Polish/Prussian Bullers: Jeziorka 1

Ten to eleven miles west-northwest of Schwetz (modern Świecie) lay the village of Jeziorka (aka Jeziorken, Kleinsee, and modern Jeziorki). Jeziorka was located far enough from the Vistula River that it was not within the river valley itself (the red A in the map); according to the Polish Wikipedia article on the village, Jeziorka was the only Mennonite village in the Vistula area that was not in the actual valley (see here).

Unlike many other Mennonite villages of that time, Jeziorka did not have a pre-Mennonite history; rather, it was established in 1727 by a group of thirteen Mennonite families from the Przechovka area. Five years later the village added twelve Mennonite families from Culm (Chełmno), roughly twenty-one miles to the southeast. According to Peter J. Klassen, all these settlers “were granted a lease for forty years by the owner, Hedwig von Steffens-Wybczyriski” (2009, 86). Herbert Wiebe agrees in broad terms but clarifies that the lease was made with Frau (Mrs.) Hedwig von Steffens-Wybczyriski with the consent of the guardians of her children (Wiebe 1952, 30). Wiebe adds that the lease was for 1 Hufe (1 Hufe = 30 Morgens = ca. 41.5 acres) of meadow and 19 Morgens (= ca. 26 acres) of arable land that had been damaged by soldiers.

Nanne van der Zijpp and Richard D. Thiessen note that a church was erected early on, in 1743, but the residents of the village “never formed an independent congregation, but were in one congregation with their brethren in Przechovka and Konopath.” The Przechovka church is, of course, the one with which our Bullers were associated.

Today, nearly three hundred years later, the village still exists in a loose form (the houses on each side of the road in the center of the photograph below) and is reported to have around 150 residents, though that seems doubtful.

As we noted previously, Bullers lived in Jeziorka during the latter part of the eighteenth century. For example, both the 1772 land register (see here) and the 1776 census of Mennonites (see here) list a Georg(e) Buller as living in Jeziorka. The 1772 register simply gives his name and location, but the 1776 census adds important details. At the time of the census George had a wife and two sons, and he was a farmer and Eigentümer (owner) whose financial status was schlecht (low).

Still, there are more questions than answers at this point. When did George Buller and his family first live in Jeziorka? Were they the first Bullers to live in that village? Since all the Jeziorka Mennonites leased their land, in what sense was George an Eigentümer (owner)? What happened to George after this time? What happened to his family? Is is possible that George was a direct ancestor of ours?

Fortunately, the Przechovka church book and other historical sources will allow us to fill in some of the details, but that is a task for another post.

Sources

Klassen, Peter J. 2009. Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia. Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Wiebe, Herbert. 1952. Das Siedlungswerk niederländischer Mennoniten im Weichseltal zwischen Fordon und Weissenberg bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts. Wissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte und Landeskunde Ost-Mitteleuropas 3. Marburg: Johann Gottfried Herder-Institut.

Zijpp, Nanne van der, and Richard D. Thiessen. 2014. Jeziorka (Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. See here.

Polish/Prussian Bullers: the land register of 1772

Before Frederick the Great took a census of all the Mennonites in West Prussia (Poland) in 1776 (see here), he took stock of all the land owners in his newly added territory. The purpose of the survey (or registration) was simple: to “produce the necessary foundation for the introduction of the Prussian taxation system in the new territory” (see further here).

Because the purpose of the register was not to count heads (as in all the people), only the male heads of taxable households are recorded. The original records also list the number of children, but these numbers are not readily available online. Fortunately, the basic information for fourteen Buhler or Buller households in West Prussia is provided by Reuben R. Drefs at the Odessa Digital Library (link above).

