Tying up loose ends

The previous post wondered aloud if Maria Schmidt of family 15 in the Rovno register 1 was closely related to the Peter Schmidt of family 16, the hypothesis being that closely related families may have been likely to make the trek from Prussia to Volhynia together.

Further research reveals that, although Maria and Peter were related, it was not remotely close. They shared only a common great-great-grandfather; stated differently, their relation was four generations back. Thus, it was presumably a coincidence that Maria and Peter emigrated to Zofyovka.

The same post also noted the presence of Efcke (Eva) Buller of family 16 in the same travel group (if that was the case) as Benjamin Buller and family. To recap briefly, families 15–18 are all reported to have moved to Zofyovka in 1817, so our working hypothesis is that they all traveled together.

Of course, since we do not (yet) know who Benjamin Buller’s father was, we cannot say how closely (or distantly) Efcke and Benjamin were related. The best we can do is to place Efcke in her historical and genealogical context in the Schwetz area.

Efcke was born, as one can see above, on 14 October 1784. Thus she would have been thirty-five if the register was compiled in 1819, not the thirty-three that the register lists. The Przechovka church book also records her place of birth (Klein Konopat), her year of baptism (1798—fourteen was an unusually young age for Mennonite baptism), and her date and place of marriage (6 November 1808 in [Deutsch] Konopat) to number 1233, whom we know as Peter Schmidt.

Looking more closely at the church-book entry, we see that her father was number 352, who turns out to be a Benjamin Buller who was married to a Maricke Cornelsen. Together they had seven children; Efcke was their sixth: Maricke, Heinrich, Ancke, David, Trincke, Efcke, Elizabeth.

Of course, the entire family descended from George (formerly Unknown) Buller and Dina Thoms. In this case the line was:

		George Buller || Dina Thoms
		|
		Hans Buller || —— Sarcke
		|
		Heinrich Buller || Ancke Beckers
		|
		Benjamin Buller || Maricke Cornelsen
		|
		Efcke Buller Schmidt

There is not much else we can say. We know that Efcke and our Benjamin (father of David) were related in some way; in fact, they were from the same generation of Bullers at Schwetz: the fourth generation after George and Dina. Beyond that, we can only wait and hope for additional archival information to come to light that permits us to trace the line between these two members of our larger family.