School records

The historical record does not consist merely of the deeds and decrees of the powerful, such as the Russian land commission’s 1869 mandate that the Molotschna villages distribute all of their surplus land. In fact, the documents of history include the most mundane of a community’s records, even to something as simple and boring as a list of students attending a village school.

Examining such records can reveal a great deal about the people who inhabited that time and space and give us a better sense of the rise and fall and courses of their lives. Consider, for example, the extant school records for Waldheim of Molotschna colony.

Waldheim is the red rectangle to the upper right.

Tim Janzen and others have collected various school records for Molotschna and made them available here. Waldheim is included in four of the collected records, for the years 1853–1855, 1861–1862, 1873–1874, and 1883–1884.

Waldheim was established in 1836, if you recall, by the group from Volhynia, which likely included our matriarch Helena Zielke. Thus the village had existed for seventeen years by the time of the first school record that we have. With that brief background, we are ready to examine the records from this thirty-year period.

What becomes immediately obvious is the growth of the school in a short time, from 56 students in 1853–1855 to 176 in 1861–1862. That period was the peak, as the school then contracted in size to 131 in 1873–1874 and further to 88 in 1883–1884. Did the period of immigration to North America during the 1870s account for some of the decline during that time?

Digging into the details reveals further nuances. Reading through the names for 1873–1874, one sees a number of blended families, where the kids have different last names from the father or from each other (father listed first):

• Benjamin Voth: Helena Ediger 11, Maria Voth 7
• Abraham Dueck: Kornelius Voth 11, Johann Voth 7, Susanna 6
• Franz Neumann: Abraham 11, Jacob Buller 11, Elisabeth Buller 10, Helena Neumann 6

Since divorce was not common among Mennonites of that time, there is really only one explanation: a higher mortality rate among adults than we experience today. The widowed parent of one or more children generally did not stay single for long; the bereaved found a new mate to help raise the children already born as well to build a new family together.

Continuing to read through the list, one encounters familiar names such as Wedel, Voth, Unrau (or Unruh), Pankratz, and Ratzlaff—many of the same names first encountered at the Przechovka, West Prussia, church, as well as many more.

For example, Jacob Zielke/Zuelke (both spellings are used) appears in 1861–1862 and 1873–1874 registers. As far as I can tell, however, he is no direct relation to Helena.

Then there are the Bullers, several in every list. In addition to the Buller children bereft of their father listed above, we encounter the following individuals:

• 1853–1855: David Buller, child’s name unknown 13 (no, not that David Buller)
• 1853–1855: David Buller, Abram 8 (no, not that David Buller)
• 1861–1862: Heinrich Buller, Susanna 10, Elisabeth 8
• 1861–1862: Peter Buller, Anna 6 (no, not that Peter Buller)
• 1861–1862: David Buller, Benjamin 9, David 6 … yes, that David Buller! 

Amazingly, this mundane school record gives us indisputable evidence that David and Helena Buller lived in Waldheim as early as 1861. Let’s walk through the evidence together.

The Grandma database allows one to search for pairs such as husband and wife or father and child. Searching for anyone named David Buller with a son named Benjamin returns three possibilities.

Since the school records are for the years 1861–1862, the only possible match is the first one, who just happens to be our David, father of Benjamin (born in 1851) and David (born in 1855)—and of Peter D, born in 1845 and thus past school age at this time.

Granted, Benjamin’s age is a year off (he would have been ten at the beginning of the school year, not nine), but the other correlations leave little doubt that this is our David Buller. The identification is further confirmed in the 1873–1874 school register, which lists a David Buller with a nine-year-old son named Jacob—which is the same son born to our David by his second wife (see above).

There is much more to explore in this Grandma entry (Can you spot the huge difference between the Buller Family Record listing of David’s family and this one?) as well as in the school records and with regard to Waldheim in general. For now it is enough to know exactly where David lived and died (see above) and presumably was buried in a cemetery abandoned long ago; for now it is enough to know exactly where Peter D lived before he moved to Kleefeld to be with Sarah and her family.