Last Name	First Name	Village	Area	County
Buhler	Abraham	Ruckenau	Tiegenhoff
Buhler	Abraham	Tiegenhoff	Tiegenhoff
Buhler	Wilhelm	Tiegenhoff	Tiegenhoff
Buhlern	Wittwe (widow)	Tiegenhoff	Tiegenhoff
Buhler	Jac.	Laakendorf	Amt Elb. Niederung
Buller	?	Sazewka	Cammin
Buller	?	Sazewka	Cammin	Zempelburg
Buller	Adam	Sazewka	Cammin
Buller	Adam	Sazewka	Cammin	Zempelburg
Buller	Adam	Dworziska	Schwetz
Buller	Georg	Jesiorky	Schwetz
Buller	Heinrich	Ostrower Kämpe	Schwetz
Buller	Heinrich	Ostrower Kämpe	Schwetz
Buller	Peter	Deutsch Konopat	Schwetz

Of greatest interest for us are the last five Bullers listed: Adam, Georg, Heinrich, Heinrich, and Peter. These five families lived in the Schwetz area (Schwetz is the village just left of E in the map below), some in villages that we have already encountered: Jeziorka (A), Ostrower Kämpe (F; aka Ehrenthal; modern Ostrów Świecki), and Deutsch Konopat (B/C). The only village new to us is Dworziska (or Divorczieka; German, Wilhelmsmark), which was just to the southwest of the B on the map.

Not only have we encountered some of these villages; we have also already encountered the persons listed. The following list compares several individuals in the 1772 land register with the names given in the 1776 census of West Prussian Mennonites (here):

• 1772 George in Jesiorky = 1776 George in Jeziorken (both Jeziorka)


• 1772 Peter in Deutsch-Konopat = one of two 1776 Peters in Deutsch Konopat


• one of two 1772 Heinrichs in Ostrower Kämpe = 1776 Heinrich in Schwetzerkampen

Only Adam Buller of Dworziska is not included in the later census. One wonders whether he moved or died in the interim. This is not the last we will hear of the other Bullers, however. Future posts will return to the Przechovka church book to flesh out these families even further.

To be clear, we do not know whether any of these Bullers are our direct ancestors. However, we can conclude with relative confidence that they are part of our larger family. The same cannot be known at this time for the other Buhlers and Bullers listed. Although at least one of them was a Mennonite (Abraham of Tiegenhoff is listed in the 1776 Mennonite census), we do not know even that much of the others. Perhaps the Buller surname is not as rare as we thought!

***

For additional background on the 1772 land register, see the introduction by Rueben R. Drefs here.

Polish/Prussian Bullers: background

The Buller family history, like most other family histories, is very much a tangled mess of similar-looking but separate threads. We know which thread we want to follow—that of David Buller (father of Peter D, grandfather of Peter P, and great-grandfather of Grandpa Chris)—but the deeper we dig into the tangle, the more confounding and confusing it all becomes. There is no clear way to trace the one thread that interests us systematically back in time.

Rather, we must approach the task much as we would a storage room stuffed with the accumulations of life over a number of years. To clean out such a room, to bring order to it, we first create a bigger mess as we drag out and pile up different categories of items: clothes for Goodwill here, books for the local library there, kitchen gadgets over there, and all those things that we should have thrown away years ago in the dumpster sitting in the driveway.

With those two images in mind—our family history as a mess of threads that need to be untangled and as a storage room that can be cleaned out only by creating an even bigger mess—let us begin to sort out what we know about our family’s existence in Poland/West Prussia during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries.

To set the stage for the messiness to follow, I ask you to indulge one last rehearsal of some of the basic geographical and historical facts that will be in the background of many of our discussions.

1. The area of our interest is located modern-day Poland, from the Baltic Sea in the north, down the Vistula River basin to the south. For the most part, Mennonites in Poland (there were Mennonites in other countries and regions) lived in the area shown below.

Our specific interest will often focus on the area south of Świecie (German Schwetz), which is identified by the arrow left of center in the map above. This is not only where most Mennonite Bullers lived; it is also where our Bullers lived. For a more detailed map of this area, see here.

2. We do not need to know a great deal of history to explore our family history, but it is helpful to keep in mind that our Bullers first lived within the Kingdom of Poland but then, in 1772, became a part of the Prussian kingdom of Frederick II. This change in political rule did not entail immediate changes, but eventually it created the conditions that led our family and many other Mennonites to leave West Prussia for Catherine the Great’s New Russia.

