Bergthal Colony

The Bergthal Colony was a Mennonite settlement in the southern part of the former Russian Empire, now Ukraine that emigrated to Manitoba, Canada. The Mennonites coming from the Russian Bergthal Colony to Canada are sometimes called Bergthaler but later some congregations that originally came from Bergthal kept the name while others did not.

The colony consisted of five villages: Schoenfeld, Heuboden, Bergthal, Schoenthal, and Friedrichsthal. The villages 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, bishop Gerhard Wiebe persuaded the entire colony consisting of about 500 families, to emigrate to Manitoba.

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.

...
Wikipedia