Waldheim settlers 6

The previous post identified the first twenty-one settlers in Waldheim: eight in 1838 and thirteen in 1839 (here). Because there were forty total Wirtschaften (land allotments) in Waldheim, as there were in many other Molotschna villages, we have nineteen more persons to identify to round out the entire group of original settlers.

As noted earlier, the 1839 planting list (which can be viewed in its entirety here) includes twenty-one numbered names (the 1838 and 1839 settlers) and fifteen unnumbered names. Among the latter one would expect to find some of the 1840 and 1841 settlers. To discover if this is the case, we reproduce the fifteen names from the 1839 planting list on the left and, for comparison, two lists we have looked at previously on the right: the 1840 settler list (here) and part of a 1839–1841 list of Mennonites who were assigned land at Waldheim (here).

1839 Planting List	1840 Settlers	1839–1841 Land Assignments
Jacob Richert	Jacob Jacob Richert	Jacob Richert
Andreas Nachtigal	Andreas Peter Nachtigal	Andreas Nachtigal
Heinrich Sperling	Heinrich Peter Sperling	Heinrich Sperling
Johann Schmidt	Johann Johann Schmidt	Johann Schmidt
Heinrich Voth	Heinrich Jacob Voth	Heinrich Voth
Peter Schmidt	Peter David Schmidt	Peter Schmidt
Johann Wedel	Johann Kornelius Wedel	Johann Wedel
Cornelius Wedel		Cornelius Wedel
David Nachtigal	David Georg Nachtigal	David Nachtigal
Jacob Pankratz	Jacob Heinrich Pankratz	Jacob Pankratz
Cornelius Unruh	Cornelius Cornelius Unruh	Cornelius Unruh
Samuel Boese	Samuel Martin Boese	Samuel Boese
Heinrich Wedel	Heinrich Kornelius Wedel	Heinrich Wedel
Benjamin Voth

For the most part, the lists correspond, with only Cornelius Wedel absent from the 1840 list and Benjamin Voth missing from the 1840 and 1839–1841 lists. We will return to this in a moment; for now we need to recall that there are only fifteen names in this half of the 1839 planting list, and we are looking for the final nineteen settlers. Where are the others to be found?

The answer is simple: in the other names listed in the 1840 and 1839–1841 lists that do not appear on the 1839 planting list. Those names include the following:

1839 Planting List	1840 Settlers	1839–1841 Land Assignments
	Jacob Gregor Buller	Jacob Gregor Buller
	Benjamin Kornelius Unruh
	Martin Martin Bayer	Martin Martin Bayer
	Andreas Andreas Schmidt
		Tobias Schultz

There are five unique names on the 1840 and 1839–1841 lists. Adding these five to the fifteen on the 1839 planting list gives us twenty names … which is one too many; we have room for only nineteen. There is, however, a logical explanation that arranges all the data into a consistent picture. Notice that Benjamin Voth at the end of the 1839 planting list (above) does not appear on any of the other lists. This is telling. For whatever reason, there is no record that Benjamin Voth ever became a landowner in Waldheim.

With Voth excluded, the numbers match exactly, and we have a full complement of forty landowners from the years 1838–1841. All that remains is to decide which of these final nineteen settled in 1840 and which in 1841. Fortunately, that task is relatively simple. Of the nineteen names given, only two are not listed as 1840 settlers: Cornelius Wedel in the first list and Tobias Schutz in the second one. These gentlemen are the two 1841 settlers whom we have been expecting.

One last time (I think) we look back at, and then revise, the 1848 Gemeindeberichte, the community report. The original stated:

This village was founded in 1836. That year eight landowners settled in it, twelve in the year 1838, and twenty landowners in 1840.

The Gemeindeberichte correctly reports the number of landowners in Waldheim’s first year (eight), but everything else is mistaken. A corrected version of report would read:

This village was founded in 1838. That year eight landowners settled in it, thirteen in the year 1839, seventeen in 1840, and two in 1841.

A tediously complete version might even list all of Waldheim’s first forty settlers:

This village was founded in 1838.

That year eight landowners settled in it: Michael Teske, Peter Wedel, Johann Worbel (or Werbel), Peter Nachtigal, Friedrich Kunkel, Benjamin Ratzlaff, Christian Teske, and Peter Sperling.

