Neumark to Molotschna: 1834 … and a scandal

Nearly a month ago we began our exploration of the Neumark (Neztebruch, Driesen, Brandenburg) area by noting not only the founding of Brenkenhoffswalde and Franztal but also the end of their Mennonite inhabitation. Specifically, we discovered that, sixty-nine years after the founding of this Mennonite community (or congregation) in 1765, most of the residents of these two villages packed up their belongings, hitched up their livestock, and moved to the Molotschna colony (see here).

One would think, given what we learned about the lack of Bullers in the villages from the 1826 tax lists (see here and here), that no Bullers were involved in this Neumark to Molotschna immigration. However, Mennonite historians have collected and posted online records related to that emigration, and they reveal that there were at least five Bullers who made the trek.

We begin with a comprehensive listing of emigrants provided by Richard D. Thiessen (see here). The list is titled “Migration of Mennonites from Brandenburg, Prussia to Russia 1833–35,” which might indicate that there was not a single forty-family emigration in 1834 but several smaller ones over this period. Although the 1833 date is apparently the year when permission to emigrate was granted, this leaves open the possibility of one migration in 1834 and another in 1835. That being said, the precise course of events remains unclear.

The list is organized alphabetically by last name and also grouped into family units as much as is possible. Working through the list, one notices immediately that, although several individual Bullers are listed, no Buller families per se are recorded. Consistent with what we learned from the 1826 tax lists, all the Buller families had already left the region; only five individual Bullers remained.

Name	Age	Occupation	Place of Origin	Year
Baecker, nee Schmitt, Marie	65	widow Buller	Franzthal	1833
Buller, Heinrich	69		Brenkenhoffswalde	1833
Unruh, nee Buller, Helene	24	wife of Georg	Brenkenhoffswalde	1833
Buller, Heinrich	1	child of Helena Voth (illegitimate)	Brenkenhoffswalde	1833
Voth, nee Buller, Maria	34	wife of Benjamin	Franzthal	1835

Three of the Bullers were females who had married into other Mennonite families. Interestingly, one (Marie Baecker) was born a Schmitt, married a Buller first, then married a Baecker when her Buller husband (unknown to us) died. The other two females were a generation younger and no doubt were still in Neumark because their husbands chose to remain there.

Aerial view of the east end of Brenkenhoffswalde.

This leaves us with two male Bullers, both named Heinrich, whose existence as the only two male Bullers in this area probably tells a story and reveals a scandal all on its own. Heinrich the elder, sixty-nine years old, has neither wife nor occupation recorded. Heinrich the younger, one year old, was the illegitimate son of Helena Voth, twenty-two-year-old unmarried daughter of Benjamin Voth. The fact that both males are named Heinrich and that there is no other male Buller listed in the area who could have fathered the child suggests rather strongly that Heinrich the elder was Heinrich the younger’s biological father. I find it interesting that, in spite of the out-of-wedlock birth, the child was given the father’s last name even while living in the home of the mother along with her parents and siblings. Of course, we cannot be absolutely certain that Heinrich the elder was the only adult male Buller in the community, but the evidence does seem to tilt in that direction. Further, we cannot know beyond any doubt who Heinirch the elder was, although the facts would seem to point in a fairly clear direction (see further below).

A second historical resource, the “Register of the Distribution of Passports 19/31 March to 15/27 July 1834 for Settlement in the Mennonite colonies of Tauridia District” (Chaiderman 1997–1998) offers additional insight into the groupings of this migration (see further here). This Russian archival document lists twenty passports granted for emigration from the Neumark area in 1834.

Neither Marie Baecker nee Schmitt (widow Buller above) nor Maria Voth nee Buller are listed at all; Helene Unruh nee Buller is listed as the wife of Georg but is not identified as a Buller, which is not at all surprising. Beyond this, passport numbers 12–14 are of greatest interest to us.

12. Royal Prussian citizen, Mennonite, Benjamin Voth with wife Susanna, son Tobias, daughters Helena, Anna, Maria and Helena’s unlawfully born son, Heinrich Buller

13. Royal Prussian citizen, Mennonite, Ludwig Boettcher with wife Anna, daughters Maria, Anna, Wilhelmina, Henrietta, Amalie and Heinrich Buller

14. Royal Prussian citizen, Mennonite, Kornelius Voth with wife Sara, son in law Buller with wife Susanna, son Heinrich and grandson Johann Voth

Passport 12 lists the illegitimate Heinrich Buller the younger along with the rest of the family exactly as they appear in the first Thiessen list.

Passport 13 includes the Boettcher family and Heinrich Buller the elder. Although it might seem odd to see Heinrich grouped with an unrelated family on a single passport, this was probably the only way that Heinrich could lawfully leave, since “only families having at least five members” were permitted to leave (see Mannhardt 1953). Heinrich had no other family, so the Boettchers attached him to their family so that he could emigrate with the rest of the group.

Passport 14 complicates matters, since it does not correspond to the information in the Thiessen list. The passport lists husband and wife Kornelius and Sara Voth and their grandson Johann Voth; so far so good, since the Thiessen list matches. However, passport 14 also lists a son-in-law Buller and his wife Susanna. The fact that no first name is recorded for the son-in-law raises suspicion about the reliability of the translation here; a passport without a first name is hard to imagine. There are several Susanne Voths named in the Thiessen list, so presumably one of them is the one in view here. Could it be that the apparently orphaned brother and sister Peter (seventeen) and Susanna (fifteen) Voth are the two people intended here? Whatever the explanation, we cannot conclude based on the evidence that there was another male Buller in the group who emigrated from Brenkenhoffswalde and Franztal to Molotschna colony.

This brings us back to Heinrich the elder. According to the first list, Heinrich was sixty-nine in 1833. This would put his birth year around 1764, just before Bullers first settled in Neumark. The list also locates Heinrich in Brenkenhoffswalde, which, if you recall, was the village in which Peter Buller 351 (in the Przechowka church book) and his family settled in 1767: Peter, his wife, their two daughters, and their two sons. Drawing upon the evidence of the later tax lists, from 1793 especially (see here), we suggested earlier that Peter’s two sons were named Peter Jr. and Heinrich. Of course, since Peter’s four children were recorded as being alive in 1767, they were all born prior to that year, and it would not surprise if Peter and his wife had a child sometime during 1764, the year when Heinrich the elder of 1833 Brenkenhoffswalde was born. As with most of our findings, certainty eludes us, but it seems more likely than not that the Heinrich Buller who came to Brenkenhoffswalde with his father Peter, his mother, and three siblings in the 1760s was the father of the illegitimate Heinrich Buller born to Helena Voth and that both Heinrichs, father and son, ended up at Gnadenfeld in Molotschna colony, which is where the Neumark group was emigrating.

What are we to make of all this, not just the scandal but the seventy years of Buller residency in the Neumark region? On the one hand, it is clear that Bullers lived in Brenkenhoffswalde and Franztal during the entire time of its Mennonite inhabitation, from 1765 to 1834. On the other hand, it is just as obvious that all the Buller families left the area before 1834. When did they leave, and where did they go? Those are questions for continued research and future posts.

