Who was the first?

Research does not have to be serious and focused all the time; on occasion it can be borderline frivolous and little more than fun, more akin to surfing the Web than engaging in sober study. For example, recently a question came to mind that prompted a fun bit of research: Who was the first Carl Buller?

We all know and love our family’s current Carl Buller (Happy Father’s Day, Dad!), but who was the first? There is only one place to find the answer to that kind of question: the GRANDMA database—so off to the database I went. The answer was just a few clicks away.

Ignoring all the Bullers named Charles (GRANDMA returns alternate spellings if a searcher wants) and the Carls and Karls named Buhler or Buehler, it was easy to see that the earliest Carl/Karl Buller was GRANDMA number 28456. One click from the results screen, and we were at the page for Karl Buller 28456.

Born 10 March 1826 in Deutsch-Wymysle, Prussia, Karl was the son of Tobias and Anna Foth Buller. To put this in a more precise historical context, Karl Buller was nine years younger than David father of Peter D.

The reference to Deutsch-Wymysle, Prussia, was a new one, so I decided to explore further, beginning with Robert Foth’s 1956 article on the village in GAMEO. We will return to the village history and location later (a number of posts of interest to Bullers will arise out of this information); for now we jump ahead in the story to a twentieth-century handwritten copy of the original church records (which were apparently lost in a fire), which provides us additional details about Karl Buller 28456.

There listed plain as day is the first Karl (also the firstborn of his parents), born 10 March 1826 in the village of Deutsch-Wymysle and married (we know not to whom) on 14 August 1854. The last column records the place of his death, which is by now well known to all of us: Volhynia.

We have only scratched the surface of what lies waiting to be discovered in Deutsch-Wymysle (note, for example, where Karl’s parents were born), but it is enough for now. Sometimes even fun and frivolous research, such as a search for the first Carl/Karl Buller, leads us in unexpected and rewarding directions. That is certainly the case in this instance, so Buller Time will now leave Neumark behind (sort of) and move back into Poland in search of more pieces of the puzzle in our larger Buller family history.

Work Cited

Foth, Robert. 1956. Deutsch-Wymysle (Masovian Voivodeship, Poland). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.