Meanwhile back in Rovno …

The last two substantive posts looked at the eighteen families who lived in the village Zofyovka in the Rovno district of the region of Volhynia. As promised, this post looks at three of the families in a little more detail, to see if what we learn about them gives us any hints about Benjamin and Helena Buller and family (including David).

Before we examine families 15 (David Koehn), 16 (Peter Schmidt), and 17 (Jacob Pankratz) in the Rovno register, a brief preview of several coming attractions:

1. Glenn Penner continues to excavate through archival material relevant to nineteenth-century Mennonites and our family in particular. Most recently he identified two Benjamin Bullers in Waldheim during the early 1840s. One of these is most assuredly the father of David.


2.  We will also return to the other Rovno register (which we dubbed Rovno 2; see here), since it provides additional information on the Mennonite community of Zofyovka.

For now, families 15–17 of Rovno are the focus of interest. Our reason for looking at these families more closely is simple. Rovno register 1 states that families 15–18 all came to Zofyovka in 1817, so one might imagine that they all came together. We do not know this for a fact, but it seems plausible as a working hypothesis.

It seems unlikely that a lone family such as Benjamin Buller’s—husband and wife, two young sons, and a teenage nephew—trekked hundreds of miles all on their own. It seems more likely that groups of families traveled together, just as U.S. families headed west in wagon trains later in the same century. Obviously, we should not envision Conestoga wagons slowly rolling from Prussia to Russia, but wagons of some type were no doubt involved, and they likely traveled in groups of families of varying sizes.

With that as background and rationale, let us examine families 15–17, the ones who arrived the same year that Benjamin and family did, to see where they lived before the settled in Volhynia. For ease of reference, we repeat the listings for those families, then search for them in the GRANDMA database (GM) and the Przechovka church book (PCB).

15		David Koehn		51
		his wife Maria				32
		daughers Anna				6
		Elisabeth				5
		Maria				3
		Helena				2
16		Peter Schmidt		32
		his wife Eva				33
		daughters Anna				8
		Elisabeth				6
		Maria				5
17		Jacob Pankratz		27
		his wife Anna				33
		son Heinrich		5
		daughters Anna				4
		Helena				3

Family 15

The strongest evidence for identifying this family rests on the names and ages of the four daughters. GM provides the following information:

Note first that the names of the four daughters appear in the same order in Rovno 1 and GM: Anna, Elisabeth, Maria, Helena. Remarkably, the ages appear to match as well. We know that the register was compiled in 1819 or 1820; if it was the former, then according to the GM years of birth, Anna would have been six, Elisabeth five, Maria three, and Helena two. That is strong correlation.

A complication arises, however, with the ages of the parents. According to GM, David was born in 1788, which would have made him roughly thirty-one at the time of the register, not the fifty-one that is recorded. Likewise, Maria is said to have been born three years earlier than that, which means she would have been around thirty-four, not thirty-two. How can we explain this discrepancy?

The PCB does offer entries for this David Köhn (PCB 1262) and this Maria (Maricke) Schmidt (1220), and the dates of birth that GM has are correct. However, the PCB entries for David and Maria do not list a spouse for either one, so the suggestion that this David Köhn and this Maria Schmidt were married may be mistaken. There were other David Köhns in that church, and it may very well be that Maria married David Köhn number 608, who was baptized in 1785 and thus presumably was born around 1767 or 1768, which would have made him fifty-one or fifty-two when the register was taken.

Whether the David Köhn listed in the register is PCB 608 or 1262, the significance for our study remains the same: family 15 clearly had a close connection with the Przechovka church.

Family 16

This family is even more interesting. According to the PCB, a Peter Schmidt (1233) was born in Jeziorka on 24 April 1786. That village name should sound familiar, since we learned about it here, here, and here. GM states that he and his wife had three daughters: Anna, Elisabeth, and Maria—the same names listed in the same order in Rovno 1. The first two daughters also appear in the PCB: Anna is number 1527, and Elisabeth is number 1545. Both girls are said to have been born in Klein Konopat, which was close to and associated with the Przechovka church. But there is more.

The girls’ mother Eva (Rovno 1) was known as Efcke in the PCB, appearing as entry 1198, where she is identified as the wife of Peter Schmidt 1233 (so the person we are looking for) and the daughter of one Benjamin Buller and his wife Maricke. This is not, of course, the Benjamin who is the father of David, but it seems more than coincidental that there was another Buller in the group of families who came to Zofyovka in 1817. Were Efcke Buller Schmidt and Benjamin Buller father of David related? We do not yet know, but it would not be surprising if they were. At the very least, we can conclude with relative certainty that family 16, like family 15, originated from the Przechovka church, or at least the larger Schwetz area where that church was located.

Family 17

The Jacob Pankratz family also appears in GM and in the PCB. The PCB, for example, lists Jacob as number 1326, where he is said to have been born in Beckersitz, a small village to the northeast of the church but still within the Schwetz area. Anna (Ancke) also appears in the PCB (1235), which lists her as being born in Konopat. Even their first-born son Heinrich is included in the PCB (1578): he is reported to have been born in Beckersitz. No need to drag this out any further: family 17 clearly was associated with the Schwetz-area Przechovka church as well.

Conclusions

In light of what we have learned about families 15–17, it seems reasonable to suggest that Benjamin and Helena Buller and their small family likewise came from the same locale. We cannot say that we know this, only that it is the most likely explanation until further information comes to light that disproves our hypothesis.