3. In addition to geography and history, it will be useful to remind ourselves of a genealogical fact, that the earliest known (that is, earliest documented) Buller in the Schwetz area was the *** Buller listed in the Przechovka (pronounced pshe-KHOF-ka) church register.

Unknown Buller, as previously discussed here, was probably born sometime in the mid-seventeenth century, perhaps in the 1650–1660 range. At present, this is the earliest recorded Buller we have for the area, possibly for all of Poland (we will have to explore further before we can confirm the latter). Although certainty will not be possible, we will work from the hypothesis that the Przechovka-area Bullers listed in land leases and other historical documents after 1660 probably are descendants of Unknown Buller and his wife Dina Thoms.

 Now that we have set the broad background of the geographical, historical, and genealogical context, we are ready to dive into the mess of details about Bullers in Poland/West Prussia during the period 1650–1820, that is, from the early days of Unknown Buller until David Buller and family emigrated to Molotschna colony in Russia.

New territory

Exploring our family history requires us to enter a variety of new territories. The history of the times is unfamiliar to many of us, and the script and even the language of key documents is often difficult to comprehend. The geographical setting of our family history is frequently as unfamiliar as all the rest. So, before we proceed further in our trek into the Prussian/Polish period of the Buller family history, we should take a moment to orient ourselves.

If you recall, before Bullers lived in the U.S. we lived in the Molotschna Mennonite colony in New Russia (present-day Ukraine). Before that we lived in the lowlands of the Vistula (Wisła) River in a part of the Prussian Empire, West Prussia, to be exact, modern Poland. The map below offers a wide view of the area of our interest.

The city Gdańsk, Poland, on the shore of the Baltic Sea was known as Danzig during the period in question. Approximately 75 miles south of Danzig lies the area where Bullers lived several centuries ago. The red rectangle shows the rough location of our forebears’ home, which is shown in greater detail below.

The area in the detail map is roughly 20 miles by 14 miles, so essentially the same size as the south half of York County, Nebraska. The most noteworthy feature on this map is, of course, the Vistula River, which cuts across the lower right.

We will zoom in further on portions of this detail map in future posts; for now it is enough to note a number of specific locales.

• The red letter A in the upper left marks the village of Jeziorken (Jeziorka), where the George listed in the 1776 census of Mennonits (see here) is located. 


• The two Peters listed in that census are associated with Deutsch Konopat (B: Greater Deutsch Konopat; C: Lesser Deutsch Konopat).


• The Heinrich in the 1776 census is said to have lived at Schwetzerkamp (E). Heinrich is also linked to Ehrenthal (F) in another source.


• D marks the village of Przechovka, which housed the church where many of the Bullers in the area were members. (See earlier posts on the Przechovka church book here.)

Except for the Jeziorka Bullers, the rest lived and worshiped within a 5 mile radius that extended from Deutsch Konopat on the west to Ehrenthal on the east. We will do well to learn more about all these villages and areas, beginning with Heinrich Buller’s Schwetzerkamp.

Peter P farm 4

Before we go back to eighteenth-century West Prussia (Poland), one more photo from the farm of Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller.

We have already highlighted Grandpa Chris and his brother Klaas (see here) and their parents Peter P and Margaretha (here); now we turn our gaze toward the buggies in the background.

Looking closely, one can make out three horse and buggies in the background. One can also see two people each in the middle and right buggies. It is impossible, of course, to know exactly who is in the buggies, but we can offer a reasonable guess.

Assuming that the picture was taken circa 1913, it is plausible to think that one of the buggies holds Grandpa’s older sister Margaretha P, who married Klaas Friesen in 1912. Presumably they rode in the buggy to visit her parents’ home. The next-oldest daughter, Katharina, did not marry until 1915, so it is less likely that she and her future husband (Dietrich Quiring) are one of the other couples.

In the lower right of the picture one can see two girls standing on the driveway. The girl on the right is head and shoulders taller than the girl on the left. The girls are no doubt some combination of Sara (born 1899), Elizabeth (1904), and Maria (1908).

