Benjamin Buller 3

Although we were able to identify Benjamin and the ten other members of his family among those who, in 1833, wanted to emigrate from Volhynia to Molotschna, we still have questions to answer. We begin with the first:

The last we knew (the 1819/1820 census), Benjamin rented his land from a Polish noble named Waclav Borejko and lived near the village of Zofyovka. Why is he now located at a different village renting land from a different person?

We actually answered this question nine months ago—except we did not realize at that time that our answer also related to Benjamin and family. If you recall, during a series of posts on Waldheim, the village where David eventually lived in Molotschna colony, we examined the 1848 Gemeindebericht (community report) for Waldheim, which began with a brief history of the village’s origins (see here and here). The report noted particularly the areas where Waldheim’s original settlers had previously lived.

(1) from the village Ostrowa in the Lutzkischen district on the estates of the nobleman Michael Bitschkowskij, where they had come from the Rokonosch district not far from the town Wissotzk from the manor of the nobleman Watzlaf Vorainy; (2) from the village Wolla on the estates of the nobleman Ignat Bitschkowskij, where they had come from the manor of Count Olisarow near they town of Rawalowka in the Lutzkischen district, and (3) from the district Novograd Volhynsk from the estate of Prince Ljubomirskij.

Compare this with the locations of the 1833 Mennonites who wished to move to Molotschna:

1. Currently residing on the estate of Michael Bischkowsky in the Lutzki region in the colony Ostrowka
2. Currently residing on the estate of Ignatz Bischkowsky in the Lutzkiregion in the colony Wolla
3. Currently living on the estate of the Prince Joseph Ljubomirsky in the colony Doschidorf

Both lists agree that one group came from Ostrowa, that another came from Wolla, and that a third came from the land of Prince Ljubomirsky/Ljubomirskij. The only substantive difference is that the 1833 list identifies the village in which Joseph Ljubomirsky’s tenants lived: Doschidorf.

What is important for us is that Gemeindebericht clarifies an important detail about the first group, which is the group of which Benjamin was a member: the members of that group had come to the village of Ostrowa from the Rokonosch district not far from the town Wissotzk from the manor of the nobleman Watzlaf Vorainy. To put that in the terms we have been using, the first group came from the Rovno district in Volhynia, near the town of Wysock (actually in the village Zofyovka, a mile or so north of Wysock), where they had farmed the land of Waclav Borejko/Watzlaf Vorainy (presumably variant spellings of the same name).





So, the short answer to our question is that in 1833 Benjamin and family were located in a different place because they had moved from their original (1817) Volhynian location to a new one. But that is not all. Martin H. Schrag offers additional detail. According to Schrag:

The group left Zofyovka in 1828 and established “Ostrova” [or Ostrowa] which is identical with Jozefin, 20 miles northeast of Luck, Volhynia. They also settled in the neigh­boring village that they again named Zofyovka. Here they were on the land of Count Michael Bichkovski.

In the map above, Zofyovka is located just left of center in the top third of Volhynia. The villages of Ostrowa/Jozefin and Zofyovka II were to the southwest near the river to the northeast of Lutsk (see also the map below, which does not show Zofyovka I but does show the Lutsk villages).

Schrag’s 1828 date for the move from Zofyovka in Rovno to Ostrowa in Lutsk finds support in the fact that Waclav Borejko wrote leases with new settlers—Germans but not Mennonites—in that same year (see Giesinger 1977, 14).

However, Schrag’s statement that the group left Zofyovka in 1828 and established Ostrowa seems at odds with the evidence of our 1833 list. The 1833 list clearly distinguishes between settlers who had emigrated early and thus had been paying taxes since 1818 and those who were still tax-free at the time of the list. Most obviously, if nine Mennonite families had been paying taxes since 1818, they did not arrive ten years later, in 1828. Perhaps Ostrowa was not founded until 1828, but I would feel better if Schrag cited his evidence or source for stating that.