As often happens, the more we learn the more questions arise. In this instance we wonder whether Efcke Buller Schmidt of family 16 was related to Benjamin Buller, the head of family 18. For that matter, was Maria Schmidt, wife of David Köhn (family 15), related to the head of family 16, Peter Schmidt? It would make perfect sense for close relatives to embark on such a life-altering journey together, so perhaps we need to dig a little deeper into the family histories of these families to see how closely they were bound by blood and by marriage.

Please stand by

My apologies for the lack of posts recently: work has ruled every waking minute, with an annual budget to create, reports to write, and books to get ready for the printer. Rest assured that we will return to the simpler times (early nineteenth century) of a simpler place (Volhynia) as soon as we possibly can. Until then …

Cue the banjo music …

Our discussions of village life in Volhynia or even Molotschna sometimes feel terribly distant both in terms of time and location. Then I see a photograph such as the one below, and I realize that maybe the Bullers of recent times are not all that different from our nineteenth-century forebears. Life in Lushton in the early 1960s probably had more in common with life for our ancestors back in Russia than we may sometimes realize.

Of course, the real reason to post this photo is share a laugh or three by thinking up captions that capture the (hillbilly) essence of what we see. I offer several suggestions below; feel free to offer your own ideas in the comments.

• Cue the banjo music—here comes the cast of Deliverance!


• Larry was unavailable, but Daryl and his other brother Daryl agreed to be photographed.


• The sales team at Junior Sample’s used car lot. Give them a call at BR-549.

The Rovno register 2

The previous post offered some simple observations about the first ten families of Rovno register 1, which included ample evidence of the disruption that a higher adult mortality rate caused with many families of that day, as well the priority given to males in the listing of heads of household. This post turns to consider families 11–18 (which includes Benjamin and Helena Buller), in order to make further observations.

First the list from Chaiderman 1997, then the observations.

11		Karl Baltzer		38
		his wife Maria				28
		son Karl		1
		daugher Helena				2
12		Johan Nickel		56
		his wife Susanna				24
		sons Andrew		20 [?]
		Abraham		3
		daughters Susanna				4
		Helena				1
13		Erdman Nickel		26
		his wife Eva				43
		sons Samuel		12
		Peter		10
		Johan		3
14		Karl Wedel		38
		his wife Helena				38
		their sons Karl		5
		Dominik		1
		Heinrich		17
		daughter Elisabeth				3
		Karl’s brothers
		Heinrich		17
		Peter		15
		Dominik		24
		his wife Magdalina				18
		Jacob		22
		his wife Anna				22
		daughter Helena				1
		their mother Maria				50
15		David Koehn		51
		his wife Maria				32
		daughers Anna				6
		Elisabeth				5
		Maria				3
		Helena				2
16		Peter Schmidt		32
		his wife Eva				33
		daughters Anna				8
		Elisabeth				6
		Maria				5
17		Jacob Pankratz		27
		his wife Anna				33
		son Heinrich		5
		daughters Anna				4
		Helena				3
18		Benjamin Buller		31
		his wife Helena				25
		sons David		2
		Dominik		4
		nephew David		15
		Totals		XXX44		XXX46

1. The first thing that jumps off the page here is the age difference in most of the married heads of households listed: Karl Baltzer was ten years older than his wife Maria, Johan Nickel was thirty-two years older than wife Susanna, while Erdman Nickel was seventeen years younger than wife Eva; Karl and Helena Wedel were the same age, and Peter and Eva Schmidt were only a year apart, but David Koehn was nineteen years older than wife Maria, Jacob Pankratz was six years younger than wife Anna, and Benjamin Buller was six years older than his wife Helena. In all, six of the eight couples listed were separated by six or more years.

The average age difference between these eight couples was 11.4 years. More husbands were older than their wives, but only barely: four to three (one the same age). However, the average number of years by which a husband was older was double the average number of years by which a wife was older: 16.75 years for the four older husbands versus 8.0 years for the three older wives.

What are we to make of these significant age differences? A working hypothesis might be that the age differences are evidence of the high incidence of a second marriage for at least one of the two partners, which would be expected if the families of that time and place (an early nineteenth-century village within the Russian Empire) experienced a relatively high adult mortality rate.

2. One data set that might substantiate or call into question this hypothesis is the ages of the children relative to the ages of the household’s husband and wife. For example, in family 12, twenty-four-year-old Susanna Nickel clearly was not the mother of twenty-year-old Andrew (the reading “20” is uncertain but likely); nor was twenty-six-year-old Erdman Nickel (family 13) likely the father of sons aged twelve and ten.

Other clues point in the same direction: seventeen-year-old Heinrich Wedel (family 14) is listed last, although his two brothers are younger. As suggested in the previous post, this could be an indication that he was Helena’s son by a previous marriage. We might deduce the same from the Buller family listing: younger David is listed before older Dominik, perhaps reflecting a difference of parentage.

Although we cannot be certain about everything suggested, it seems reasonable to conclude from the differences in ages between husband and wife and from the ages of the children relative to their listed parents that perhaps six out of the eight families listed were second marriages for at least one of the partners. This in itself is a clue to the relatively high adult mortality rate for this group of Mennonites.

Scan of the original Russian archival record for family 14.

3. The size and complexity of family 14 is worthy of special note. Fifteen related people lived in that single household: the head of the household and his wife, four children connected to one or both of them, two unmarried brothers of the household head, a married brother of the head plus his wife, a second married brother of the head plus his wife and child, and the mother of the head and (probably) his brothers.