Further examination of this detail reveals that there may be one more person previously unnoticed. Look carefully at Peter P and Margaretha at the left of the photograph. It appears that Margaretha is holding a young child in her arms. Peter E was born in 1911, so it is probably not him. Anna was born in October 1913, so it might be her.

If Margaretha is indeed holding a child, this would imply that the picture was taken in 1914, before Anna’s first birthday. Notice that the trees seem to have all their leaves, so it is not later in the year. This almost-overlooked detail may well hold the key to the date of this photo. Certainty will continue to elude us, but for the time being we should probably date this photo circa 1914.

One final item: the two-story house in the background. The photograph below shows that Peter P and Margaretha’s house still stands today in excellent shape, but notice how much the trees have grown in the intervening century!

Peter P farm 3

First a correction, then a new photo.

The previous post identified the two boys as Ben and Grandpa Chris. Dad (Carl) advises me that the older boy is probably Klaas, not Ben. Dad also learned that the original photo came from Don and Margaret Huebert, who made it available to Abe Buller.

And now today’s photo detail.

Standing at the north end of the barn are, it is thought, Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller, parents of Grandpa Chris. If you recall, both Peter P and Margaretha were born in the Molotschna colony, Peter in 1869 and Margaretha in 1870. They were likely in their mid-40s when this photo was taken, circa 1913. They lived on this farm for another twenty-three years, until they moved to California in 1936. Margaretha died at the age of eighty in 1951, Peter at the age of ninety-five in 1964.

Not a great deal more to say about this detail, except to note the horse and buggies in the background. We will focus in on those next.

Peter P farm 2

As noted earlier, the photograph provided by Abe and Alice Buller contains details that merit closer examination. With that in mind, we begin by zooming in on two boys in a wagon left of center in the 1913 photo. First the full photo, then the detail:

The sharpness of the image is degraded when we zoom in, but we are still able to see two boys sitting on a wagon (a buckboard?) drawn by two horses. The older boy on our left is wearing a light-colored hat; the younger boy on our right may be wearing a dark hat. According to Abe, the older boy is his father Ben and the younger boy is Grandpa Chris. As far as I recall, this is the earliest photograph of Grandpa that we have seen thus far.

The apparent ages of Ben and Chris enable us to suggest a date between 1912 and 1914. Ben was born in 1897 and was thus fifteen in 1912; Grandpa was born in 1906 and so was six at that time. Since it appears that Ben could be fifteen to seventeen and Grandpa six to eight, a 1912–1914 time frame seems likely for this picture.

One final observation just made: a sliding door is clearly visible in the background of the detail above (to the left of the window in the middle). That sliding door is still visible today (see the detail from a 2015 photograph below), even though it was closed off and sided over. We will zoom in on other people and elements in the 1913 photograph in subsequent posts.

Peter P farm circa 1913

Thanks to Abe and Alice Buller (Abe’s father was Ben, Grandpa Chris’s older brother), we have a new photographic treasure to enjoy and to examine: the farm yard of Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller.

We have already seen the same area in earlier pictures, such as the 1936 photograph of Grandpa, Grandma, and five kids below. (Keep in mind that the 1936 photo was taken looking northeast and the new photo was taken looking southwest. See further here.)

We have also seen how the Peter P farm yard looked earlier this year.

What is new, thanks to Abe and Alice, is a photograph of the Peter P farm yard from over a hundred years ago, probably sometime between 1912 and 1914. More about the date of the photo later.

A few general observations will suffice for today, after which we will zoom in specific details in the photo.

1. The 1913 photo was taken from north of the driveway and east of the barn, roughly where the red arrow is pointing in the photograph farther below.

2. The little silo on the north end of the barn today and visible in the background of the 1936 photo had not yet been constructed in 1913.

3. On the other hand, the shed in the cow lot in 1913 no longer stands in the same spot. Whether it stood in 1936 is impossible to tell.

4. The windmill was located in the cow lot in 1913, but today it is farther south. If you look closely at the picture immediately above you can see the top of the structure (no wheel) between the bins.

5. The house, which stands west and north of the barn, is visible in the background of the 1913 photo and the photo immediately above.