Works Cited

Chaiderman, Sergei, trans. 1997–1998. Russian Government Embassy in the City of Danzig: Register of the Distribution of Passports 19/31 March to 15/27 July 1834 for Settlement in the Mennonite colonies of Tauridia District. Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive File 362. State Archives of the Odessa Region (SAOR) Fond 89 Opis 1. Available online here.

Mannhardt, H. G. 1953. Brenkenhoffswalde and Franztal (Lubusz Voivodeship, Poland). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1953. Available online here.

Thiessen, Richard D. 2001. Migration of Mennonites from Brandenburg, Prussia to Russia 1833–35. Available online here.

Franztal in Neumark 5

In this fifth and final post about Franztal in Neumark, which covers the 1826 Praestations-Tabel (tax list), we will observe a similar phenonemon as we discovered in the 1826 Brenkenhoffswalde list discussed here.

To recap Franztal one last time. George Buller 350 and his wife, son, and daughter lived in Franztal by 1767. Twenty-six years later, in 1793, George disappeared from the register of lease-holders, but his son (presumably) Heinrich now farmed the same plot. In addition, two new Bullers—another man named Heinrich and an Andreas—held Franztal leases.

Twelve years after that, in 1805, Heinrich son of George had passed on, his place taken by his widow and two unmarried daughters: Maria and Anna. The “other” Heinrich still leased plot 3, while a George Buller also lived in the village but did not hold title to a lease. Finally, there were now two Andreas Bullers in Franztal, one named Jr. and no doubt the son of the other.

The tax list for the following year, 1806, once again included Heinrich of plot 3 and the two Andreas Bullers (plots 14 and 20). There is no mention of the George from 1805 nor of the widow or the two daughters of Heinrich son of George 350. Taking their place with plot 1 is Heinrich Jr., presumably the eldest son of the deceased Heinrich.

We will put this all together in a chart of sorts, along with the names and likely relationships from the other Neumark villages (Neu Dessau and Brenkenhoffswalde), but for now we should only note that the last three Praestations-Tabellen (1793, 1805, 1806) recorded at least ten different Bullers: George, Heinrich 1, Heinrich 2, Andreas, Heinrich 1’s widow, Maria daughter of Heinrich 1, Anna daughter of Heinrich 1, George (unknown origin), Andreas Jr., and Heinrich Jr. (son of Heinrich 1). The 1826 list paints an entirely different picture (see Goertz 2001, 51).

Lot 1

Johann Lange
Johann Preuss
Heinrich Hahn
Mart. Sommerfeld
Gottfried Glaser
Daniel Krüger
Mich. Dittmann aus [from] Vorbruch

Lot 2

Johann Karutz
Herrman Lentzmann
Johann Eichholz
Witwe [widow] Peter Voth geb. [born] Schmidt
Sam. Renutz aus Vorbruch
Andreas Hartmann

Lot 3

Carl Schmidt
Joh. Friedr. Dabbert
Joh. Püpke aus Netzbruch
Joh. Bremer

Looking east toward present-day Głęboczek, formerly known as Franztal.

Lot 4

Andreas Voth
Behrend Retzlaff
Renitz aus Vorbruch

Lot 5

Gottfried Ziebarth
Carl Ziebarth
Wilhelm Grahlmann

Lot 6

Carl Wiersch
Erdmann Vierus
Christ. Kühl aus Vorbruch

Lot 7

Carl Wiersch

Lot 8

Wittwe Wilh. Voth geb. Buller

Lot 9

Carl Kray

Lot 10

Ludwig Dietrich
Samuel Bensch

Lot 11

Carl Grahlmann
Carl Liermann
Behrendt Voth
Andreas Janetzky
Christian Sommerfeld

Lot 12

Peter Wedell
separ. Unruh geb.Voth
Wilh. Liermann
Abraham Becker
Peter Ganz

Lot 13

Martin Sommerfeld
Jacob Becker
Carl Schaede
Erdmann Nixdorf

Lot 14

Gottl. Bähr
Tobias Rettschlag
Gottlieb Zippel
Peter Gans
Mich. Blanck
Christ. Künzel
Fried. Sasse

Lot 15

Behrend Retzlaff
Peter Becker
Gottfr. Glaser
Friedr. Remitz aus Vorbruch

Lot 16

Wittwe Dircks geb. Voth

Lot 17

Peter Ganz
Mich. Kandt

Lot 18

Andreas Hartmann

Lot 19

Mich. Kant
Wilh. Gebhardt

Lot 20

Heinrich Dietrich
Martin Knispel
Christoph Draeger aus Rohrdorf

Lot 21

Die Mennonistengemeine zu Franthal aus Brenkenhoffswalde für die verlandete Netze
[The Mennonite church to Franztal from Brenenhoffswalde for the silted-up Netze (?)]

The list contains a lot of unfamiliar names, which makes for boring reading. But that is precisely the point: for the first time since 1767, no Bullers are listed as lease-holders in Franztal—just as with the 1826 list for Brenkenhoffswalde. In fact, the only known Buller remaining in the village is the widow Voth, who was born a Buller.*

There may have been other Bullers in the village, but the difference with the 1805 and 1806 lists is striking. Gone are both Andreas Bullers, Heinrich 2 (the “other” Heinrich), Heinrich 1’s widow, and Heinrich Jr. Neither is there mention of the George from 1805. The two daughters Anna and Marie may have still lived in the village with husbands and children, but we have no way of knowing that based on the present evidence.

This is exactly what we saw for the Neu Dessau and Brenenhoffwalde 1826 lists. Before 1826 there was an influx of non-Mennonites (to judge by the names) and a radical reduction in the number of known Mennonites in the villages. Granted, the villages still contain some Voths and Ratzlaffs and Dirkcs and Schmidts, but there are also Ziebarths and Zippels and Knispels and Kants. Clearly, the neighborhood has changed.

The question this raises is: Where did all the Bullers go? Beyond that, we descendants of Benjamin > David > Peter D > Peter P > Chris wonder if our ancestors lived in the Neumark during the latter part of the eighteenth and first part of the nineteenth centuries. Is this why it is so difficult to trace further back than Benjamin? Was he a part of the group that disappeared from the Neumark and then popped up again elsewhere?

I have no idea. But I do know that there is one more Neumark list to consult before we wander to a new locale. It is a list that reveals an apparent scandal that involves a Buller we thought we had left behind. Until then …

*****

* If this unknown Buller was Wilhelm Voth’s first wife, and if they were married when Voth first appeared on the tax list in 1793, then she probably was of the same generation as Heinrich son of George 350, perhaps even of the same family (i.e., George 350’s daughter and Heinrich 1’s sister). However, those are two very big ifs, so we should treat this idea as nothing more than an appealing possibility.

Work Cited

Goertz, Adalbert. 2001. Mennonites in Amt Driesen of the Neumark, Brandenburg, Prussia. Mennonite Family History 20:47–51.

Franztal in Neumark 4

Although the 1806 tax list, the subject of this post, was compiled only a year later than the one from the previous post, it is not simply a repeat of the 1805 information, at least as far as the Bullers were concerned.