This Wedel household did not contain just a single nuclear family but rather three married couples and their children and a widowed matriarch and her two unmarried sons. Somewhat surprisingly to us, the matriarch of the family is listed last, after all her sons and families are recorded. Whether this reflects the reality of the household is impossible to say. This is, presumably, a Russian government official’s listing of the family, and it is possible that matriarch Maria Wedel’s opinion was the most important one in the household. After all, widows could sign contracts to rent land in that setting (see here); perhaps their status in the household is not accurately reflected in this listing.

Although one might think that there is little else we can glean from the Rovno register, there are more nuggets waiting to be uncovered. The next post will explore further to discover where families 15, 16, and 17—those who are said to have come to the village Zofyovka at the same time as Benjamin and Helena Buller—lived before they moved to the Rovno district of Volhynia in 1817.

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.

The Rovno register 1

Significant discovery often results from nothing more than observing, paying close attention, then reflecting on what one has seen. The 1819–1820 Rovno register provides us a great opportunity to put this into practice.

To save readers from having to click back and forth between windows, families 1–10 of the listings from the translation posted online by Richard D. Thiessen (Chaiderman 1997) are reproduced below.

1*		Heinrrich Dirks		33
		his wife Maria				47
		son David		7
		daughters Maria				16
		Anna				9
		Eva				1
2		Andreas Buller		53
		his wife Katherina				30
		daughter Helena				2
3*		Jacob Richert		37
		his wife Maria				33
		their children
		sons Jacob		10
		David		5
		daughters Katherina				12
		Maria				1
		nephew Jacob Nachtigal		16
4		David Nachtigal		22
		his wife Anna				30
		son Jacob		1
5*		Jacob Tzlivk [Zielke]		37
		his wife Maria				46
		sons Johan		11
		Friedrich		2
		daughters Maria				10
		Katherina				8
		Helena				1
6*		David Foth		47
		his wife Maria				38
7*		Martin Bier		47
		his daughter Pitrunega				20
8*		Heinrich Schperling		31
		his wife Anna				25
		daughter Helena				5
9		Christian Teske		27
		his brothers Samuel		23
		Michael		21
		their mother Anna				50
10		Philip Bier		15
		his mother Sara				35
		daughter Helena				14

Before we make specific observations about the list, it is important to recall what is stated in the register about families 1–10:

These Mennonites left the Kingdom of Prussia in 1810. They settled in Rovno (Rivnenska) Region on grounds owned by the town of Wegtzin [Wysock] in the estate of the landowner Waclav Borejko (Watzav Warike) in 1811, upon conditions they have arranged with the landowner to whom they pay taxes (rent).

Families 1–10 are said to have settled on the land of Waclav Borejko in 1811. The register was compiled in 1819 or 1820, at least eight, possibly nine, years later. With that as background, let us look at the list more carefully.

1. Families 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8 have asterisks to indicate that these are original settlers per the 1811 contract. Although we will make a few observations about some of them, there is nothing puzzling about the information that we read. Such cannot be said for the other families.

2. Consider family 4, for example. According to the register, David Nachtigal was twenty-two in 1819–1820, his wife Anna thirty. A Thobias Nachtigal is listed on the 1811 contract but no David, which is not surprising, since David was fourteen at that time. How is it possible, then, for the Rovno register to list David as one of those who settled in Zofyovka in 1811?

One wonders if Anna, who was eight years older than David, was the wife of an original settler who passed away between 1811 and 1819, after which she married David (son of Thobias Nachtigal?). If so, then presumably David became the head of the household Anna had shared with her first husband, and thus it would make sense to count this household as among the 1811 settlers.

3. An earlier post (here) wondered aloud if Andreas Buller (family 2) was a son of one of the two Bullers listed on the 1811 contract: Heinrich or David. A more careful look at the Rovno register above completely disproves that thought: Andreas was fifty-three at the time of the register, far too old to have been a child of Heinrich or David Buller.

What is baffling is how Andreas Buller can be included in the list of 1811 settlers in the register above but not named in the 1811 contract. Noting the significant age difference between Andreas and his wife Katherina, the thought comes to mind that perhaps Katherina Buller’s situation was like that postulated for Anna Nachtigal. Is it possible that Andreas was Katherina’s second husband and that he became the head of an 1811 household by marrying her?

4. Further questions revolve around the household led by Christian Teske (family 9; earlier written as Tik). This surname appears nowhere on the 1811 contract, so it is impossible to say why this family is listed as original 1811 settlers. Similarly family 10. There was only one Bier family on the 1811 contract (Martin, family 7), so it is anyone’s guess why family 10 was listed as an original settler family.

To sum up thus far, although we can identify why six of these ten families were considered original settlers (their names appear on the 1811 contracts), we can only guess about two others (families 2 and 4) and have no idea on the remaining two (families 9 and 10). At the least, we must hold open the possibility that the register is not speaking with absolute precision when it lists families 1–10 as settling in Zofyovka in 1811.

Several other more general observations are worth making and contemplating.

5. Of course, important for our family is the fact that Helena Zielke, the future wife of David Buller, is included on the Rovno register (highlighted in red).

6. Most of the families, as expected, include a husband and a wife and, in most instances, children. However, families 7, 9, and 10 show disruption or variation. In family 7 Martin Bier lives with his twenty-year-old daughter Pitrunega. No doubt Martin was a widower. If his daughter married, would Martin be included in her household? Would he be left to find a new wife or spend the rest of his days alone?

