Family line 2: George 3XXXX

George Buller and Dina Thoms had three sons (that we know of): Hans, George, and Peter. In the last post we explored the family line of one of those sons, Hans 340, and discovered that the Przechowka church book contains a fair amount of information about one part of that line (column C below) but almost nothing about the other parts (columns A and B). The explanation for this spotty coverage is obvious: some of Hans 340’s sons moved 120 miles away from the Schwetz area and the church, so the compilers of the church book did not have ready access to information about them.

This post moves one generation 2 son to the right to make observations about a second son of George and Dina: George 3XXXX. As before, you may want to consult the full-sized chart available here.

According to the church book, George 3XXXX had four daughters and two sons born between the years 1729 and 1743. Already we see a difference. No daughters are listed for Hans 340 (the subject of the last post), only three sons, and not one has a year of birth listed. Each of George 3XXXX’s six children has not only a year of birth but an exact date of birth provided. In addition, the church book records the marriage partner for each child. Clearly the information on this family line is much more complete than the previous one.

Moving down to generation 4 (see columns D and E above), we also discover additional details about the members of this line. Jacob 377, for example went to Alexanderwohl village in Molotschna colony in 1820, as did his deceased brother Peter’s widow and children and his cousin Jacob (387).

If we look further in the church book, we can identify more than twenty generation 5 descendants of this line, far more than the other two lines descended from George and Dina. The conclusion seems clear enough: the line of George 3XXX is the one that stayed in Schwetz and remained with the Przechowka church until the entire church moved to Alexanderwohl in 1820. Once in Molotschna, the church started a new register; I would not be surprised at all to find the George 3XXXX’s line continued there, since this was the central Buller line of the Przechowka-Alexanderwohl church.

Why should this matter to us? If it appears that the George 3XXXX line is fairly well accounted for in the Przechowka church book, and if our Benjamin or David Buller do not appear in that book, then it seems reasonable to conclude that we are not descended from George 3XXXX. We do not know that for certain, but it seems far more plausible than that our family was part of George 3XXXX’s line but was accidentally but thoroughly passed over in the church book.

One final note, George 3XXXX had the same first name as his father, which probably indicates that he was the first of the three known sons of George and Dina. Perhaps primogeniture (the favoring of the firstborn) played a role in the primacy of this family line within the church and even in the community?