Thus far we have discovered in this series that George Buller (Przechowka 350) settled in Franztal at least by 1767, probably in 1765 with the rest of the original residents. At that time George had a wife, a son, and a daughter. Twenty-six years later, in 1793, the tax list does not mention George except in terms of him formerly holding a lease, but that list does introduce us to additional Bullers: a Heinrich who was apparently George’s son, another Heinrich whose origin is not known, and Andreas, also of unknown origin.

Twelve years after that, in 1805, the tax list revealed that Heinrich son of George was dead and had left behind a widow and two unmarried daughters: Maria and Anna. The “other” Heinrich Buller was still on the scene and inhabiting the same plot. The Andreas from 1793 had been joined by another Andreas, identified as Jr. in the list, so presumably the eldest son of the original Andreas Buller.

That brings us to 1806, the list for which is reproduced below (see Goertz 2001, 50).

Lot 1

Hein Buller Jr.

Heinrich Hahn

der v. Sachs zu Dolgen
Michel Kniese
Isaac Sperling

Lot 2

Hein Voot
Peter Voot
Joh. Sam. Renetz olim Schmidt

Lot 3

Hein. Buller
Johann Pappe olim Cornel. Voot
Jacob Richert

Lot 4

Tens Voot
Johann Samuel Renitz

Lot 5

David Dircks
Heinrich Dircks

Lot 6

Berend Retzlaff

Carl Ludwig Hintze

Lot 7

Berend Retzlaff

Lot 8

Wilh. Voot
Heinrich Voth
nunc: Carl Hintz from Netzbruch 17

Lot 9

Tens Voot Jr.

Lot 10

Heinrich Dircks olim Schmidt

Lot 11

Berend Voot olim Schmidt
Heinrich Dircks

Lot 12

Peter Jans Sr.
Peter Jans Jr.

Lot 13

David Voot
Jacob Becker

Lot 14

Andreas Buller
Heinrich Voot
Tobias Sperling
Peter Jans Jr.

Lot 15

Jacob Becker
Benjamin Karenke
Friedr. Renitz

Lot 16

Johann Becker

Lot 17

Peter Jans Jr.
Hein Voot

Lot 18

Tobias Voot

Lot 19

Jacob Voot
Johann Becker

Lot 20

Andreas Buller

The “other” Heinrich Buller (i.e., the one who definitely was not son of George 350) still inhabited plot 3, and the two Andreas Bullers still leased plots 14 and 20, just as they did a year earlier.

However, a big change took place with plot 1. In 1805 the lease-holders included Heinrich’s widow and two daughters. Now all three females have vanished from the list, their place taken by Heinrich Buller Jr. How do we explain the sudden appearance of Heinrich Jr.?

Presumably Heinrich Jr. was not yet an adult when his father died, so the rights to the land passed to his mother and his (presumably older) sisters. By 1806, however, Heinrich Jr. was ready to assume the responsibilities of an adult, which in that context meant taking over the lease and all of its rights and obligations. (An alternate explanation might be that Heinrich Jr. lived somewhere else in 1805 but returned by 1806 to take over the family plot. This is possible but highly speculative.)

One would think that Heinrich Jr. provided for his mother from the food and revenue generated by the family property, but it is also possible that she remarried. It is also likely that Jr.’s sisters Maria and Anna married at some point and raised their own families on their husbands’ plots. Even though we do not know happened to Jr.’s mother and sisters, we can say with certainty that Heinrich Jr. did follow in his father’s footsteps in farming Franztal plot 1. How long he did so will be answered, in part, in the fifth and final post on the Bullers of Franztal—after which we will be ready for a family scandal.

Work Cited

Goertz, Adalbert. 2001. Mennonites in Amt Driesen of the Neumark, Brandenburg, Prussia. Mennonite Family History 20:47–51.

Franztal in Neumark 3

The first post in the Franztal series (here) recorded lease-holders for thirteen village plots in 1767, but the second post (here) complicated matters by listing a larger number of Mennonite families farming nineteen plots in 1793.

Zooming in on a 1936 map of the village, one can see the rough outlines of the village plots. The key is to focus on the line of houses stretching slightly upward from west to east across the lower third of the map: there appear to be between eighteen and twenty houses associated with narrow strips of land (the fields).

The layout of Franztal is less clear in the aerial photograph below, but the general organization and shape are still discernible.

The photograph is of Franztal today, but our interest is Franztal in 1805, the date of the next tax list available to us (Goertz and Goertz 1985, 48–49). Given the lack of correspondence between plot numbers and lease-holders in the first two Franztal lists, this post will simply list the data for 1805 all on its own. One note: the number that appears after each name refers to the size of the land-holding in Morgen (1 Morgen = .63 acre).

Lot 1

Maria (16) and Anna Buller (20)
Heinrich Buller widow (13) and Heinrich Hahn (10)

Lot 2

Heinrich Voth widow (21)
Peter Voth widow (20)
Benjamin Gans from Brenkenhoffswalde (14)

Lot 3

Heinrich Buller (17) and Benjamin Unruh (8)
Jacob Richert (23)
Tobias Sperling

Lot 4

Tens Voth Sr. (32)
Tens Voth Sr.
nunc (now): Remitz (6) Vorbruch [the village of Vorbruch was 1 mile north of Franztal]

Lot 5

Davied Dürcks (30) olim Gehrhard Dürcks (9)
Heinrich Dürcks (9)

Lot 6/7

Heinrich Voot (16)

nunc: Bernhardt Retzlaff (15)

Peter Gans Jr. olim Heinr. Buller (8)

Lot 8

Wilhelm Voth (15)
Heinrich Voth
nunc: Carl Hintz from Netzbruch (17)

Lot 9

Dens Voth Jr. (14)

Lot 10

Heinrich Dürcks Jr. (15)

Lot 11

Behrendt Voth (15)
Heinrich Dürcks (30) and Peter Dürcks (8)
Peter Gans Sr. olim Salomon Schmidt (10)
George Buller
nunc: V. Sack (8)

Lot 12

Benjamin Sperling (48)
Peter Gans Sr. (94 + 11)

Lot 13

Davied Voth (olim Andr. Voth 9) (119)
Jacob Bäcker Jr. (11)

Lot 14

Tomas Sperling (8) and Davied Voth (8)
Andreas Buller Jr. (10)
Heinrich Voth (10)
Benjamin Sperling olim Peter Gans Sr. (9)

Lot 15

Peter Bäcker (2)
Jacob Bäcker (12)
Benjamin Kanicke (9)
Friedr. Renith from Vorbruch (10)

Lot 16

Ludw. Jacob Harwig

Lot 17

Peter Gans Jr. (11)

Lot 18

Tobias Voth (11)

Lot 19

Joh. Fr. Kurtzweg (5) and Hamann (11)

Lot 20

Andreas Buller (16)

The 1767 Praestations-Tabel (tax list) named only one Buller: George (350); the 1793 list added two more: Heinrich and Andreas. Just twelve years later, this list names even more Bullers, including the first two female names we have seen on any of these lists.

1. We learned earlier that in 1793 Heinrich Buller leased plot 1, which was formerly held by George Buller. From this we developed the working hypothesis that Heinrich was George’s oldest son and took over the family lease when his father passed away.