Family 10, also Biers, shows the opposite situation. Here an adult woman is left with no husband. Interestingly, her fifteen-year-old son is listed as the head of household, and she is subordinated to him.

Finally, family 9, the Teskes, consisted of three brothers and their mother living under one roof. Note how she is placed last, after all the adult males are listed. It is difficult to imagine a clearer example of the prioritization of males in that time and place than the name orders observed in families 9 and 10.

Obviously, there are no big take-aways from this exercise, but we do understand better what we do not know (what the register means when it says that all these families settled in 1811), as well as the reality of life for our and other Mennonite families in Volhynia. Death was an ever-present threat even for adults (probably five of the ten families listed had been affected by the death of a spouse), and families were constantly being reshaped in order to enable everyone to survive together. Life in nineteenth-century Volhynia truly seems to have been, as Thomas Hobbes characterized it, “nasty, brutish, and short,” which makes it all the more remarkable that our family survived and perhaps even thrived in that time and place.

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.

Bullers in Rovno 2

We have covered a significant amount of territory the past few months, so before we move forward again (which we will do below), perhaps a recap is in order.

• We began at Waldheim in Molotschna colony, the village in which David Buller (father of Peter D, grandfather of Peter P, great-grandfather of Grandpa Chris) lived and died. Several posts (here and here) explored the establishment of that village in 1836 and what we can learn about it from the 1848 community report.


• We also observed that all the early residents of Waldheim had moved there from Volhynia, so we spent time (here) learning helpful background on that area of northwest Russia (modern-day Ukraine), with Poland to the immediate west.


• We then took a further step back before Volhynia, to Neumark and Schwetz (here), because that is from where the earliest Mennonite residents of Volhynia came.

To summarize those posts as simply as possible, we moved back in time to trace our family’s likely history from Waldheim (where we know David lived) to Volhynia (where we suspect he lived before that) to Neumark and Schwetz (where we know Bullers lived, some of them in all probability David’s immediate ancestors).

After that first movement back in time, we returned to Volhynia, where we have been ever since.

• We began with several posts (here and here) providing the geographical and historical context of Volhynia in the early eighteenth century.


• Then followed a most important discovery: an 1819–1820 register of Mennonites from the Rovno district of Volhynia with the names of David Buller’s father and mother: Benjamin and Helena (see here).


• Examining the Rovno register more closely, we discovered that Benjamin, Helena, and David moved to the Rovno district in 1817 and that David was actually born in that area of Volhynia, not in Poland/West Prussia, as the Buller Family Record implies (see here and here).


• In hopes of identifying more precisely the place of David Buller’s birth, we searched for Wegtzin, the village purportedly named in the Rovno register (here and here). In the end, we learned that the village was actually named Wysock and that the nobleman Waclav Borejko owned land north of that town on which twenty-one Mennonite families founded a village named Zofyovka.


• With the knowledge that Benjamin, Helena, and David lived in Zofyovka beginning in 1817, we set out to learn we could about that setting. Remarkably, we found a record of the contract that the twenty-one Mennonite families (including two Bullers!) had made with nobleman Waclav Borejko in 1811 (see here, here, and here). 

To summarize these posts geographically, we entered the region of Volhynia, then focused on the Rovno district because it was there that David and his family lived, then narrowed our focus further to the town Wysock and the village Zofyovka to its north. In terms of chronology, we began with the 1819–1820 Rovno register, from which we deduced that Benjamin and Helena (David’s parents) moved to Zofyovka in 1817, then stepped back in time to the 1811 contract to learn about the first Mennonites who lived in that village (which included two Buller families).

So here we are back in the Rovno district of Volhynia, village of Zofyovka, ready to look at the 1819–1820 Rovno register of Mennonites once again. Our attention will focus for the rest of this post on our direct ancestors, Benjamin and Helena Buller and the other members of their family. We begin with the Rovno register entry for them.

According to Sergei Chaiderman, the translator of the “Register of Mennonites in Rovno Region, Volhynia, 1819–1820,” the entry for family 18 reads as follows:

Benjamin Buller	31
his wife Helena		25
sons David	2
sons Dominik	4
nephew David	15

According to GoogleTranslate, the Russian phrase for “wife of him” (= his wife) is жена его, which appears to be what is written before Helena’s (actually Elena’s) name. As we noted earlier, Helena was six years younger than Benjamin. One wonders if this was David’s first marriage (or Helena’s as well).

Two Russian words for “sons” are сыновья and сыны, which again may be reflected in the register heading above David and Dominik. The Russian word for “nephew” is племянник, which might be the word at the beginning of the last line.

Orthographical matters aside, several details about the entry deserve mention.

1. The Benjamin Buller family did not include just children; a fifteen-year-old nephew named David was also a part of the household. We do not know why this nephew lived with his aunt and uncle. He may have lost one or both parents (the adult mortality rate then was higher than it is today), or he may have been sent to live with Benjamin and Helena to increase his opportunity of establishing himself in a trade or vocation (farming) or to help provide labor for Benjamin’s young family. We see the same phenomenon with family 3 in the Rovno register, Jacob and Maria Richert, whose sixteen-year-old nephew Jacob Nachtigal (presumably Maria’s blood nephew) was a part of that household.

2. As noted in the original post, the order of the listings in the Rovno register follows a pattern: first the male head of household, then his wife, followed by sons from oldest to youngest, then daughters from oldest to youngest, and, finally, other members of the household (e.g., nephew, mother-in-law, brother or sister of the primary husband and wife). In two cases the chronological pattern is broken: with family family 14 (Karl and Helena Wedel) and here, with Benjamin and Helena Buller, where two-year-old David is listed before his four-year-old brother Dominik.