Furthermore, it is hard to imagine that groups emigrating at the same time would have been subject to different lease terms. A better explanation is that the first nine families in group 1 of the list (the ones who paid taxes) entered their leases before the second ten families (the ones who still enjoyed their free years) did. It seems most plausible to conclude that these nineteen families did not move to the Ostrowa area all at the same time, that there was at least an early group and a later (1828) group.

Since Benjamin was still tax-free, he presumably did emigrate from Zofyovka to Ostrowa in 1828. If so, then the period of freedom from taxes extended at least five years. In spite of these other uncertainties, we can now supply (tentatively) the actual year of Benjamin and family’s move in our family timeline.

Year	Person(s)	Event
1817	Benjamin and family (4)	emigrated from Prussia to Volhynia
1818	David Benjamin	birth on 25 January
1819/1820	Benjamin, Helena, David, Dominik, nephew David	listed on census living at Zofyovka, Rovno, Volhynia
1828	Benjamin and family (?)	moved from Zofyovka to Ostrowka, Lutsk, Volhynia
1833	Benjamin and family (11)	expressed desire to emigrate from Ostrowka to Molotschna colony

***

I am troubled by the fact that, as far as I can tell, there was no village named Ostrowka in Lutsk. The village name was quite common in Volhynia, and the Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe Volhynian Gazetteer records twenty different villages named Ostrow, Ostrowje, Ostrowka, Ostrowki, Ostrowok, Ostrowsk, Ostrowy, and Ostrowzy in various Volhynian provinces. Not one of the twenty, however, is located in Lutsk. The gazetteer does identify a Jozefin in Lutsk but does not give an alternate name as Ostrowa.

This makes me wonder if Schrag and others might be misconstruing references to the region of Lutzki or Lutzkischen. The association with Lutsk would seem to be clear enough. However, do we know that at that time the term referred to the what we would regard as Lutsk proper, specifically the district or province of Lutsk? The question seems legitimate for at least two reasons.

First, of the twenty Volhynian villages whose name is a variant of Ostrow, one seems a particularly likely candidate for locating Benjamin’s group of Mennonites. The Russian place name Острозька, which would be transliterated Ostrowka, is the name of a city now known as Ostroh. Its Polish name was Ostrog. If the latter name sounds vaguely familiar, it is because several posts discussed the Mennonite presence in villages near Ostrog (here and here). The problem here is that Ostrog was in Rovno district, not Lutsk. However …

Second, there is at least one piece of obscure evidence suggesting that the term Lutzkischen referred to a region much larger than the Lutsk district narrowly defined. Thanks to Google, we have access to a German book published in Warsaw, Poland, in 1797 (so reasonably close to the same time frame) that may shed light on this mystery. The book, Polens Ende: Historisch, statistisch und geographisch beschrieben, contains the following list (Hübner, 1797, 370):

The introductory phrase (“Die zu dieser Ordination gehörigen Städte, ohne die vielen Dorfer, sind folgende”) can be translated “The towns belonging to this ordination without many villages are the following.” Then the author lists towns “Im Lutzkischen District,” a phrase that means just what it looks like: Ostrog, Stepan, Klewan, Dubno, and Dereznia (?). The last city cannot be located, but the other four are cities in the Rovno/Rivne district of Volhynia. Because the book was published in Warsaw, one would think that it refers to what was former Polish territory with some degree of accuracy. Could it be that Lutzkischen actually encompassed the territory of Ostrog/Ostroh, where we know Mennonites lived, in the terminology of that day?

This evidence is admittedly slender, but it at least raises the question whether Schrag has properly located the village of Ostrowka. If he has evidence for identifying it with Jozefin, it would be nice to know what it is. What little evidence we have seems to point in a different direction. In any event, we should treat the identification of Ostrowka as an open question, not as a settled fact.


Works Cited

Giesinger,  Adam. 1977. A Volhynian German Contract. American Historical Society of Germans from Russia Work Paper 25:13–15. Available online here.

Hübner, Carl Joseph. 1797. Polens Ende: Historisch, statistisch und geographisch beschrieben. Warsaw, n.p. Available online here.

Schrag, Martin H. 1959. Volhynia (Ukraine). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.

Stewner, Frank. 2012. SGGEE Volhynian Gazetteer. Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe. Available online here.