George Buller after 1700

We have been tracing, over the course of the past week or so, appearances of George Buller, the husband of Dina Thoms, within civil historical records from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. We first spotted George in Herbert Wiebe’s list of Schönsee residents/landowners in 1695 (see here).

We next located George on a 1700 agreement in which he and six other individuals from Schönsee signed a forty-year lease for property apparently located close to Schönsee but owned by the city of Culm (here). George’s fellow lessees included Michel Meister, Georg Boltz, Ferdinand Hube, David Fot, Andres Decker, and Peter Siewert. It is important to keep those names in mind as we look at the Weibe list for Schönsee again.

We already noted George in 1695, but now we turn our attention to 1705. Most obviously, George is now missing, gone from Schönsee; just as important, all the other lessees are still there: Michel Meister (9), George Boltz (4), Ferdinand Hube (3), David Vott (13), Andres Decker (10), and Peter Sievert (2). Clearly, George’s absence from the list indicates that he has moved from Schönsee. Of course, this raises the question of where he went.

To answer that question, we return to a primary source that enabled us to identify Unknown Buller as George in the first place, the travel diary of Hendrik Berents, which contains both Ale Derks’s 1714–1716 list and Berents’s later list of Mennonite families in the villages of the Schwetz area, including Schönsee. As before, we will consult Glenn Penner’s translation of the diary and lists available here (for earlier posts on the diary, see here and here).

We begin with the listing of Schönsee Mennonites at the bottom of page 11 and the top of page 12. The Ale Derks reproduced by Berents lists the following persons:

Hans Voet	Lijsabet Smit
Jurjen Vonk	Andries Raatslaf
Jacob [Dekker]	Andries Dekker
Jacob Bankrats	the old Grietie Pinkelers

As expected, George Buller does not appear in Schönsee, but it is worth noting that three Mennonites whom Derks listed are also on the 1715 Schönsee landowner list above:

• Hans Voth = Hans Voet
• George Funck = Jurjen Vonk
• Andreas Decker = Andries Dekker

Those listed by Derks who are not on the landowner list probably were not landowners/lease-holders. Thus one might guess that Jacob Dekker was a close relative of Andries who lived with him (so he was not listed as a landowner); Jacob Bankrats (Pankratz) may have been a craftsman who did not lease any land. Whatever the explanation, we can say that Derks’s list is reliable, given the degree to which it corresponds to the civil records.

But where’s George? Two-thirds down page 9 of Glenn Penner’s translation we encounter a listing for a particular resident of Schighofke (that is, Przechowka) at Sweets (Schwetz):

Jurjen Boeler+

Dijna Toomske, reside in the new school

It seems reasonably clear, based on the civil landowner records and testimony of the Derks list, that George and Dina began living in Schönsee sometime before 1695 (how long before we do not know) and stayed there through at least 1700 or 1701, after George signed the long-term lease. Within a few years after that, before 1705, George and Dina moved to Przechowka area, where they lived as late as 1714–1716. It is entirely possible, of course, that they lived somewhere else in between Schönsee and Przechowka; we have no way of knowing one way or another.

It is interesting to notice that George and Dina are said to have been living in the “new school.” Was George the school teacher for that Mennonite community? As always, certainly eludes us, but that is the simplest explanation of their residency. I am unaware of any other cases in which someone other than the teacher lived in the school (unless he or she lived with the teacher who lived in the school).

The mark after George’s name in the Derks list indicates that he had died by the time Berents made his visit to the same locations in 1719. Consequently, it is unlikely that we will find later evidence of George in civil records or other documents (e.g., diaries) from that time period. That being said, we are not yet finished with George. One important question remains to be considered--which will be the subject of an upcoming post.


Source Cited

Wiebe, Herbert. 1952. Das Siedlungswerk niederländischer Mennoniten im Weichseltal zwischen Fordon und Weissenberg bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts. Wissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte und Landeskunde Ost-Mitteleuropas 3. Marburg: Johann Gottfried Herder-Institut.