To recap, according to the Przechowka church book (see here), Andreas Buller Sr. (345) was married in Franztal, which implies strongly that he was not yet an adult when he and the rest of the Jeziorka and Schwetz-area Mennonites moved to the Neumark area in 1765. This hypothesis gains further support when we consider that the birth year of his son Andreas Jr. (1773) probably implies a birth year for Sr. in the early 1750s, which would mean that he was no older than fifteen when he moved west to Franztal. The fact that Andreas Sr. (345) is not listed as a lease holder in 1767 is consistent with the notion that he was not yet an adult at that time and thus adds further plausibility to the hypothesis.
If Andreas Sr. (345) was not yet an adult when he moved to Franztal in 1765, what does this imply about his father, Hans 341? Asked directly, does the 1765 emigration of the not-yet-adult Andreas to Franztal indicate that his father, mother, and the rest of the nuclear family also moved at that time? To turn the question around, did the not-yet-adult Andreas 345 move 120 miles west without his father and mother accompanying him, or does his move to Neumark before he had reached adulthood imply that his parents also moved?
Previously (here), in a discussion of the late eighteenth-century Prussian censuses, we observed that, although Hans 341 had earlier been listed as a resident of Jeziorka, neither Hans nor his sons appear on the 1772 and 1776 censuses. We wondered then if Hans had gone to the Netzebruch (Neumark) but waited for evidence that Han’s family had lived in the Mennonite villages of the area. Now that we have that evidence, at least for Andreas 345, son of Hans 341, we should take a closer look at the rest of the family to see if what we discover about them inclines us in one direction or another with regard to the question at hand.
Listed above are all the children of Hans 341 and Ancke Wedels (215) Buller known to us: Ancke 344, Andreas 345 (Sr.), David 346, Maricke 347, Hinrich 348, and Trincke 349. According to the Przechowka church book (PCB), all three girls and all three boys were born in Jeziorka. Oddly, only Ancke’s year and month of birth was known to the compilers of the PCB. Why was Anicke’s known but not the others’? We shall return to that question later. For now, our focus will be on learning all that we can about each child, to see if what we learn tilts in favor or against Hans and Ancke Wedels Buller emigrating to Neumark.
1. We begin with Ancke 344. As indicated in the full-width scan below, Ancke was married to PCB 88 in Jeziorka. Fourteen pages earlier in the book we learn that PCB 88 was Alt Berent Ratzlaff. Alt was not part of the man’s name but indicated that he was an Ältester (German) or Aeltester (Dutch), that is, an elder in the church. Interestingly, someone wrote “344” in the column indicating that Ancke was Ratzlaff’s first wife, then crossed that out and wrote “344” in the column for a second wife. The location of the marriage is entered as Jeziorka, and the date of the marriage is recorded as November 1750, a month after Ancke had turned fifteen.
Ancke had her first child (Berent’s third child) two years later, in 1752, followed by five more, after a significant hiatus, in 1761, 1764, 1767, 1774, and 1779. The PCB has fairly complete information on most of the children (the two youngest are the most poorly documented), including dates of baptism and places and dates of marriage. The clear picture presented is of a prominent family in the church (with Berent being an elder) who remained in the Jeziorka/Schwetz area long past the immigration to Neumark in 1765.
2. Skipping over Andreas (we already know he was married in Franztal and can see it with our own eyes again in the scan), we turn our attention to David 346. We see above that, like his brother Andreas, David was also married in Franztal, which means that he was not married when he moved to Franztal. In fact, the PCB indicates that David was actually married two times in Franztal. The book does not record who his first wife was, but the page after the one shown above records that David was married a second time in Franztal; his second wife was Trincke Dircksen (447). Clearly, David spent his adult years in the Neumark region.
3. After David, we encounter Maricke 347. (We have no reason to think that the order of the listing of the children is the order of their birth. That may be the case, but there is no evidence pointing one way or another.) The PCB knows nothing about Maricke: when she was born, whom she married, where she was married, or even if she was married. The contrast with Ancke, about whom much was known, is telling.
4. The information about Hinrich 348 is complicated and sometimes confusing. We can see above that he married PCB 81 (Liscke Ratzlaffen), but the location of their wedding is not indicated. When we look at the PCB entry for Liscke Ratzlaffen, we see that she was married twice before Hinrich: she was first married in 1760 at age fourteen to Ehrenst Schmidt (802; she was his second wife); when he died in 1775, she married Jacob Schmidt (821), but the year and place of the marriage are not recorded. The PCB then lists Hinrich as husband 3, recording that they were married in 1779; the book also records that she passed away in July 1785. Curiously, although Liscke’s exact date of birth is recorded (20 March 1746), an exact day of death is not.
The complication arises from additional information recorded in the PCB. Husband 2, Jacob Schmidt 821, is recorded as marrying his second wife (Efchke Köhnen) on 14 October 1782. The record of the PCB is clear and consistent: Liscke Ratzlaffen was Jacob Schmidt’s first wife, and he was her second husband; further, Jacob married his second wife in 1782, three years before Liscke passed away. The only logical explanation is that Jacob Schmidt and Liscke Ratzlaffen divorced prior to her marriage to Hinrich Buller.
None of this gives us direct insight into Hinrich’s location at the time, although we should note that Liscke married her first and second husbands in the Schwetz area, so one might expect the same for her third husband, Hinrich. That being said, it is curious that the PCB knows nothing about Hinrich and Liscke’s two daughters, Lehncke and Liscke. Since the PCB knows all about many of the other Bullers of that generation, one wonders if Hinrich and Liscke and family remained in the area after they were married in 1779.
We should also recall what was written about Hinrich back in January (here):
Heinrich was the third husband of Liscke Ratzlaff (81), who was born in 1746. They married in 1779 and had two daughters together, before Liscke died in 1785. One gets the impression that Heinrich was perhaps a “late bloomer.” If he was born approximately the same time as Liscke, then he did not marry until he was thirty-three, which was old in that social context. Might this be the Heinrich listed as living in Schwetzer Kämpe in 1776? Perhaps, but it is also plausible that this Heinrich does not appear in the censuses at all.
Two things in this passage merit attention. FIrst, if Hinrich was born in the same year as Liscke, he would have been nineteen when others in the family moved to Neumark in 1765. Someone that age could have stayed behind to establish his own household, if he chose to do so. Second, if Hinrich 348 did stay behind, he very likely is one of the Heinrichs listed in the 1776 census.Where does this lead us? In my view, the evidence implies rather strongly that Hans 341 and Ancke Wedels (215) Buller and most of their family emigrated to Neumark in 1765. We already know that Andreas 345 and David 346 went to and were married in Franztal. We also know that Ancke 344 did not make the journey, since she was already married by then (since 1760). The lack of information in the PCB about the two other sisters—Maricke 347 and Trincke 349—contrasts sharply with the full information given for Ancke 344, which supports the notion that the PCB knew nothing about them because they left the church in 1765. Finally, Hinrich 348 appears to have stayed in the area, since he married a Schwetz-area woman and possibly established his own household and farm in the general area.
To sum up, it seems that Hans 341 and Ancke Wedels (215) Buller and all the children who were not yet married or male adults moved to Franztal in 1765 as part of the larger Mennonite emigration to the Neumark (Brandenburg, Driessen, Netzebruch) area. Married Ancke 344 and adult Hinrich 348 stayed behind, but the rest of the children accompanied their parents to Neumark. Presumably some of them lie buried in that area, their graves forgotten but their names remembered over two centuries later.
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