Why the younger is listed before the older is not immediately evident, but one wonders if it might have something to do with ranking within the family. Considering the Wedel sons may shed some light on the matter:

sons Karl	5
sons Dominik	1
sons Heinrich	17

The disparity in ages between the oldest and second-oldest is rather large, and it makes one wonder if all three sons have the same biological parents. Couple that with the fact that the second-born bears the same name as his father (Karl), and one might plausibly suggest that Heinrich is the son of Helena and an earlier husband who died. He was a member of the household, to be sure, but as a stepson to the head of household he ranked below the full-blooded descendants of both parents.

This is nothing more than a hypothesis, but it might explain why four-year-old Dominik Buller is listed after two-year-old David. Perhaps Helena had a prior husband, now dead, who was the father of Dominik. It is also possible that Benjamin had a prior wife who bore him Dominik, so that David as the child of both Benjamin and Helena was listed first; however, the first scenario seems most likely, since rights of inheritance and family rankings were determined largely on the basis of the male parent. Whatever the explanation, it is interesting that David was not the oldest in his family but was listed first. That says a great deal in and of itself.

3. The name Dominik itself seems unusual; it does not sound like a Mennonite name. We are far more accustomed to Jacobs and Heinrichs and Davids and Peters and Johans and Karls. In fact, the GRANDMA database lists only a single Mennonite named Dominik for the entire nineteenth century: Dominick Weiland.

What is more than a little unusual here is that three people in this list of forty-four males are named Dominik, two from family 14 and one from family 18: Karl Wedel’s son and brother and Benjamin Buller’s (step?)son. One wonders: Was Dominik such a common name in other Mennonite families during this time? What, if anything, might this tell us about where these Mennonite families originated?

To sum up the new material in this post, we learn from Rovno register 1 that Benjamin and Helena Buller’s household included three children, one of whom was clearly the son of both parents, one of whom may (!) have been a stepson to Benjamin (or perhaps Helena), and a nephew. David was apparently ranked higher in the family than his (half-?)brother Dominik, and both ranked higher than their cousin David, who may have been part of the household due to the loss of one or both parents, in order to have the opportunity for his own advancement, or perhaps to provide much-needed labor for the household of Benjamin and Helena.

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 here.

The terms of the 1811 contract

Earlier we looked at the opening paragraph of the 1811 contract between Waclav Borejko and the original Mennonite families of Zofyovka (see here). Today we examine the rest of the contract, both the first four terms originally discovered here and the remainder of the contract, which was translated by Adam Giesinger and published in Work Paper 25 of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (Giesinger 1977).*

Giesenger provides a helpful introduction to the contract, which I invite you to read on your own at the AHSGR site (available here, scroll down to page 13). Giesenger notes that the original German version of the contract is found in its entirety in Karasek and Lück 1931, 22–24. I offer Giesenger’s translation of that document in the numbered sections, interspersed with explanatory comments.

1. The aforementioned Mennonites and their descendants shall be forever free of taxes and seignorial duties, as well as of money payments in lieu of these, except for the land rent stipulated in this contract. They shall not be subject to compensation payments of any kind; shall not be required to provide quarters for soldiers or make money payments in lieu thereof, at the behest of their lord; shall not be required to furnish army recruits, as their lord’s subjects have to do, or make money payments in lieu thereof; and shall enjoy also all the rights and privileges conferred on Mennonites in the Emperor’s Privilegium.

The Privilegium was the charter of privileges promised to Mennonites by Catherine the Great in 1787 and ratified by Tsar Paul I in 1800. Under the terms of the Privilegium, Mennonites were granted a variety of special rights, including freedom to practice their faith without interference by the state church, freedom from the usual obligation of military service and support, and local and regional self-governance (for a complete English translation of the Privilegium, see Urry 1989, 282–84; see also Staples 2003, 72–74)). Here the Mennonite signatories are guaranteed those privileges plus several others.

2. The said Mennonites shall be free to sell their agricultural products as they wish and to transport them anywhere, without making payment of any kind to their lord or to anyone else on the lord’s domain.

3. They shall be free to pursue any trade or profession, without paying dues to a guild or to anyone else. 

As a rule, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries certain vocations were closed to those who were not members of the respective guild. Under the terms of this contract, these Mennonite families were free to pursue any profession they wished.

4. They shall enjoy undisturbed freedom in their religious beliefs and practices, shall not be subjected to pressure to become converts to another faith, and shall not be taxed to support the clergy of other confessions. In short, they shall enjoy the full religious freedom which His Majesty accords to all religions in his realm. They shall receive half a hide of land for a school and cemetery and the lumber needed for the building of the school. 

Religious freedom was a nonnegotiable matter for the Mennonites, one of the two great causes for their wanderings. This generous contract confirms their freedom in matters of faith and grants the Mennonites the space and materials needed to establish a cemetery and build a school. It may seem odd that no mention is made of a church building, but presumably it was expected that this small congregation would meet in homes or in the school building.

5. They shall be provided with an exit road from their fields which will not be counted as part of their landholding and therefore not be subject to rent payment.

6. They shall be free to raise bees on their land without paying tithes or interest, as well as to erect a pottery. Regarding the produce of the bees which are now in the trees on their land they must negotiate with the owners of the bees.

