As should be evident by now, Buller Time’s interests extend beyond genealogy or even family history broadly conceived. This blog is also curious about matters of history, geography, and various aspects of the social sciences, including birth rates, demography, life expectancy, and even social mores and practices. So it is that we take a moment to observe two instances of children born out of wedlock in Buller families of the mid-nineteenth century, to observe what is similar and what is different about them.
The first instance involved Heinrich Bulller the younger of Brenkenhoffswalde, the son of Helena Voth, an unmarried woman in her early twenties who lived with her parents Benjamin and Susanne (here). Heinrich the younger is clearly identified as illegitimate in several records; it is also evident that he was with his mother as a part of his grandparents’ larger household. The fact that he bore the last name Buller pointed in the direction of Heinrich Buller the elder as his father.
The second instance was recently covered (here). Anna Buller, dauther of Heinrich 97 and Helene 98 in the Deutsch-Wymysle church records, has two sons listed: Wilhelm, born when Anna was twenty-seven; and Heinrich, born when she was thirty-four. Both boys are identified as Anna’s sons, and no father is listed. Because the boys have Buller as a last name, we can safely conclude that they were born to Anna out of wedlock (if Anna had been married, the boys would have retained their father’s last name). As with the first case, the illegitimate children lived, or so it seems, with their mother in the house of their grandparents.
The fact that the illegitimate children and their mothers lived with the mother’s parents is consistent with what appears to have been the most common custom in Mennonite communities (although not without exception, of course). Presumably a child was thought best served by being with its mother, and she, being unmarried, typically lived with her parents.
What is strikingly different in the two cases is the last name given to the illegitimate child. Helene Voth’s son Heinrich was a Buller, a clear indication of parentage. Anna Buller’s two sons, however, were not given the last name of their father(s) (we have no idea if they had the same father). They were born Bullers and remained so the rest of their lives (the second son appears later in list 3 of the Deutsch-Wymysle records).
This raises the question of why Anna Buller gave her boys the last name of Buller. Did she not know who the father was? That is possible, but it seems more likely that she, for some reason, did not want her boys identified with their father(s). Helene Voth, by contrast, seems to have wanted everyone to know who had fathered her child; to make it crystal clear, she gave the boy the same first and last name as his father. One wonders if other illegitimate births in the Mennonite community also display this variation in naming practices.
Finally, to bring matters around full circle, it seems a bit ironic that the Heinrich Buller of Brenkenhoffswalde who was the presumed father of Heinrich the younger was a direct ancestor of the illegitimate sons of Anna Buller of Deutsch-Wymysle. If our reconstructed family tree here is accurate, Heinrich the elder was, in fact, the great-grandfather of Anna’s boys Wilhelm and Heinrich. You see, Heinrich 97 of Deutsch-Wymysle was likely Heinrich the elder’s firstborn son, which would make Anna Heinrich the elder’s granddaughter and her two boys his great-grandsons.
One final irony: when Heinrich the elder and the rest of the Brenkenhoffswalde company emigrated to Molotschna in 1834, they stopped over in Deutsch-Wymysle. Heinrich the elder no doubt saw his first son (Heinrich 97) and his family there, and they no doubt became aware of Heinrich the younger. Although some of the Brenkenhoffswalde group decided to stay and settle in Deutsch-Wymysle, as far as we know both Heinrich the elder and the younger continued on to Gnadenfeld in Molotschna colony. Perhaps some day we will discover one or both of the Heinrichs there.
No comments:
Post a Comment