Thirteen additional landowners settled the following year, in 1839: Tobias David Dirks, Peter Jacob Pankratz, Cornelius Cornelius Wedel, Cornelius Cornelius Wedel, Heinrich Johann Dirks, Peter Johann Schmidt, Jacob Aron Klassen, David Jacob Köhn, Benjamin Benjamin Buller, Benjamin Cornelius Wedel, David Heinrich Dirks, David David Köhn, and Johann Heinrich Ewert.

Seventeen landowners settled in Waldheim in 1840: Jacob Jacob Richert, Andreas Peter Nachtigal, Heinrich Peter Sperling, Johann Johann Schmidt, Heinrich Jacob Voth, Peter David Schmidt, BenjaminBenjamin Buller Jr., Johann Kornelius Wedel, David Georg Nachtigal, Jacob Heinrich Pankratz, Cornelius Cornelius Unruh, Samuel Martin Boese, and Heinrich Kornelius Wedel.

Two final settlers in 1841 filled the forty Wirtschaften allotted to the village: Cornelius Wedel and Tobias Schultz.

I believe we are finished with the Waldheim settlers series (but not the Benjamin Buller series). I am happy to report that the information presented over the last two posts is available in a slightly more formal document that has been posted on the Mennonite Genealogy Resources webpage. Thanks to Richard D. Thiessen for making it available on that site. The document is linked from the New Files page here and lives in the Russia section of the website here.

Waldheim settlers 5

In an earlier post (here) we examined the “List of Mennonites in Waldheim Who Planted Potatoes and Flax in Spring 1839” (extracted and translated by Glenn Penner) in order to mine it for Buller-relevant information. We discovered that in early 1839 Benjamin II (David’s father) and Benjamin III (David’s brother) planted potatoes for consumption and flax for the weaving of linen. What else one or both may have planted we do not know.

The 1839 list is significant for opening a window on the lives of our family members, but the list is also important for what it tells us about Waldheim’s earliest settlers: the names of the eight original settlers of this Molotschna village. When the evidence of the 1839 list is put together with the other lists we have examined, we are actually able to identify who settled in Waldheim in each of its first four years: 1838, 1839, 1840, and 1841. We begin with the 1839 planting list and the original eight settlers in Waldheim.

The 1839 planting list (which can be viewed in its entirety here) begins with twenty-one numbered names, then continues with fifteen unnumbered names. Thus the first question that comes to mind is: Why are some of the names numbered and others unnumbered? The fact that twenty-one names are numbered points toward the answer. As we have mentioned several times (most recently here), eight settlers were granted Wirtschaften (farms) in 1838 and thirteen more in 1839—a total of twenty-one. Since the planting list reflects the reality of 1839, the twenty-one individuals with numbers are most likely those who had been assigned a Wirtschaft.

Fortunately, because we know all the names of the 1839 settlers from another Waldheim list (see here), we can check our reasonable hyphothesis by comparing the names of the twenty-one people who planted potatoes and flax in 1839 with the list of 1839 settlers.

	1839 Planting List	1839 Settler List
1	Tobias Dirks	Tobias David Dirks
2	Peter Pankratz	Peter Jacob Pankratz
3	Cornelius Wedel	Cornelius Cornelius Wedel
4	Michael Teske
5	Peter Wedel
6	Johann Worwel [Worbel]
7	Peter Nachtigal
8	Cornelius Wedel	Cornelius Cornelius Wedel
9	Heinrich Dirks	Heinrich Johann Dirks
10	Peter Schmidt	Peter Johann Schmidt
11	Jacob Klassen	Jacob Aron Klas [Klassen]
12	David Koehn	David Jacob Kohn
13	Benjamin Buller	Benjamin Benjamin Buller
14	Friedrich Kunkel
15	Benjamin Ratzlaff
16	Christian Teske
17	Peter Sperling
18	Benjamin Wedel	Benjamin Cornelius Wedel
19	David Dirks	David Heinrich Dirks
20	David Koehn	David David Kohn? [or Kol"]
21	Johann Ewert	Johann Heinrich Ewert

The correspondence between the two lists is exact: each of the thirteen 1839 settlers (the right column) appears as a numbered name on the 1839 planting list (left columns). Further, this leaves us exactly eight names of individuals who planted potatoes and flax in 1839. These eight were in all likelihood the original eight settlers in Waldheim, the ones who had received their land allotment in 1838. There is no better explanation at the moment.

The names of Waldheim’s original eight settlers were:

• Michael Teske
• Peter Wedel
• Johann Worwel [Worbel]
• Peter Nachtigal
• Friedrich Kunkel
• Benjamin Ratzlaff
• Christian Teske
• Peter Sperling

This is not the first time we have encountered some of these names, but further discussion of that must await another post. For now, we end by providing a further revision of the 1848 community report (Gemeindeberichte). If you recall, the original read:

This village was founded in 1836. That year eight landowners settled in it, twelve in the year 1838, and twenty landowners in 1840.

