Presenting a recap, a reconstruction such as this is tricky business, so let it be said directly up front: a good portion of what follows is a reasonable explanation of the evidence that we have, but little of it is rock-solid fact. I believe the reconstruction is accurate, but I admit that it may be mistaken in some details. Caveat lector! Let the reader beware!
1. The evidence
We drew principally upon two sources during this investigation: the Przechowka church book and Prussian governmental Praestations-Tabellen (land tax lists) and other records.
2. The locales
We begin with the Przechowka church, located near the Polish city of Schwetz (Świecie), a mile west of the Vistula River (at the right end of the red line). Many Mennonites from the immediate area were members of that church, including residents (Bullers) from the small village of Jeziorka roughly ten miles to the west-northwest of Schwetz (here, here, and here).
In 1765, thirty-five families from this area (twenty-eight from Jeziorka and seven from Schönsee and Przechowka) emigrated approximately 120 miles west-southwest to the Netzebruch, a boggy wetland around the Netze/Noteć River (the area at the left end of the line; see Klassen 2009, 87; Hege 1957). There these Mennonite families established three villages: Brenkenhoffswalde, Franztal, and Neu Dessau.
3. The original Buller immigrants
The available evidence implies that at least three Buller families made the journey from Schwetz to Neumark: Hans 341 and family (generation 3), George 350 and family (generation 4), and Peter 351 and family (generation 4). All three were part of the Jeziorka component of the group.
The 1767 tax list informs us that Peter 351, his wife, and their two sons and two daughters settled in Brenkenhoffswalde (here). The same list reports that George 350, his wife, and their daughter and son took up residence in Franztal (here). One wonders if their father George 342 also moved to Neumark, but that question must remain open, due to a lack of evidence.
The evidence for Hans 341’s family is not quite as straightforward, but by coordinating information in the Przechowka church book with Prussian tax lists, we were able to argue convincingly that Hans 341 and four of his six children were likely among the original immigrants (here). Hans himself does not appear in any of the tax lists, but two of his sons do later on, which lends credence to the idea that Hans and his nonadult children moved to Neumark with the rest of the Mennonites in 1765.
4. Peter 351 and family (Brenkenhoffswalde)
As already observed, Peter 351 appears as a resident of Brenkenhoffswalde in the 1767 tax list along with his wife, two daughters, and two sons. In all likelihood, the two sons were named Peter Jr. and Heinrich, both of whom are listed as lease holders in the 1793, 1805, and 1806 tax lists. Peter 351 (Sr.) disappears after the 1793 list, probably indicating that he died between 1793 and 1805.
Both sons appear on the 1806 tax list but not twenty years later, on the 1826 list. However, Heinrich makes a final appearance on the emigration list of 1835, apparently as the sixty-nine-year-old father of one-year-old Heinrich Buller, the illegitimate son of Helena Voth. It seems that Heinrich the elder gave up his lease sometime before the 1826 tax list but remained in Brenkenhoffswalde as a renter to the very end of Mennonite habitation of the village. Both Heinrich the elder and his presumed son Heinrich the younger apparently ended up in Gnadenfeld, a village in Molotschna.
5. George 350 and family (Franztal)
The 1767 tax list reports that George 350, his wife, and their son and daughter resided in Franztal. Clearly, they were part of the 1765 immigrant group. The 1793 tax list does not list George, which likely signals that he had died in the interim. Another Buller, Heinrich, was lease holder of the same plot that George had previously held, which almost certainly signals that this Heinrich was George’s son.
Twelve years later, the 1805 lists Heinrich’s widow and, apparently, two daughters (or sisters?) named Maria and Anna, indicating that Heinrich was no longer alive. A year later, however, the lease had been taken over by Heinrich Jr., no doubt the son of Heinrich Sr. The male family line, thus, was George 350 > Heinrich Sr. > Heinrich Jr. By 1826, none of the family leased land in Franztal; the only Buller who remained was the widow of a man named Voth. Nine years later, in 1835, a Benjamin Voth widow nee Buller by the name of Maria is listed as a thirty-four-year old living in Franztal. It is tempting to identify this woman first with the 1805 Maria and then with the 1826 widow Voth, but that might be making more than we should out of a coincidence of names.
6. Hans 341 and family (Neu Dessau and Franztal)
According to the Przechowka church book, Hans and his wife had six children: three daughters and three sons. It is likely that Hans and wife and four of their children moved from Jeziorka to Neumark in 1765. Their daughter Ancke (344), who married at age fifteen in 1760, remained behind, as did Heinrich 348, who later married a widowed and then divorced woman from the Przechowka area.
We cannot say with certainty that daughters Maricke 347 and Trincke 349 moved to Neumark, but the lack of information about them in the Przechowka church book points in that direction. The two sons clearly moved to the Neumark area, which supports our hypothesis that the entire family left Jeziorka and made the journey to Neumark in 1765.
David 346 turns up only in relation to Neu Dessau in the Prussian records (here and here). David is not listed as a property holder in 1771, which would be consistent with the hypothesis that only the nonadult children of Hans 341 moved with him to Neumark (i.e., David was presumably not yet an adult in 1771). However, later records mention David twice, when he sold his rights to 37 acres of Neu Dessau property in 1779 and when he was listed, along with daughters Anna and Sara, among the creditors of Johann Dirks, possibly a relative of David’s wife, Trincke Dirks Buller.
Like his brother David 346, Andreas 345 can be linked with relative confidence to Neumark (here). Andreas 345 appears in the 1793, 1805, and 1806 tax lists but not in 1767 (when he was likely too young to lease property) or 1826 (when he had passed away or left the area). An Andreas Jr. appears in 1806 and 1806; the fact that he took over the property formerly leased by Andreas 345 is a clear indication that these were father (Andreas 345, or Sr.) and son (Jr.).
Like his father, Andreas Jr. is absent from the 1826 tax list. Remarkably, we know where he went: to Antonovka in Volhynia (here). From the Volhynian records we also know that Andreas Jr.’s wife was named Anna and that they had a daughter Maria and sons named David and Benjamin, all of whom had been born in Franztal.
7. Stray Bullers
The Neumark records also name individuals whom we cannot place; they are listed here for the sake of completeness—and with the hope that someday we will be able to identify them.
Johann Buller is listed as a Brenkenshoffswalde lease holder in 1805 but not in 1806.
A Heinrich Buller who is not Heinrich Sr. or Jr. discussed above leased plot 3 in Franztal from at least 1793 through 1806.
A George Buller is listed as a resident of Franztal in 1805, but he is not said to have held a lease for any land.
Marie Schmitt Buller Baecker had been married to a Buller at some point; in 1835, she was a sixty-five-year old resident of Franztal.
Helene Buller Unruh was the twenty-four-year-old wife of Georg Unruh of Brenkenhoffswalde in 1835.
8. Conclusion
The emigration from Jeziorka to Neumark in 1765 certainly was a family matter. This is probably why the three Buller families who emigrated at that time account for most of the Bullers we find in the Neumark historical records. The pieces, whether derived from the Przechowka church book or Prussian governmental records, seem to fit together well. Three Bullers—generation 3’s Hans 341 and generation 4’s George 350 and Peter 351—led their families 120 miles west in search of new land and new opportunity. The Buller family remained there in some form for seventy years, but eventually all the Bullers and other Mennonites of the area picked up their stakes and moved once again. Why they did so will be the subject for a future post.
Works Cited
Hege, Christian. 1957. Netzebruch (Poland). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.
Klassen, Peter J. 2009. Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia. Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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