Dramatic changes took place between 1793 and 1805. First, Heinrich died, leaving behind a widow who now controlled a part of the land. The fact that this woman is identified in terms of her relation to Heinrich (his widow) probably implies that she had not remarried at that time.

It is impossible to know exactly how old Heinrich was when he passed on, but we can surmise that he was a relatively young man. If he was born around 1765 (as implied toward the end of this post), he would have been forty at the oldest.

Heinrich’s age is important to keep in mind as we consider two other Bullers named as lease-holders of plot 1: Maria and Anna. As usual, we should be careful in the conclusions we draw, but the most natural explanation of this listing of female lease-holders is that they were unmarried daughters of Heinrich and his wife. If Heinrich was roughly twenty when he married, any children of his would have been twenty or younger in 1805.

Although we might not think of female daughters as eligible to inherit from their fathers, it appears that there was no restriction on the practice in Prussia at that time.* So, presumably Heinrich’s unmarried daughters inherited rights to the lease upon his death. To be clear, we do not know with certainty that Maria and Anna were Heinrich’s daughters, but there seems no other good explanation of why these unmarried Buller females held the lease jointly with Heinrich’s widow.

The three females held the lease to plot 1 jointly with Heinrich Hahn, whose appearance is a little less simple to explain. One wonders if Heinrich Hahn had married into the family and thus received the inheritance due to a third daughter. Of course, another equally plausible explanation is that Heinrich’s “estate” sold the part-lease to Hahn in order to generate cash.

2. Surprisingly, another Heinrich Buller appears on the list, as part-owner of plot 3 (with Benjamin Unruh and Jacob Richert). If you recall, that plot was jointly owned by Heinrich Buller, Cornelius Voot, and Jacob Richert in 1793. Clearly, this is not the same Heinrich whose heirs who possess plot 1, so it seems that we misinterpreted the 1793 list in the previous post. That is, in 1793 Franztal there were two Heinrich Bullers, not one who leased two properties.

Because plot 3 Heinrich leased land in 1793 (when plot 1 Heinrich would have been twenty-eight or so), plot 3 Heinrich was not a son of plot 1 Heinrich. Beyond that, we really know nothing. Who the “second” Heinrich was and where he came from is a mystery (for now). (Instead of going back and correcting the previous post, I will leave the text as is and consider this an adequate correction of the record.)

3. Lot 6/7 is reported to have been formerly (olim) owned by Heinrich Buller. Is this one of the two Franztal Heinrichs known to us or a third Heinrich Buller? It is impossible to tell.

4. Lot 11 introduces a different kind of mystery. It lists George Buller as associated with the plot but does not indicate any acreage. To work backward through this odd listing, one must ask whether the listing of an individual without any acreage indicates that the person lived in the house together with the other people listed for that plot but did not hold actual title to the lease. That must remain an open question for the time being, but it would accord with what we observed in the early 1700s, when the Mennonites of George Buller and Dina Thoms’s time often lived several families to a single house.

If that explanation is valid, then the next question that comes to mind is whether this is the original George Buller who settled Franztal in 1767. We assumed he was dead in 1793, but perhaps he had simply turned over the family lease to Heinrich and moved to another house. Assuming George 350 (in the Przechowka church book) was born around 1745, he would have been sixty at the time of this tax list, certainly not that old even for the early nineteenth century.

Of course, we have no reason to think that the George of plot 11 was George 350; it could have been any George Buller, of whom there seemed to be no shortage. For that matter, it could have been a son of George 350, although that strikes me as somewhat difficult to swallow.

5. Two Bullers remain: Andreas Buller of plot 20, and Andreas Buller Jr. of plot 14. It seems a safe hypothesis to identify the former as the 1793 owner of plot 14 and Jr. as his son. We do not know, as usual, that they were father and son, but it seems more than coincidental that one Andreas held lease to property in 1793 and that a second Andreas who is identified as Jr. held the lease to the same plot in 1805. That being said, it is a little troubling that lot 20 Andreas is not explicitly identified as Sr., as are others in this register. On balance, however, the evidence tilts in favor of father–son, in my view.

A great deal changed in the twelve years between 1793 and 1805: (1) Heinrich died and left the rights to property to his wife and two unmarried daughters whose names we now know: Maria and Anna (and maybe a son-in-law); (2) either George 350 reappeared in the records or a different George took up residence in the village; and (3) a second Andreas (most likely the son of the first one) established his own household in the same plot that the first Andreas had farmed twelve years earlier. In addition, the number of Buller families in the village had increased from one in 1767 to at least five in 1805, with a significant number of individuals. The Franztal Bullers were still not as numerous as the Voths, but they had grown substantially in the four decades of life in the village.

*****

* If Maria and Anna inherited the lease from their father Heinrich, it seems most likely that this took place before Prussian emperor Frederick William III’s 1801 Declaration that “only current Mennonite property owners and their legal male descendants” would be exempt from military service. Because military obligation was tied to the land, an unmarried daughter who inherited property after 1801 and then married would apparently obligate her new husband and any male children of theirs to provide military service whenever called upon to do so. This led, of course, to many Mennonites not passing property on to daughters, to avoid this unacceptable entanglement. Because Heinrich left property to his two daughters, and because he probably would not have done so if it would have resulted in their husbands and sons being forced to serve in the military, one might reasonably propose that Heinrich passed away before the emperor’s declaration in December 1801. See further Jantzen 2010, 66–72.

Works Cited

Goertz, Adalbert, and Bärbel Goertz. 1985. Mennonites of Neumark, Prussia, in 1805. Mennonite Family History 4:48–50.

Jantzen, Mark. 2010. Mennonite German Soldiers: Nation, Religion, and Family in the Prussian East, 1772–1880. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Franztal in Neumark 2

This second post in the Franztal series takes us from 1767 to 1793. Thus far we have learned that one Buller family was among the original (or at least early) settlers in this small Neumark village: George Buller and his wife plus their daughter and son. As mentioned earlier, George (350 in the Przechowka church book) was the brother of Peter (351), one of the early inhabitants of Brenkenhoffswalde. The proximity of the two villages (and thus the two brothers) is evident in the 1936 map below.

Franztal was roughly 2 miles east of Brenkenhoffswalde, the other Mennonite village in the Neumark area.

With that recap and visual reminder as background, we are ready to compare the village lists from 1767 and 1993 (Goertz 2001, 49).

