and flour miller in Ukraine in the 1870s. He came to North America on a scouting mission for a new home for his colony, which was fleeing Russian persecution for their peaceful beliefs. He sought a region similar in climate and topography to the steppes of Ukraine, and he found it in central Kansas. In 1874, he settled in Halstead, building a grist mill on the banks of the Little Arkansas River and encouraging other Mennonites to join him. And tradition has it that he brought with him a chest full of Turkey Red seed wheat from his Ukrainian homeland — a winter wheat variety unlike any grown in America at the time.”

Farm in Ohrloff, Molochna, Russia. “Threshing floor behind the fruit gardens and planted woods in Ohrloff. The roofs of the large barns are visible.” Source

Today winter wheat accounts for 70 to 80 percent of the country’s total production, and Kansas is at the top of the list, producing about 10.8 million tons a year. Kansas is what it is today because immigrants were once welcomed with open arms.