7. To prevent damage to their gardens and fences, no one will be permitted to hunt with hounds over the areas belonging to them.

8. There will be provided for them and their descendants forever a free forest to furnish wood for fuel and lumber for building, fencing, and repairs.

We catch a glimpse of life in nineteenth-century Volhynia, complete with raising of bees, hunting with hounds, and using fresh-cut timber in a multitude of ways.

9. If one or more of them, or the whole community, should suffer serious loss through a livestock epidemic, they will be granted remission of rent, being required to pay in such a year only one-half of the normal amount.

10. If they should be forced to leave their homes through war or other disturbance, they will be permitted to return unhindered when peace has been restored.

11. The land will be surveyed and measured out to the German community by a certified surveyor at the landowner’s expense. The trees on the land will be left for the colonists’ use, except for the bees which live in them.

12. In case of necessity anyone may mortgage or sell his share of the land, provided that no rent payments are missed and that the seller does not leave the land until a new settler has agreed to take over and until the seller himself has paid all his debts to the community and to others, 

Several points of interest here. Paragraph 9 deals with loss due to a livestock epidemic; there is no similar mention of loss due to crop failure. One might explain this omission in several ways. (1) The agricultural economy at Zofyovka may have been focused on the raising of livestock, not crops, so only livestock-related disasters were addressed. (2) Waclav Borejko knew that there would be crop-related disasters (i.e., flooding of crops) and did not wish to grant special consideration for such a likely occurrence. It may be that both reasons played a role in the terms of the contract.

Paragraph 12 addresses a different situation: sale of “the land.” It was possible for a tenant on Waclav Borejko’s land to sell his or her right to the land, but only after paying any debts and finding someone to assume the rental obligations. In other words, because such a one did not own the land, he or she could not sell it per se, only the right to earn a living from the land in exchange for rent payments to the lord.

13. The colonists may purchase brandy, beer, or other liquors wherever they wish, but only in the shops located on the lord’s domain.

14. They will not be drafted for the repairing of roads and bridges and are granted free passage, without payment, on all roads and bridges forever.

15. The ponds filled with reeds will not be included in the land measurement, but if they should ever be put into condition for cultivation, rent will have to be paid for them on the same basis as the rest, that is, four gulden for each morgen.

Mennonites in Molotschna could brew their own adult beverages; it is not clear if these Mennonites were permitted the same right. One suspects that they were not, that Waclav Borejko kept a tight rein on the liquor industry on his estate, no doubt to his own financial benefit.

After detailing fifteen rights guaranteed to the Mennonite colonists, the contract specifies precisely what land is in view and how much the Mennonites will pay to rent it.

The landowner further promises the colonists the following:

1. There will be divided among them 33 hides of land, each containing 30 morgen Warsaw measure, for which they will be expected to pay on New Year's Day annually 18 silver rubles per hide, that is, the equivalent of 120 gulden in the silver currency used here.

2. They will have three rent-free years, from 1 January 1812 to 1 January 1815. On the latter date the first payment of 18 silver rubles, i.e. 120 gulden, of land rent will be expected.

3. The milling of the grain for the colonist community shall not be done anywhere except at the lord’s mill, with payment of the required fee.

4. Although the colonists will live under the jurisdiction of the lord’s courts and government, they shall be free to elect judges of their own to adjudicate disputes among themselves, although the wronged party will always have the right of appeal to the lord.

5. As the lord has promised them free lumber for building, a section of forest will be assigned to each of them for this purpose. For firewood, however, they will have to cut their supply in the area assigned to the community for such use.

6. The lord will advance to each colonist 200 gulden in silver currency, which sum the colonists promise to repay in two installments, the first on 1 January 1814, the second on the same date in 1816. 

Measurements of area varied across time and geography, so we do not know precisely how large of an area is in view; still we can make a reasonable guess. This contract specifies the Warsaw measure, in which each morgen (Polish mogrow) was 1.3829 acres (as opposed to the Danzig morgen, which was 1.372 acres; as you can see, the differences are not great). If this is correct, then the entire area comprised 1,369 acres (33 hides/Hube x 30 morgen in each Hube x 1.3820), that is, slightly more than two square miles. This would provide each family around 65 acres, although some of that was lost to community areas such as the village itself, the cemetery, the school, and the forest.

Calculating the currency is even more uncertain than the area, so we will note that the Mennonites did not have to pay rent for the first three years and that Waclav Borejko loaned each colonist the equivalent of 1.67 years’s of rent payments at no interest, to be paid back in full during the fifth year of their residency. Note also that the lord of the estate controlled the milling industry, and his subjects were obligated to use his services.

7. The lands to be used for this settlement lie on the left bank of the river Horyn, starting at the Balamuta bridge near the village Zadworse; Uroczysko, Polanka, Medwied, Sielec, Rozany, Zakradie, Orlowica to the Udryck mill, Podbozkowa Pllanka, Pohale to the river near the Zadworze gardens, and others which will be found suitable during the survey of this region.

This contract, to last forever, was prepared by both sides in the presence of witnesses and duly signed at Wysock, 19 April 1811.

Perhaps someone on the ground in the area today could identify some of these places. They remain for us intriguingly precise but completely opaque.

There in its entirety is the 1811 contract signed between Waclav Borejko and twenty-one Mennonite families, including Heinrich Buller and David Buller. What relation those two are to us we may never know, but at the least we understand a little more about Buller family life in Zofyovka, which came to include our ancestors Benjamin and Helena Buller, as well as their son David Buller and his future wife Helena Zielke.