6. The 1913 photo includes a number of people, some of whom we can identify. But that is a post for another day.

Prussian Bullers in 1776

According to the Buller Family Record, David Buller (recall the sequence moving backward in time: Chris > Peter P. > Peter D. > David) was born in 1817 and moved from Prussia to the Molotschna Mennonite colony around the year 1820.

Taking another step back before David, we encounter several Bullers (actually, Buhlers and Büllers) in the 1776 Prussian census. In terms of historical context, after a period of war in which the Poles proved unable to defend their territory, a significant portion of the Kingdom of Poland was divided between the three powers Austria, Prussia, and Russia in 1772. So it was that the area in which our ancestors lived came under the control of the Prussian king Frederick II.

As one way of taking inventory, as it were, of his newly gained territory, Frederick conducted a census of Mennonites living in most parts of the province of West Prussia (Danzig and the Thorn territory were excluded). According to Glenn H. Penner, this census “contains information on 2,638 families and accounts for 12,186 people.”

Listed among the 2,638 heads of households are two Buhlers, three Büllers, and one Butler whose name was actually Buller, according to a later marginal note. Although the actual census documents are not available for viewing online, as far as I know, Horst Penner and others have transcribed the recorded data so that we can learn something of the individuals included. The figure below shows a portion of page 421 in Horst 1978.

The third name listed is Abra. (Abraham) Buhler, followed by Abrah. (Abraham) Buller. Immediately below are Heinrich Büller and two Peter Büllers. Five names below one spies George Butler, but the note in the right margin indicates that Butler is actually a Buller. So much for the names. What else can we learn about these 1776 Prussian Bullers?

The column after the names lists the village of residence, followed by the occupation of the person listed. The six “number” columns that follow list, in order: husband, wife, number of sons, number of daughters, number of male servants, and number of female servants. The last two columns identify the household head’s status as owner or renter and the family’s relative financial condition.

The first Abraham Buhler lived in Alt Schottland, an area just outside of Danzig and thus not in the area of our Bullers, who lived farther south in the Vistula River delta. He was, if you can make out the Fraktur script, a Häker, which Glenn Penner indicates was a proprietor of a general store. His household contained only Abraham and his wife plus a female servant. The E. in the next-to-last column indicates that he was an Eigentümer, that is, an owner (presumably of his house and shop). His financial condition is listed as mm., meaning mittelmässig, “average,” what we might call today middle class.

The second Abraham Buhler lived in Tiegenhof (a village east of Danzig, so likewise some distance from our Bullers). He was a Schuster (cobbler) whose household contained him, his wife, three sons, and one daughter. He was a Mietsmann (renter) rather than an Eigentümer, and his financial status was characterized as s. (= schlecht), that is, low (but not the lowest).

All the Büllers (including George Butler = Buller) lived in the same general area of the Vistula River delta: Heinrich in Schwetzerkampen (or Schwetzer Kampe), George in Jeziorken (aka Jeziorka), and the two Peters in Deutsch-Konopat. The occupation for all four is given as Lw., an abbreviation for Landwirt, or “farmer.” All four are said to have owned their farmland, and all four are characterized as schlecht (low). The four families include husband and wife (no widows or widowers) and between one and seven children. Only the second Peter lists a servant, in this case a female.

We end with a few passing observations and questions.

1. It is interesting that the two Buhlers lived in the Danzig region to the north and the four Büllers were farmers in the area farther south. Is there any connection between these two family-groups, or is it a coincidence that their names appear to stem from the same original name?

2. If these family-groups are related, does the distinction between Buhlers in the north and Büllers in the south shed light on the statement in the Przechovka church register about the first Buller listed, that this was “the first time that this family name appears” (see here)?

3. Does the listing of four Büller families around the Vistula comport with the number of Bullers included in the Przechovka church register (see here)? I think that is worth exploring further.

More questions than answers, as usual, but at least we have added a bit more detail to the portrait of our family’s life in Prussia. As of 1776, there were twenty-one Büllers living in the Vistula River area (eight adults and thirteen children), all of them land-owning farm familes who were not quite middle-class.

