Brenkenhoffswalde in Neumark 2

Before we continue our exploration of Bullers in the Neumark region (aka the Netzebruch, Driesen, or Brandenburg), we should take a look back to where we have been.

First we identified and learned about David Buller (almost certainly 346 in the Przechowka church book), who lived in Neu Dessau, a village in the Neumark locale, around the years 1778–1780. Most recently, in the last post, we identified another Buller in another Neumark village a decade earlier: Peter Buller (PCB 351), who was living in Brenkenhoffswalde as early as 1767.

The Buller family chart shows the relation between these two Bullers with great clarity.

David is in the A column (far left), Peter in the B column. These two were sons of brothers, which made them cousins. They represent the two family lines of the six shown with the greatest presence in Neumark. It is important to keep these relations in mind as we move forward in time and see the Buller presence in Brenkenhoffswalde grow.

The next Praestations-Tabel (land-tax list) at our disposal from Brenkenhoffswalde dates to 1793 (Goertz 2001, 49). For a clear view of how things had changed in Brenkenhoffswalde between 1767 and 1793, we will present the two Praestations-Tabellen side by side.

	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

Before we focus on the new Bullers we encounter, a few words about other particulars: (1) olim is Latin for “formerly,” so the entry “Joh. Quade olim Peter Buller” means that the lot is now owned by Joh. Quade but had formerly been owned by Peter Buller; (2) lot 13’s “der von Sack” apparently is to be translated “the blind,” but what that means in context is not obvious; (3) the entry for lot 17 is likewise obscure: “the red house that has five Mennonites living within it” (my best guess).

Beyond those peculiarities, we note that the Voth family maintained its presence in the village, selling some lots and buying others but still owning six of Brenkenhoffswalde’s sixteen lots. The Unruhs did the same and ended up with three lots, the same number that they owned twenty-six years earlier. The Bullers are the family that made the biggest move, increasing from Peter Buller’s lot 16 to ownership of three lots and prior ownership of a fourth.

The 1793 list also provides information that was previously unknown: the name of Peter Buller 351’s son, which was also Peter (hence Jr.). The Przechowka church book lists no children for Peter 351, no doubt because the names of his children were unknown to the compilers of the book, who lived 120 miles away. However, the 1793 list gives us the name of one son of Peter 351—and perhaps even a second one.

That the Peter Buller Jr. of lot 15 was the son (presumably firstborn) of Peter 351 can scarcely be doubted. No other Peter Buller of generation 4 (the generation in which Peter Jr.’s father must have lived) fits the bill both chronologically and geographically. Thus, we can now add another name to the line of Peter 351: a son also named Peter.

However, the 1767 list in our first post in the Brenkenhoffswalde series (here) indicated that Peter Sr. had two sons. One wonders if the Heinrich listed for lot 4 of the 1793 list is that second son. This can be no more than a hypothesis at this point: there was more than one Heinrich Buller during this time, and one of them may have lived in the Neumark area (Heinrich 348). Still, as hypotheses go, this one would explain a great deal, so we will consider it plausible until new evidence indicates otherwise.

What the 1793 record apparently shows, then, is the establishment of a particular Buller family in a single village over the course of several generations. Peter was one of the first settlers in the Neumark area, and over the course of two to three decades he raised a family in Brenkenhoffswalde and saw two sons establish their own households in the same village.

If Peter Sr. (351) was, say, twenty-three when he moved from Jeziorka to Neumark around 1765 (see Mannhardt 1953), by the time of the 1793 census he would have been around fifty. Further, two sons had already been born to Peter and his wife by 1767 (the date of the first Praestations-Tabel), so these sons had to be at least in their late twenties by 1793. In all likelihood, then, Peter Sr. had several grandchildren by the time of the 1793 list, especially when we recall that Peter Sr.’s family also included two daughters in 1767.

None of this can be considered certain based on the evidence at hand, but the listing of Peter Sr. and two other Bullers (Peter Jr. and Heinrich) in the village of Brenkenhoffswalde in 1793 does make the suggested reconstruction at least plausible. Where the next list, from 1805, will take us we do not yet know.

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.