Bullers in Rovno 1

We begin our exploration of the “Register of Mennonites in Rovno Region, Volhynia, 1819–1820” (Chaiderman 1997) at the macro-level. Thus, looking at the three pages of the file posted here, we notice that the list comprises eighteen families with a total of ninety persons (forty-four males and forty-six females).

Looking specifically at the Comments column, we also see that the families are grouped together in terms of when they moved to Volhynia (generally):

• Families 1–10 left Prussia in 1810 and settled in the Rovno district in 1811.
• Family 11 left Prussia in 1816 and settled in Volhynia that same year.
• Family 12 left Prussia much earlier (1799) but did not settle in the Rovno district until 1817.
• Families 13 and 14 do not have a migration date listed, only their residency in the same location.
• Families 15–18 are said to have left Prussia in 1807 and settled in Volhynia the same year. 

Before we go any further, we need to correct an error in the translation. The listing for families 15–18 states that they settled in Volhynia in 1807, but that is incorrect; those families settled in the Rovno district of Volhynia ten years later, in 1817. When we look at scans of the register, it is easy to see how the translator made this mistake.

The year listed in the explanatory column for families 15–18 does look like 1807 at first glance. However, closer inspection of the date and comparison with another entry in the register call that reading into question.

Looking carefully at the enlarged scan to the right, we can see that the the last three numbers are written cursively, that is, not individually but linked together. Because of this style of writing, the numeral after the 8 resembles a 0, but it is actually a 1 that is joined to the 8 preceding and the 7 that follows.

Based on this observation, we can regard it as more likely than not that the year recorded was 1817, not 1807. Comparison with a date written in another part of the Rovno register confirms the 1817 reading.

The scan to the left shows a portion of the explanatory column for family 12. In line 5 we see exactly the same date as that written for families 15–18. (If you are curious as to what family 12 was doing all those years in between, the explanation notes that they first lived in the Ostrog district of Volhynia, then moved from there to Rovno.)

In this case the translator has (correctly) read the date as 1817, which really leaves little doubt about when families 15–18 settled in Rovno. It was 1817, not 1807.

Why should we care about such a minor matter? Recall that Benjamin and Helena Buller are family 18 in the list, so it is a matter of getting the facts of our family history correct. Based on this primary source, this piece of contemporary archival evidence, we know that David Buller and the rest of his immediate family moved from Prussia to Volhynia, to the Rovno district, to be exact, in the year 1817.

I am afraid that the Buller Family Record has it incorrect. David did not move to Russia (by which the BFR means Molotschna colony) when he was three to five years old. At that time he was living in Volhynia (which technically was Russia); he did not move to Molotschna until many years later, 1836 at the earliest but probably sometime after that.

With this new understanding of the beginning of David’s life in hand, we now want to go to the end of David’s life and revisit what we were told in the Mennonitische Rundschau articles that reported his death. My hunch is that we will uncover another mistake in the Buller Family Record, one that is also repeated in the Grandma database. Stay tuned!

Source

Chaiderman, Sergei, trans. 1997. Register of Mennonites in Rovno Region, Volhynia, 1819–1820. Posted by Richard D. Thiessen on the Mennonite Genealogy website. Available online here.