At this point almost none of the original Gemeindeberichte remains; in fact, the only element of the original that has been found accurate is the statement that Waldheim had eight settlers in its first year. A corrected, expanded version would state:

This village was founded in 1838. That year the following eight landowners settled in it: Michael Teske, Peter Wedel, Johann Worbel (or Werbel), Peter Nachtigal, Friedrich Kunkel, Benjamin Ratzlaff, Christian Teske, and Peter Sperling. Thirteen additional landowners settled in the year 1839; their names were Tobias David Dirks, Peter Jacob Pankratz, Cornelius Cornelius Wedel, Cornelius Cornelius Wedel, Heinrich Johann Dirks, Peter Johann Schmidt, Jacob Aron Klassen, David Jacob Köhn, Benjamin Benjamin Buller, Benjamin Cornelius Wedel, David Heinrich Dirks, David David Köhn, and Johann Heinrich Ewert. Seventeen landowners settled in Waldheim in 1840 and two in 1841, filling the forty Wirtschaften allotted to the village.

The next post will expand the list of names further by comparing the unnumbered names on the 1839 planting list with other lists we have already examined. When we are finished, we will have identified the names of all forty Waldheim settlers for the years 1838–1841.

Holodomor Remembrance Day

Buller Time makes it a point not to venture or wander into the policitical (no mention, for example, of the 2016 U.S. election), but sometimes the historical and the political cannot be kept separate. So it is that we take a few moments to note Holodomor Remembrance Day on this fourth Saturday in November, an official day of remembrance established by the Ukrainian government and observed by people around the world.

Holodomor (Голодомо́р), a Ukrainian term meaning “extermination by hunger,” refers to the Stalin-directed, Soviet-implemented starvation of millions (the exact total is unknown, and estimates vary from 2.5 million to over 14 million) of ethnic Ukrainians and other residents of the region. Readers can find far more informative accounts of the genocide in the resources listed below; suffice it to say for now that, in response to continued Ukrainian resistance to Soviet rule, the Stalin goverment chose to extinguish Ukrainian nationalistic ideals by exterminating those who held them. The Soviets laid the foundation in the last years of the 1920s and the first few years of the 1930s; the majority of the people died in the space of just a few years: 1932–1933.

The Soviet weapons in this fight were several. First, privately owned land was siezed and organized into collective farms; the rural peasantry thus became employees (or slaves) of the state. Second, the taxes (generally paid in produce, not currency) due on the land of a particular area were increased to the point that an entire year’s harvest (or more) was due to the Soviet state, leaving little or none for the residents of that place. Third, when harvests did produce an excess, it was piled within a secure compound—left there to rot instead of being distributed to the starving peasants who had produced it. Fourth, the Soviet authorities banned all travel and emigration, forcing the peasantry to remain in the country to die. Fifth, Stalin’s officials also rejected any international aid initiatives that would have alleviated the suffering and saved innumerable lives; the point, after all, was to kill a people. Sixth and last, many individuals were imprisoned and many families exiled to Siberia and similar regions on charges imagined or real. The outcome of these measures was not surprising: the destruction of an independent way of life, the desolation of the Ukraine, and the death of millions of residents of the Ukraine.

The horror of the Holodomor is best captured by Robert Conquest, who wrote the definitive account of this genocide. The preface of his 411-page book begins as follows:

The task of the historian is the notoriously difficult one of trying to represent clearly and truly in a few hundred pages events which cover years of time and nations of men and women. We may perhaps put this in perspective in the present case by saying that in the actions here recorded about twenty human lives were lost for, not every word, but every letter, in this book. (1986, 1)

At twenty lives lost per letter, the paragraph above represents approximately six thousand deaths. As horrific as this clearly is, one may wonder why this is a particular concern of this blog. The answer is simple: the Mennonites of the Molotschna who had remained behind when others emigrated to North America were in the heart of the Holodomor. Many of these Mennonites no doubt died during Stalin’s genocide.

But the Holodomor is even more personal for Buller Time. It raises the haunting question: Whatever happened to Katja Buller?

Katja is the little girl marked with an arrow on the right end of the front row. This photograph, which was reproduced in John A. Harder’s From Kleefeld with Love (see here, here, and here), pictures the students and teacher of Kleefeld’s 1930 school.