Note

* The American Historical Society of Germans from Russia is based in Lincoln, Nebraska, but has a number of local chapters in the U.S. and Canada. AHSGR offers a museum in Lincoln and a variety of resources to view or buy on their website (here). I encourage all Buller Time blog readers to explore AHSGR’s website and even to consider becoming a member. (Sutton has a local chapter led by Loren Huber.)

Sources

Giesinger, Adam. 1977. A Volhynian German Contract. American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, Work Paper 25:13–15. Available online here.

Karasek, Alfred, and Kurt Lück. 1931. Die Deutschen Siedlungen in Wolhynien: Geschichte, Volkskunde, Lebensfragen. Deutsche Gaue im Osten 3. Leipzig: Hirzel.

Staples, John. Religion, Politics, and the Mennonite Privilegium in Early Nineteenth Century Russia: Reconsidering the Warkentin Affair. Journal of Mennonite Studies 21 (2003): 71–88. Available online here.

Urry, James. 1989. None But Saints: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia 1789–1889. Winnipeg: Hyperion Press.

Why was the village named Kol. Zofyovka?

If you look closely at Benjamin Buller’s village in the map below, you will see that it is given the full name Kol. Sofijskaja, the latter part of which we know as Zofyovka. Looking to the northwest, one also spots Kol. Władysławow. This raises the question of why these villages but not others have the abbreviation Kol. 

To a great extent the rural villages of that day (in contrast to towns and urban areas) were populated by “like” people. For example, Zofyovka was a Mennonite village, not a village of Mennonites, the Polish nobility, and native Volhynians all intermingled. This is not surprising; we see the same sort of dynamics today. Such divisions were not absolute, of course, and different groups sometimes lived side by side even in small villages.

Still, the abbreviation Kol. said something about the people in this village. The inhabitants were not citizens but colonists (Kol. stood for “Kolony”). That is, the people in Volhynian villages with Kol. before the village name were emigrants from some other region, often “Germany,” to use the term loosely. Colonists generally did not have the same rights as citizens; their lives in the host country were far more tenuous and subject to disruption than citizens’ lives, which explains why our family and other Mennonite families moved from place to place so often.

As we have chance to look at other maps of Volhynia, be on the lookout for villages with Kol. as the first element; this will indicate that the village was filled with colonists, perhaps even Mennonites.

*****

The map also uses other abbreviations to identify noteworthy locations:

• M.H. = Meierhof = steward’s house (steward of the noble?)
• W.H. = Wirtshaus = tavern
• Z.S. = Ziegelschlag = brick mold (i.e., a place where bricks are formed; a brick factory)
• J.H. = Jägerhaus = gamekeeper’s house
• R. = Ruine = ruins (i.e., ruins when the map was drawn in 1911)

For additional abbreviations and the German equivalents, see the list here.

A surprising observation

We will return to the 1811 contract between Waclav Borejko and twenty-one Mennonite families in more detail later on (we especially want to read the terms of the contract to see what they tell us about our family’s life in Zofyovka), but for now let’s play a quick game of “one of these things is not like the others.”

Listed below are the names of all the Mennonite signatories to the contract. Which of the names is not like the others?

Andreas Pankrac, his son Andreas Pancras, Thobias Nachtigall, Heinrich Boller, Helene Derkien, Jakob Cilke, Jakob Richard, David Joot, Heinricht Dirks, Gotthilf Beese, Johann Nikel and his son Erdmann Nikel, Peter Unruh, Heinrich Joot, David Boller, Lorenz Sperling, Jakob Joot, Martin Beier, Thobias Sperling, Peter Sperling, Heinrich Sperling

Horyn River. © Oleksandr Yakovets.

Spot the one? Surprisingly, mixed among the twenty male heads of households is a female: Helene Derkien. What are we to make of this?

Presumably Helene served as the head of her own household, probably due to the death of a husband. She was probably known as Witwe (widow) Derkien. It was fairly common for people of that era to have multiple spouses, given the higher mortality rate even among adults compared to modern times. So, one might imagine (and this is no more than that) that Helene’s husband had died but that she had not yet remarried.

It is striking that, in a male-oriented, even male-centric, society such as that, a woman could serve as head of her own household and become a coequal partner in legally binding agreements such as the contract with Waclay Borejko. It was a small accommodation to treating all households equally, to be sure, but it is interesting to note that gender roles were not completely rigid even in a male-dominated society such as nineteenth-century Volhynia.

The contract and the registers

The last post explored the relation between Martin Schrag’s 1959 article on Volhynia (here) and an 1811 contract between Waclav Borejko and twenty-one Mennonite families (including two Buller families). Based on an exact match between the names that Schrag listed and the names who were parties to the contract, we concluded that the contract was indeed the source on which Schrag drew. Extrapolating further from what Schrag says about the location of the land in question—on Waclav Borejko’s estate north of Wysock, specifically the village of Zofyovka—we concluded that Benjamin and Helena Buller (parents of David) settled in the same village north of Wysock six years later, in 1817.

This post picks up at that point to compare the list of signatories to the contract with the names listed on Rovno 1 and Rovno 2, to see what that might imply about what had happened in the first years of the life of the village Zofyovka.

Aerial view of the area in which Zofyovka and its fields were located. The Horyn River is just to the east.