	1767	1793
1	Andres Vood	Heinr. olim George Buller und der von Sack
2	George Buller	Hein. Voot, Peter Voot, Joh. Schmidt: olim Hans Becker
3	Salomon Schmidt	Heinr. Buller, Cornel. Voot, Jacob Richert: olim Tobias Sperling Sr.
4	Tobias Sperling	Tens Voot
5	Hans Ratzlaff	David olim Jerd Dircks, Heinrich Dirck
6	William Vood	Carl Ludwig Hinze olim Heinr. Voot, Berend Retzlaff
7	Peter Ratzlaff I	Berend Retzlaff
8	Tens Vood	Wilh. Voot
9	George Ratzlaff	Tens Voot Jr., olim Jacob Jans
10	Hans Türcks	Martin Schmidt, olim Wilh. Voot Sr.
11	Lieb Schmidt	Martin Schmidt, Hein. Dircks
12	Gerd Türcks	Peter Jans
13	Hans Becker	13a. David olim Andr. Voot, Jacob Becker
		13b. David Voot olim Johann Funcke
14		Andr. Buller olim Hans Becker
15		Jacob Becker, Benjamin Karnecke, Frantzenitz
16		Joh. Becker olim Dircks
17		Peter Jans olim Tobias Sperling, Hein. Voot
18		Tobias Voot olim Hans Unruh
19		Jacob Vot, Peter Becker, olim George Unruh

Seeing these two lists side by side reveals one thing in a hurry: the continuity that we saw earlier for Brenkenhoffswalde is completely absent here. With Brenenhoffswalde, between 1767 and 1793 the names stayed largely the same for the sixteen village lots. For Franztal, not only has the number of plots grown from thirteen to nineteen, but not one of the named lease-holders in 1767 is associated with the same plot number in 1793.

Further, of the thirteen named lease-holders in 1767, only two are reported as holding a lease in 1793: Tens Voth (plot 8 in 1767 = 4 in 1793), and William Voth (6 = 8). Five or six other 1767 individuals are listed only as olim (former owners) in 1793: Andres Voth (1 = 13a), George Buller (2 = 1), Tobias Sperling (4 = 3 and/or 17), Gerd Dircks (12 = 5), Hans Becker (13 = 2 and/or 14), and perhaps Hans Dircks (10 may = 16). Five of the original settlers are not mentioned at all: Salomon Schmidt (3), Hans Ratzlaff (5), Peter Ratzlaff I (7), George Ratzlaff (9), and Lieb Schmidt (11).

If the two lists are taken as accurate records of the division and assignment of plots within Franztal, then something significant happened during the twenty-six years between the two registers. The most likely explanation is that the land associated with the village was expanded, which led to a complete reorganization (and renumbering) of the village plots. So, for example, George Buller’s plot 2 in 1767 became plot 1 in 1793. It is also worth noting that six plots have no former lease-holder listed, which might reflect the fact that six new plots were added after the original founding of the village (i.e., 13 + 6 = 19).

All that is of some interest, but our focus really is on the three Bullers listed: George, Heinrich, and Andreas.

1. George is listed only as the former owner of 1793 plot 1. This is probably a sign that George had turned over the family farm to one of his children or had passed away, which led to the same result. We know that George’s brother Peter 351 was still alive in 1793 but died sometime before 1805 (see here). Since George is listed before Peter in the Przechowka church book and has the same name as their father George (342), it seems reasonable to think that this George (350) was the older of the two brothers. It may be that he passed away sometime during the twenty-six-year period between 1767 and 1793.

2. Heinrich Buller is recorded as taking over George Buller’s Franztal property. This is a strong hint of a father–son relationship, and it makes it plausible that Heinrich was George’s firstborn son, likely the unnamed son recorded in the 1767 register. If he was, then Heinrich was at least twenty-six years old and no doubt establishing his own family by then.

Not to be overlooked is a Heinrich’s joint lease (with Cornelius Voth and Jacob Richert) of 1793 plot 3, the land formerly farmed by Tobias Sperling (1767 plot 4). If this is the same Heinrich identified above, it might hint that Heinrich was enjoying a certain level of success.

3. Andreas is the last Buller mentioned, the one about whom we can say the least. We know from this list that he farmed 1793 plot 14, which was presumably the 1767 plot 13 held by Hans Becker. One might imagine that Andreas was a second son of George, but this is nothing more than a guess, reasonable though it may be.

Just as we saw with Brenkenhoffswalde, so also in Franztal an original Buller inhabitant in 1767 was followed by two additional Buller families in 1793. Although it seems reasonable to think that these new families were closely related to (probably the children of) the the original settler, we should not confuse this working hypothesis with demonstrable fact.

Work Cited

Goertz, Adalbert. 2001. Mennonites in Amt Driesen of the Neumark, Brandenburg, Prussia. Mennonite Family History 20:47–51.

Franztal in Neumark 1

With this post we start a series that will parallel the one just completed on Brenkenhoffswalde. The new series will consult the same Praestations-Tabellen (land tax lists) that we looked at earlier, from the years 1767, 1793, 1805, 1806, and 1826. This time, however, we will focus on the Mennonite village of Franztal.

As mentioned previously, Franztal was only 2 miles east of Brenkenhoffswalde, so the residents of the two villages no doubt knew each other relatively well. How well will become clearer shortly.

Brenkenhoffswalde on the left, Franztal just to the east, and Neu Dessau farther east.

As before, we begin with the 1767 tax register, which lists all families who held leases to plots in Franztal, along with a delineation of the number of members in each family. Once again, Adalbert Goertz has supplied the data (Goertz 2001, 48; see also here).

		M	F	S	D	Total
1	Andres Vood	1	1	2	5	9
2	George Buller	1	1	1	1	4
3	Salomon Schmidt	1	1	2	2	6
4	Tobias Sperling	1	1	2	4	8
5	Hans Ratzlaff	1	1	2	1	5
6	William Vood	1	1	2	1	5
7	Peter Ratzlaff I	1	1	1	1	4
8	Tens Vood	1	1	2	1	5
9	George Ratzlaff	1	1	—	—	2
10	Hans Türcks	1	1	3	2	7
11	Lieb Schmidt	1	1	3	2	7
12	Gerd Türcks	1	1	—	1	3
13	Hans Becker	1	1	3	2	7
	Total	13	13	23	23	72

Interestingly, H. G. Mannhardt reports that, of the 1765 group of Mennonites who emigrated to the Neumark area, “16 families with 95 persons were allocated in Brenkenhoffswalde and 19 families with 97 persons in the adjacent Franztal.” In other words, Franztal had three more families and two more persons than Brenkenhoffswalde.

According to the 1767 register for both villages, however, Franztal had thirteen lease-holding families and seventy-two members of those families. The difference in numbers given by Mannhardt and the 1767 register are striking: nineteen families with ninety-seven people (Mannhardt) versus thirteen families with seventy-two people (1767 register).

How do we explain this? The key is in recognizing the difference between the number of families and residents in the village of Franztal and the number of the families and members of those families who held a lease to one of the village’s thirteen plots. To state it directly, from the very beginning about a third (6/19) of Franztal’s families were landless, earning their living through a specialized trade or as a day/seasonal laborer.

Before we focus our attention on the one Buller family in the village, it is also worth noting that there were three Vood (Voth) families and three Ratzlaff families in Franztal; if you recall, Voth was the most common family name in Brenkenhoffswalde as well. Franztal also included two Schmidt and two Türcks families, as well as one each of the following: Buller, Sperling, and Becker.

We do not know (yet) how closely related the Brenkenhoffswalde Voths were to the Franztal ones, or if the Schmidt from Franztal was related to the Schmidt from Brenkenhoffswalde, but the presence of some of the same family names in both villages raises the possibility of close association between the two villages—in addition to their proximity and their union in a single congregation (see Mannhardt).

