Waldheim 48

Our earlier excavations in the Waldheim school records left little doubt about the identity of the David Buller listed there. This father of Benjamin and David (1861–1862) and Jacob (1873–1874) was our own ancestor, father of Peter D, grandfather of Peter P, great-grandfather of Chris. All well and good, but we still need to excavate a little more.

The 1873–1874 school register contains important information that not only sheds light on our family but also sets them squarely in a context we have discussed previously. I encourage you to look at the school register for yourself by opening this link in a new tab or window and then scrolling down to Waldheim.

Notice the numbers to the left of some of the names? Those numbers are important clues that can tell us a great deal about David’s life in Waldheim. We begin, appropriately, at the beginning, with the establishment of Waldheim. Rudy P. Friesen offers a succinct account of Waldheim’s origins:

The village of Waldheim was founded in 1836, along the Begim Tschokrak River by a group of Groningen Old Flemish Mennonites from Volhynia, and originally from Prussia. Eight families arrived the first year, 12 more in 1838, and another 20 in 1840. The village was laid out with two streets that were parallel to the river. The street on the north side of the river was for the 40 landowners and the street on the south side of the river was for … small farm owners. They were connected by three cross streets. (Friesen 1996, 300)

Several points bear emphasis: (1) the original village had forty Wirstschaften (farm allotments); (2) all the owners of one of the full allotments lived on the north side of the river; (3) those who did not own a Wirtschaft lived on the south side of the river. All this is relatively clear in Friesen’s map of Waldheim below (adapted for our purposes).

So what does this have to do with the numbers to the left of some of the names in the school register? Simple: the numbers correspond to the Wirtschaften in Waldheim; the fathers with numbers by their names are landowners.

Now look at David Buller’s name: it is preceded by the number 48. How can this be? If there were originally forty farmsteads, how can David Buller have Wirtschaft 48?

Keeping in mind which school year the record covers (1873–1874), think about what happened in Molotschna just a few years earlier, say, in 1869 (see here).

The only reasonable explanation is that David Buller was one of the fortunate few who received an 88-acre (32.5-dessiantine) tract from the mandated distribution of surplus land. Although the farm that he owned was only half the size of a full share and did not come into his possession until he was in his fifties, David did become a Waldheim landowner. Although our family’s destiny lay elsewhere, it’s nice to know that we did “belong” in Molotschna and that a part of Molotschna belonged to us, even if only for a short while.

Source

Friesen, Rudy P., with Sergey Shmakin. 1996. Into the Past: Buildings of the Mennonite Commonwealth. Winnepeg: Raduga.