***

For additional online resources, see Glenn H. Penner’s introduction to the census list here. He also provides a complete census with additional notes here.

Source

Penner, Horst. 1978. Die ost- und westpreußischen Mennoniten in ihrem religiösen und sozialen Leben, in ihren kulturellen und wirtschaftlichen Leistungen. Teil 1: 1526 bis 1772. Weierhof: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein.

Heinrich, we have a problem!

A funny thing happened on the way from Brüttisellen to Lushton (see here for the last post in that series): we lost Heinrich Buller. Allow me to explain.

Last year I was excited to learn that the GRANDMA database (which collects pertinent information about all known Mennonites) included Heinrich Buller, who not only was probably our ancestor but obviously was the same individual as the Heinrich Bühler whose story is told in The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren (see further here). The approximate time and location of the births are identical, and other sources seem to confirm that these individuals were one and the same.

Some time ago for reasons that I no longer recall, I went back into the GRANDMA database, asked for record 273782 (Heinrich’s number above), and was surprised to see an entry for one Anna Zinn. Where was Heinrich? I tried several other search approaches, and Heinrich was nowhere to be found.

I wrote the GRANDMA staff and asked if they could explain, although I had a feeling that I already knew the explanation (people do not disappear from geneaological databases for no reason). They politely replied that Heinrich Buller 273782 has been removed from the database because there is no documentary evidence that he ever existed. He may be nothing more than a plausible fiction.

You are probably feeling some of the dis-ease that I did then, so let me be clear about what we are and, more important, are not saying.

1. There is no documentary evidence for the existence of a Heinrich Buller (note the spelling!) who was born outside of Zurich, Switzerland, in the late seventeenth century and lived for part of his life in Deutsch Konopat, Prussia (Poland).

2. There is documentary evidence for the existence of a Heinrich Bühler who was born outside of Zurich, Switzerland, in the late seventeenth century.

3. Whether or not Heinrich Bühler ever lived in Deutsch Konopat is at present unknown. Horst Penner says that he “probably” did, but the documentary evidence proving that claim is lacking.

So what is the truth of the matter? We simply do not know. I happen to think it plausible that the Hutterite Heinrich Bühler did emigrate to Deutsch Konopat, where he established a sizeable family whose last name sometimer thereafter began to be written Buller. That’s my story for now, but I do not know if I’ll be sticking to it.

In the end, although it is disconcerting not to find Heinrich Buller in the GRANDMA database, nothing really has changed. It is just as plausible now as it was earlier to work from the hypothesis that all the Molotschna–Prussian Bullers descended from the Hutterite Heinrich Bühler. As long as we remember that we are dealing with hypotheses, we can freely and confidently explore all the data that we can uncover. Who knows? Maybe someday documentary evidence of Heinrich Buller (aka Bühler) will come into the light of day.

Source

Penner, Horst. 1978. Die ost- und westpreußischen Mennoniten in ihrem religiösen und sozialen Leben, in ihren kulturellen und wirtschaftlichen Leistungen. Teil 1: 1526 bis 1772. Weierhof: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein.

It says “occasional” right there under the title

Okay, lame joke and lamer excuse. I don’t think a nearly four-month gap between posts qualifies as “occasional” by anyone’s definition. Sincere apologies all around! I am going to attempt to resume blogging at least a little over the next days, weeks, and months. Pray that work does not overtake me once again.

The posts will probably be shorter and may be a bit scattered, jumping from one topic to another. The scope is likely to be broader as well, focusing not just on the descendants of Chris and Malinda Franz Buller but also on other Bullers of the distant and recent past.

I plan to start with “Heinrich, we have a problem!” and then begin to think out loud about “Whatever happened to Katja Buller?” In between I will jot a note here about Georg Buller buying land in 1700, recount which Bullers are listed in the Prussian census of 1776, and begin to compile and then note information on all the Bühlers, Buijlers, and Bullers that I can find.

If anyone is still checking and reading, stay tuned!

Katja Buller is indicated by the farthest-right arrow.
This 1930 photograph shows the students and teacher  of the Kleefeld school.