The George Buller family (plot 2) offers further evidence for a close relation, for George was none other than the brother of Peter Buller of Brenkenhoffswalde, as the Buller chart makes clear.

Generation 4, column B, lists the two brothers together: George 350 and Peter 351. The former was a resident of Franztal, the latter of Brenkenhoffswalde.

Before this we knew nothing about George 350 other than that, according to the Przechowka church book, he had been married in Franztal (see here). Now we know that, in 1767, George had a wife, a son, and a daughter—apparently the early years of the family.

In fact, it is worth our while to think chronologically for a moment. As we have noted several times (see here again), Jeziorka and Schwetz-area Mennonites moved to the Neumark area (which includes Franztal and Brenkenhoffswalde) in 1765.

In the 1767 register, George and his wife have two children. So either George and his wife married before they emigrated to Neumark or they planned to be married the moment they arrived. In either case, the move to Neumark seems to have been motivated by a desire to have a farm plot adequate to support a family. In my view, the former hypothesis (they married before leaving) is the most likely. The Przechowka book also states that George’s brother Peter was married in Brenkenhoffswalde, but we know that in 1767 he already had four children, so he clearly was married and raising a family before he left. The same seems the most reasonable assumption for George as well.

In other words, the PCB records what it knew for these two brothers: they ended up in the villages of the Neumark area. In terms of details, however, it cannot be made to say more than that. The brothers probably were married before they left the Schwetz area, but by the time the Przechowka book was recorded some three decades later, no one remembered those minor details.

There is little more that can be gleaned from the 1767 tax list. George and family are stable residents of Franztal, and we can only look forward to seeing how the family changed by the time of the next register, dated to 1793.

Works Cited

Goertz, Adalbert. 2001. Mennonites in Amt Driesen of the Neumark, Brandenburg, Prussia. Mennonite Family History 20:47–51.

Mannhardt, H. G. 1953. Brenkenhoffswalde and Franztal (Lubusz Voivodeship, Poland). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.

A scandal on the horizon

Looking through list after list may seem tedious at times, as we try to piece together and make sense of scraps of information. But every now and then the pieces fall into place, and we get a clear picture of an important, or at least interesting, event in the Buller family history.

There is just such an interesting revelation on the horizon—but first we must work through the same tax lists for Franztal as we did for Brenkenhoffswalde in the previous five posts. Once we finish those, we will be ready for a titillating tale about a Buller in one of the two villages.

Ultimately, of course, we hope to be able to draw connections between some Bullers in Neumark and others in the Schwetz area, Volhynia, the Molotchsna colony, and other places in between. In order to have any chance of doing that, we will need to keep in mind the Bullers we encountered in Brenkenhoffswalde and the ones we will encounter in Franztal.

Therefore, let us recap briefly the Bullers of Brenkenhoffswalde:

• Peter Buller Sr. is almost certainly number 351 in the Przechowka church book. According to the 1767 register, he was married and had two daughters and two sons. He appears again on the 1793 list but never after that. Presumably he died sometime between 1793 and 1805.


• Peter Buller Jr. is first listed on the 1793 list. Given the shared first name, it seems highly likely that he was the eldest son of Peter Sr. If so, then he was one of the sons counted on the 1767 list. Peter Jr. appears again on the 1805 and 1806 lists, but he is not on the 1826 register. Either he passed away before then, or, more likely, he moved to another location.


• Heinrich Buller also makes his first appearance on the 1793 list. It is reasonable to think that he was the other son of Peter Sr. counted on the 1767 list, but this is nothing more than a plausible guess. Like Peter Jr., he is listed again on the 1805 and 1806 registers, but he is not on the 1826 list. He likewise either passed away or moved from the plot that he had leased since 1793.


• Johann Buller makes a brief appearance in 1805 as one of two lease-holders of plot 9, but by 1806 he is gone. We know nothing about him beyond the fact that he was one of the earliest Bullers we know who was named Johann.

It is possible to guess at other details, and it is interesting to do so, provided that we remember that these are more hunches and hypotheses than demonstrable fact:

• Since Peter Sr. is on the 1767 tax list, he probably was part of the large group of Mennonites who emigrated from Jeziorka/the Schwetz area to Neumark in 1765 (see here). This explains the listing of Peter as 351 in the Przechowka church book.


• Peter Sr. and his wife had four children in 1767, which means the first was born no later than 1763. If Peter was around twenty-one at the birth of his first child, then we might estimate his date of birth around 1742, or, more generally, the early 1740s.


• Since Peter Sr. apparently died between 1793 and 1805, he was presumably at least fifty but not older than sixty-five when he passed away.


• All four children, of course, were born before 1767, so the two sons would have been at least twenty-six when they first appear in the 1793 register. This accords well with them establishing their own households (houses and farm plots) before 1793.


• The fact that the Przechowka church book does not record the name of Peter’s wife or list any of his children—in spite of the fact that at least two of the children had to have been born prior to the family’s departure from the Jeziorka/Schwetz area—is difficult to explain. Perhaps the Jeziorka Mennonites were only loosely connected with and involved in the church?


• If we take 1763–1767 as the time frame for the birth of Peter Jr. and Heinrich, we can project that they were around sixty at the time of the 1826 register. They could have passed on by that time, but that is not the best explanation, as will become scandalously evident later on.


• Johann Buller remains an enigma. He may have been part of the Peter Sr. larger family, either another son of Peter Sr. (but why was he not mentioned earlier?) or a firstborn son of Peter Jr. (a male born in 1763 could have had an adult male son in 1805). Given the lack of evidence,  however, it seems best to offer no hypotheses at all about who Johann was. 

Now that we have wrapped up the Brenkenhoffswalde Bullers, we are ready to tackle the Bullers of the nearby village, Franztal.

Brenkenhoffswalde in Neumark 5

Before we examine the final land tax list (Praestations-Tabel) currently available to us, let’s take a moment to compare the map shown earlier (thanks to Adalbert Goertz) with an aerial view of Brenkenhoffswalde today.

If you recall, we were able to identify the plots in which Brenkenhoffswalde’s Bullers lived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries:

• 16: Peter Sr.
• 15: Peter Jr.
• 4: Heinrich
• 9: Johann

Remarkably, an aerial view of Brenkenhoffswalde (Błotnica) today still shows the division of land into farm plots, and it seems possible to correlate the strips in the 1805 map above with the current layout of the village. Thus the plots of Peter Sr. and Jr., Heinrich, and Johann can be located with a relative degree of accuracy, though obviously not with absolute certainty, in the photograph below.

Did any of our direct ancestors live in Brenkenhoffswalde? We cannot say at this time. All we know is that part of our larger family called this small village home for at least four decades, if not more.

The 1806 tax list recorded Peter Jr. and Heinrich Buller as the only remaining Bullers in the village of Brenkenhoffswalde. What do we find twenty years later, in 1826? As always, we begin by presenting the data (provided by Goertz 2001, 50–51), then develop conclusions based on what we see.

The 1826 register differs from all the others we have surveyed, in that it lists multiple owners for most plots. Whether this reflects the history of ownership or joint ownership or sole ownership of smaller subdivisions of the plot (i.e., an original plot was divided and leased to different individuals) is not immediately clear. The names recorded for each plot are as follows:

1.   a. Cornelius Voth

      b. Gottf. Lange aus Alt Haferwiese [from Alt-Haferwiese, a village ca. 60 miles northwest?]