If you recall, the Rovno 1 register listed eighteen families in groups based on when a family migrated to Volhynia and/or settled on Waclav Borejko’s estate, that is, Zofyovka. Families 1–10 in Rovno 1, for example, left Prussia in 1810 and settled in Rovno in 1811, the same year the contract between Waclav Borejko and the Mennonites was made. This raises the question as to how many of the names on the 1811 contract appear among the families in Rovno 1, especially among families 1–10, who are reported to have settled on Waclav Borejko’s estate in 1811. Once again, a table helps to organize the data.

1811 Contract	Rovno 1 (1819–1820)
Andreas Pankrac
Andreas Pankrac
Thobias Nachtigall
Heinrich Boller
Helene Derkien
Jakob Cilke	Jacob Tzlivk (1811)
Jakob Richard	Jacob Richert (1811)
David Joot	David Foth (1811)
Heinricht Dirks	Heinrich Dwerkb (1811)
Gotthilf Beese
Johann Nikel	Johan Nickel (1817)
Erdmann Nikel	Erdman Nickel (1817?)
Peter Unruh
Heinrich Joot
David Boller
Lorenz Sperling
Jakob Joot
Martin Beier	Martin Bier (1811)
Thobias Sperling
Peter Sperling
Heinrich Sperling	Heinrich Schpulingo (1811)

1. Of the twenty-one families who signed the contract with Waclav Borejko in 1811, only eight were listed as still being on the land less than a decade later. Of course, it is always possible that the Rovno 1 register is not a complete list and that some or many of the other names might be found on a related list. However, the disappearance of so many names is striking.

2. Two of the names on the contract and Rovno 1 are reported on the latter to have come to Rovno in 1817 (it seems), so one wonders if these are the same individuals as those who signed the contract or different persons who coincidentally had the same name.

3. It seems that at least thirteen and perhaps as many as fifteen of the original settlers were no longer living in Zofyovka by the time the Rovno 1 register was compiled (1819–1820), less than a decade later. It is hard to imagine that all of them died, to have their places taken by an heir, although that no doubt happened in some cases (see immediately below). It is more likely that most of these families left for some other locale, to have their places taken by new Mennonite families.

4. Of the first ten families on Rovno 1 (those who are said to have settled in Zofyovka in 1811 and whose names should thus be on the contract), only six actually are named on the contract. Four are missing for some reason: Andreas Buller, David Nachtigal, Christian Tik, and Philip Bier. One wonders if Andreas Buller was a son of one of the two Bullers on the contract (Heinrich, David) who do not appear on Rovno 1. That is, Andreas may have taken over the family lease when his father (whoever it was) passed away. If so, his name would not be on the contract (he was a child and thus did not sign), but it would still be correct to say that he came to Zofyovka in 1811, since he did so along with his adult father.

We might suppose the same thing for David Nachtigal and Thobias Nachtigall. Similarly, Philip Bier might be a son of Martin Bier who leased his own property once he reached the age of maturity. Of these four, only Christian Tik is an enigma. How he fits into the 1811 situation in Zofyovka is a mystery.

5. The passing of land from father to son between 1811 and 1819/1820 still does not adequately explain why so many original settlers were missing after such a short time. In all probability, the geography of the area does. The Zofyovka land was located, by all reports, close to the Horyn River. It was thus marshy and subject to flooding. In fact, Kurt Lück writes that the local population laughed at the Mennonites for trying to farm this wetland (“Desjatinen Sumpfgebiet am Horyn in Zofijówka bei Wysozk niederliessen, haben die Ukrainer sie ausgelacht”). Over time, one would assume, some settlers moved to a more promising location.

6. One final way of comparing the contract and Rovno lists is by surname.

1811 Contract	Rovno 1 and 2 (normalized spellings)
Pankrac—2	Pankratz—1
Nachtigall—1	Nachtigal—1
Boller—2	Buller—2
Derkien/Dirks—2	Dirks—1
Cilke—1	Zielke—1
Richard—1	Richert—1
Joot—3	Voth—1
Beese—1
Nikel—2	Nickel—2
Unruh—1	Unruh—1
Sperling—4	Sperling—1
Beier—1	Beyer—2
	Tik—1
	Baltzer—1
	Wedel—1
	Köhn—1
	Schmidt—5
	Ratzlaff—1
	Becker—1
	Tzeevka—1 (Zielke?)

Almost all of the original surnames were still represented in 1819–1820, but eight new surnames had been added to the mix. Note especially the influx of Schmidts, who at that time were the largest family group in the village. Even if the geography of the area was against the residents of Zofyovka, this did not prompt everyone to leave right away, nor did it prevent new settlers from coming to see what they could make of the situation.

7. Finally, why did Benjamin and Helena move to Zofyovka in 1817? Presumably because members of the immediate or extended family had blazed that trail. We cannot yet say whether Heinrich or David Boller (Buller) were closely related to Benjamin, but it is highly likely that there was at least some contact between them before Benjamin trekked hundreds of miles to settle in a small village in the Rovno district of Volhynia. Perhaps Benjamin even came from the same place in Prussia where Heinrich or David had lived before they emigrated to Volhynia. Nothing more than guess and hypothesis at this point, but perhaps further research will shed light on this question, as it has on so many others.

Sources

Lück, Kurt. 1934. Deutsche Aufbaukräfte in der Entwicklung Polens: Forschungen zur deutsch-polnischen Nachbarschaft im ostmitteleuropäischen Raum. Ostdeutsche Forschungen 1. Plauen: Wolff. Pages 431–34 (of the 1990 reprinting) available online here.

Schrag, Martin H. 1959. Volhynia (Ukraine). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.