David Buller’s birth and death

Earlier this year we worked through four letters submitted to the Mennonitische Rundschau that provided contemporary information about the death—and, by extension, the birth—of David Buller (see here). We concluded at that time that the Buller Family Record, whose entry on David appears below, is incorrect with regard to several key facts.

1. David actually died on 12 November 1904, not 25 September of the same year. We do not know if the 12 November date is given according to the Gregorian calendar (which was still in use in Russia at that time) or the Julian calendar (the calendar used in the U.S. in 1904 and even now). If, as seems most likely, the 12 November date is given according to the Gregorian calendar, then his date of death according to our calendar was 25 November 1904. (It is hard to know if 25 November appearing in the BFR as his date of birth is an odd coincidence or evidence that the date was actually remembered but mistakenly assigned to the wrong event.)

2. The Rundschau letters agree that David lived 86 years and 10 months. Notice that the length of his life in the BFR is exactly that: 86 years and 10 months to the day. This correspondence is probably not coincidental; rather, it likely reflects knowledge or some family memory of the length of his life. Unfortunately, because that knowledge was applied to a faulty premise (that David was born on 25 November 1817), it resulted in an erroneous date of death.

3. The two facts about which we are certain (when David died and how long he lived) enable us to derive the one fact that we lack: when David was born. If, as seems most likely, David passed away on 25 November 1904, and if he lived exactly 86 years and 10 months (another assumption with high probability), then he was born on 25 January 1818. Even if that was not the exact date, it is not too far off from the actual date, probably within at least two weeks.

Countryside several miles southwest of Rovno (Rivne).

4. When we put our knowledge of the time of David’s birth together with the information contained in the Rovno register of Mennonites, we can now also deduce the place of David’s birth. Benjamin and Helena Buller moved from Prussia to Volhynia sometime in 1817 (see the previous post). Because David was born in January 1818, we know that he must have been born in the Rovno district of Volhynia—just like his future wife Helena Zielke.

As it turns out, the Buller Family Record contains more misinformation about David than accurate information. David was born in Volhynia (not Prussia) on 25 January 1818 (not 25 November 1817); he moved to Russia (Molotschna) when he was around the age of twenty (not when he was three to five); and he died on 25 November 1904 (not 25 September of the same year). The only facts that the BFR has correct are David’s marriage to Helena and their deaths in Russia.

This new information also allows us to tie up a loose end. In late 2014 we noted that the Przechovka church book was missing a year’s worth of entries, specifically births between 4 March 1817 and 21 April 1818 (see here). Since David was born during that time period, it seemed reasonable to think that his name does not appear in the church book due to this gap. Knowing what we now know, we have to admit that that is not at all the explanation. David is not recorded in the church book because he was not born anywhere close to the Przechovka church. He was born roughly 450 miles away, in the Rovno district of Volhynia.

The fact that his birth corresponds to the gap in the church book is an interesting coincidence—and a reminder that we need to be careful whenever we form conclusions based on a lack of contradictory evidence. As tempting as it is to fill in the many gaps in our knowledge based on logic and reason, in the end we truly know only what we can actually document. Based on the Rovno register and the Rundschau letters, we now know with certainty a great deal about David. We will continue to explore further in our journey back into our family history.