2.   a. Georg Grüneberg

      b. derselbe [the same]

      c. Martin Schmidt

      d. Martin Krüger

3.   a. Matthias Schmidts Wittwe [widow]

      b. Behrend Voth

4.   a. Daniel Sommer

      b. Friedrich Krug

5.   Joh. Sigismund Munke

6.   a. Cornelius Voth

      b. Johann Püpke aus Netzbruch [from Netzbruch, a village ca. 2 miles southeast?]

7.   a. Johann Bethke

      b. Peter Voth

      c. Johann Lange aus Franzthal [from Franztal, a village ca. 2 miles east]

8.   Verwittwete [widower] Jacob Voth

9.   a. Peter Ganz

      b. Christian Krenzke

      c. Friedrich Rettschlag

      d. Christ. Pidde aus Gertzlow [from Gertzlow, a village?]

      e. Michael Klakow

10. Jacob Voth

11. a. Gottfried Kriese

      b. Christian Belicke

      c. Daniel Krüger aus Franzthal

12. a. Friedrich Lüttke

      b. Friedrich Schulz

13. a. Behrend Foth

      b. Michael Dittmann aus Franzthal

14. Wilhelm Lange

15. Carl Hoffmann

16. Gottlieb Sturzbecher

17. Für das ehemals 5 Mennonisten auf dem Lauchstaedtschen Gute in Alt Haferwiesen brache NG übereignete 
      Rodeland [meaning unclear, but it may have something to do with meadows, that is, pastureland]

      a. Gottlieb Lange zu Alt Haferwiese [to Alt Haferwiese]

      b. Benjamin Unruh daselbst [there]

      c. Daniel Roehlsche Erben zu Netzbruch, nunc Adam aus Dragebruch [heir to Netzbruch, now Adam of Dragebruch]

A comparison of this 1826 list and the 1806 one reveals both significant continuity and noteworthy change during this twenty-year period.

1. The continuity is reflected the fact that many of the same individuals are listed as owners in both registers:

1	Cornelius Voot	1a	Cornelius Voth
2	Martin Schmidt	2c	Martin Schmidt
3	Mathes Schmidt	3a	Matthias Schmidt’s widow
5	Johann Munck	5	Joh. Sigismund Munke
6	Cornel. Voot Sr. and Johan Papke	6a 6b	Cornelius Voth Johann Püpke
7	Joh. Betke	7a	Johann Bethke
8	Jacob Foot	8	widower Jacob Voth
10	Jacob Voot	10	Jacob Voth
14	Wilhelm Lange	14	Wilhelm Lange

Nine of the fifteen plots with named lease-holders have the same owners in both lists. One notices also that the Voth presence remains strong in the village, with a quarter of all plots held by this family. The two Schmidt families likewise continue to live and work in Brenkenhoffswalde.

2. The noteworthy change should be obvious to readers of this blog: there are no Bullers listed in the register—not one. After four decades of Buller inhabitation of Brenkenhoffswalde, it appears that all the Bullers have left the village. It is possible, of course, that one or more Bullers remain in the “renter” area of the village (to the east of the main part), but no Bullers hold leases on the village farmland.

3. Ours is not the only family to disappear from Brenkenhoffswalde: all the Unruhs are gone as well. In 1806 the Bullers and Unruhs accounted for five of the village’s fifteen land-holding families; now neither family appears on the register.

We do not know at this point where all the Bullers and Unruhs went. It is possible that all the members of both families passed away, but that does not seem likely. More plausible is the hypothesis that both family groups relocated to another area—someplace like Volhynia, for example. Maybe we will discover what happened to these Bullers, maybe it will remain a mystery—either way, the search will go on.

Work Cited

Goertz, Adalbert. 2001. Mennonites in Amt Driesen of the Neumark, Brandenburg, Prussia. Mennonite Family History 20:47–51.

Brenkenhoffswalde in Neumark 4

Two more Praestations-Tabellen (land tax lists) remain for Brenkenhoffswalde; then we will turn to the other prominent Mennonite village in the Neumark (Netzebruch, Driesen, Brandenburg) area: Franztal. To recap the highlights thus far:

1. The 1767 tax list names Peter Buller (Przechowka church book 351) as the owner (better: lease-holder) of lot/plot 16 in Brenkenhoffswalde and indicates that the Peter Buller family included Peter, his wife, two daughters, and two sons.


2. The 1793 tax list names Peter again but also includes a Peter Jr. and a Heinrich, the former almost certainly a son of Peter Sr. and the latter probably so.


3. The list from twelve years later, in 1805, does not include Peter Sr., probably because he was deceased, but a new Buller by the name of Johann joins Peter Jr. and Heinrich on the list.

The next Praestations-Tabel dates to 1806. As hinted in the last post, a comparison of the 1806 list with the others raises interesting questions. To enable a full comparison, all four tax lists are offered below in sets of two (the 1806 list is from Goertz 2001, 50).

	1767	1793
1	Cornelius Vood	Cornelius Voot
2	Hein Vood	Benjamin Voot, Tobias Dreger
3	Hans Vood	Hans Voot, Berent Voot
4	George Vood	Heinrich Buller
5	Peter Ratzlaff II	Joh. Quade olim Peter Buller
6	Hein Ohnrau	Cornelius Voot
7	Heinrich Ohnrau	Johann Funcke
8	Jacob Thomas	Jacob Voot
9	Jan Richert	Hein. Unruh
10	Peter Vood I	Jacob Voot
11	Peter Vood II	Martin Unruh
12	Abraham Ohnrau	Hein. Unruh
13	Witwe [widow] Reicherten	der von Sack olim David Unruh
14	Ernst Kühn	Wilh. Lange
15	Hans Decker	Peter Buller Jr.
16	Peter Buller	Peter Buller
17		das rothe Haus, welches 5 Mennoniten  unter sich haben

	1805	1806
1	Cornelius Voot Jr.	Cornelius Voot
2	Martin Schmidt, Gottlieb Krüger	Martin Schmidt olim Voot
3 x	Bern Voot and Matthias Schmidt nunc: Berend Retzlaffx	Mathes Schmidt olim Vootx x
4	Heinrich Buller and Abraham Unruh	Heinrich Buller
5	Johann Munck	Joh. Noach (?) olim Quade
6	Cornelius Voot Sr., Gottfr. Lange	Cornel. Voot Sr. and Johan Papke
7	Johann Bethecke	Joh. Betke olim Funke
8	Jacob Voot Witwe [widow]	Jacob Foot
9	Johann Buller, Peter Unruh	Heinrich Unruh
10	Jacob Voot	Jacob Voot
11	Martin Unruh	Martin Unruh
12	Hein. Unruh	Heinrich Unruh
13	Derr Sack zu Dolgen	aus Dominium zu Dolgen
14	Wilhelm Lange (Gottfr. Lange)	Wilhelm Lange
15	Simon Jahn	Peter Buller Jr.
16	Peter Buller Jr.	Simon Jahn olim Buller
17 xx x	Zum Rothen Hause: Benjamin Gans                     Andr. Unruh           Gottfr. Lange	die 5 Mennoniten auf dem Lauchstaedtschen Guthe x x

By way of passing observation, one might note that there were fewer Voths in Brenkenhoffswalde than previously but that it still was the most common family name (four), followed by Unruh (three), and Buller and Schmidt (two). For the most part, the plot owners from 1806 were the same as they had been in 1805. However, there were two significant changes, both involving Bullers.

In 1805, Johann Buller and Peter Unruh were recorded for plot 9; a year later, Heinrich Unruh was the sole owner. Just like that, Johann disappears from the record; at present, we do not know from what family line or where he originated, and we do not know where he went. All we can do is tuck his name away in our memory banks in case we encounter evidence about him in the future.

The other change is a genuine oddity. Last post we noted that, when Peter Buller Sr. died (or so we assume), Peter Jr. gave up his ownership of plot 15 and took over his father’s plot: 16; one Simon Jahn assumed possession of Peter Jr.’s former plot 15. However, the 1806 list has Peter Jr. back on plot 15 (his former possession) and Simon Jahn on plot 16 (Peter Sr.’s former plot). Is this a clerical error, or did Peter Jr. and Simon Jahn swap properties sometime during 1805–1806?

We may never find the answer to that question, but we do know that Peter Buller Jr. and Heinrich Buller both remained in Brenkenhoffswalde through 1806. Consequently, we also know that Bullers lived in Brenkenhoffswalde for at least four decades. The fifth and final tax list currently available to us, from 1826, will offer us additional insight on the members of our broader family who lived and worked in this small village in the Prussian Empire.

Work Cited

Goertz, Adalbert. 2001. Mennonites in Amt Driesen of the Neumark, Brandenburg, Prussia. Mennonite Family History 20:47–51.

Brenkenhoffswalde in Neumark 3

The first two posts on Brenkenhoffswalde have presented Praestations-Tabellen (land tax lists) from 1767, two years after Mennonites moved into the village, and 1793. This post moves twelve years forward, to the year 1805.

The first two lists were recovered from Prussian governmental archives by Adalbert Goertz; the 1805 list was published by Adalbert and his wife Bärbel (Goertz and Goertz, 1985). Adalbert Goertz is also to be thanked for retrieving from the archives the map of Brenkenhoffswalde below.

As far as I am able to discern, the long up-and-down strips constitute the main part of the village; I believe that the smaller area to the right (east) was the area for artisans and renters. The numbers added to the map correspond to the 1805 plot numbers below.

What is immediately apparent is that the plots are not numbered consecutively from one end of the village to the other. Thus, plot 16 is on the far left, and to its right are plots 7 and then 8. Plot 15 is toward the far right, two plots over from number 4; plot 10 lies between them. Clearly, the system of labeling plots in that period differed from what most of us would expect.

The map of the village is interesting to see, but the names on the list are our real focus of attention. As before, the table includes the earlier lists alongside the new one, so we can compare and contrast easily.

	1767	1793	1805
1	Cornelius Vood	Cornelius Voot	Cornelius Voot Jr.
2	Hein Vood	Benjamin Voot, Tobias Dreger	Martin Schmidt, Gottlieb Krüger
3	Hans Vood x	Hans Voot, Berent Voot x	Bern Voot and Matthias Schmidt nunc: Berend Retzlaff
4	George Vood	Heinrich Buller	Heinrich Buller and Abraham Unruh
5	Peter Ratzlaff II	Joh. Quade olim Peter Buller	Johann Munck
6	Hein Ohnrau	Cornelius Voot	Cornelius Voot Sr., Gottfr. Lange
7	Heinrich Ohnrau	Johann Funcke	Johann Bethecke
8	Jacob Thomas	Jacob Voot	Jacob Voot Witwe [widow]
9	Jan Richert	Hein. Unruh	Johann Buller, Peter Unruh
10	Peter Vood I	Jacob Voot	Jacob Voot
11	Peter Vood II	Martin Unruh	Martin Unruh
12	Abraham Ohnrau	Hein. Unruh	Hein. Unruh
13	Witwe Reicherten	der von Sack olim David Unruh	Derr Sack zu Dolgen
14	Ernst Kühn	Wilh. Lange	Wilhelm Lange (Gottfr. Lange)
15	Hans Decker	Peter Buller Jr.	Simon Jahn
16	Peter Buller	Peter Buller	Peter Buller Jr.
17 x x		das rothe Haus, welches 5  Mennoniten unter sich haben x	Zum Rothen Hause: Benjamin Gans           Andr. Unruh           Gottfr. Lange

We see the same sort of movement from one plot to another that we observed earlier, and we might even notice changes within a family, such as plot 8 being inhabited by Jacob Voth in 1793 but owned by the widow Jacob Voth in 1805.

However, Jacob Voth was probably not the only one who died. Note that, whereas Peter Buller Sr. had lived in plot 16 in both 1767 and 1793, his son Peter Jr. now owns that plot, and Peter Sr. is not listed anywhere. The most logical conclusion is that Peter Sr. (351 in the Przechowka church book) passed away sometime after 1793 but before 1805. If our estimate of Peter Sr.’s age as fifty in 1793 was reasonably close, he probably died before his sixty-fifth birthday, perhaps even while he was still in his fifties.

Interestingly, Peter Jr., who already owned plot 15 in 1793, gave up ownership of that plot and took over plot 16, which had been in the family for nearly forty years. Whether his reason for doing so was financial, sentimental, or perhaps even to secure for himself a better piece of land is impossible for us to know.

Heinrich Buller, whom we suspect was Peter Sr.’s other son, remains at plot 4, where he was in 1793. The fact that he now shares the plot with another party, Abraham Unruh (number 12 in 1767?) may be significant, or it may simply reflect a common practice during that time.

Not to be missed is the addition of a new Buller: Johann of plot 9. Unless I am mistaken, he is the first Buller on record to have the name Johann. We have no indication of his relation to Peter Jr. and Heinrich, if there was any at all, although it would certainly make sense for there to be some sort of connection. If Peter Jr. and Heinrich were born before 1765 (a plausible assumption), then they could have had young adult children in 1805.

Since there are so many unknowns related to Johann, it seems best to leave him unconnected until we have clearer evidence telling us who he is. In spite of this uncertainty, there is a great deal that we can suggest with a fair amount of confidence.

1. Peter Buller Sr. (PCB 351) did have two sons and two daughters.

2. It is almost certain that his oldest son was likewise named Peter.

3. It is highly likely (in my view) but not certain that his second son was named Heinrich.

4. It is almost certain that Peter Sr. died sometime between 1793 and 1805.

5. Sometime between 1793 and 1805 another Buller took up residence in Brenkenhoffswalde: Johann.

That is quite a lot to gather from these lists, even if it is not everything that we would like to know. Next up is a list from 1806 that will stir the waters and raise more questions than it answers.

Work Cited

Goertz, Adalbert, and Bärbel Goertz. 1985. Mennonites of Neumark, Prussia, in 1805. Mennonite Family History 4:48–50.