If you recall, Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller lived in Kleefed with Sarah’s parents before they left for Nebraska in 1879. Obviously, other Bullers lived in Kleefeld in the decades after they left, if not at the same time. Given what we know about the Mennonite Bullers—that we are all part of a single extended family— it seems reasonable to conclude that Katja Buller (and her brother Abraham and her sister Neta, the other two arrows) was part of our larger family.

Here we see Katja and her Kleefeld schoolmates in 1930. Farm collectivization was in place, and in all likelihood Stalin’s policy of dekulakinization had begun to be felt, with some landowners already arrested and/or forcibly removed to distant work camps. The Holodomor itself was just beginning. One wonders how many of these children were still alive three years later, how many still lived in Kleefeld.

One wonders: Whatever happened to Katja Buller? Thus far we have not uncovered any evidence of her life or death apart from this photograph. We will continue looking, but for now, on 26 November, we remember Katja and the other victims of the Holodomor.

Additional Resources

The documentary Harvest of Despair (55 min.) can be viewed online here. Although some of the images are disturbing, the documentary is worthwhile for placing the Holodomor in its historical perspective.

The Wikipedia article on the Holodomor is full and informative (here), although the usual cautions about Wikipedia’s reliability apply.

Alexander Wienerberger’s photographs (here) of the Holodomor are mostly of urban areas, but they still convey the horrific nature of the genocide.

The Holodomor Education website provides a variety of resources, including a brief overview essay here. The website also offers a section on International Recognition of the Holodomor here.

In that vein, the White House website offers here President Obama’s 2009 Holodomor Remembrance Day statement.

A monument memorializing the Holodomor was erected in Washington, DC, in 2015 (here).

Works Cited

Conquest, Robert. 1986. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. New York: Oxford University Press.

Harder, John A., ed. and trans. 2003. From Kleefeld with Love. Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora Press.

Speaking of Dosidorf

The recent post on the identification of the Mennonite landlord in the 1848 lease (here), a landowner in the village of Dosidorf (also known as Zabara), is not the end of our interest in this village, nor was the 1848 lease our first encounter with Dosidorf. In fact, the village name appeared on the 1833 list of Mennonites who wished to move from Volhynia to Molotschna (for Glenn Penner’s translation of the list, see here; for the post about it, see here).

We did not pay attention to the village name because it appears in the third section of the list, which has nothing to do with Bullers. But since we have now noticed this village, let us return to the list to see if we can connect some dots. The 1833 list ends with entries for four families:

	Head of Household	Males	Females	Total	Trade
1	Peter Schmidt	4	3	7	Leinweber (linen weaver)
2	Cornelius Funk	3	1	4	Leinweber (linen weaver)
3	Peter Wedel	3	4	7	Leinweber (linen weaver)
4	Peter Nachtigal	6	6	12	Landwirth (landowner/farmer)

Schmidt, Funk, Wedel, and Nachtigal are names we have encountered alongside Bullers as far back as the Przechovka church, but we are not so interested in these names as in what is said about these Mennonites. They were, in 1833, “currently living on the estate of the Prince Joseph Ljubomirsky in the colony Doschidorf.” Is Doschidorf the same as Dosidorf?

The Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe Volhynian Gazetteer (Stewner 2012) records only one village name similar to either Doschidorf or Dosidorf:

Dosseldorf/Sabara Kol. (Zabara/Zabara), Baranivka, Zhytomyr, Ukraine; Кол. Досилъдорф (Забара)

The equation of Dosseldorf and Zabara implies quite strongly that Dosseldorf = Dosidorf, given that we already know that Zabara was an alternate name for Dosidorf. Further, it is clear that Doschidorf and Dosidorf are simply variations in representing the same German word (dorf, meaning “village,” is a clear sign that this was the German name for the village; the Russian name was Забара = Zabara). As we have noted frequently, there was no authorized spelling standard, and names were written on the basis of phonetics.

So, it seems safe to conclude that the Doschidorf in the 1833 list is the same as Dosidorf in the 1848 lease and, by extension, the village Dosidorf to which, according to Martin Schrag, Swiss-Volhynian Mennonites moved in 1837. But let us think about that a little.

In 1833, four Mennonite families from Dosidorf wanted to move to Molotschna. Four years later a number of Swiss-Volhynian Mennonite families moved to the village from where they moved. Is it possible that the two events are somehow connected? That is, was part of the reason that the Swiss-Volhynians moved to Dosidorf to assume the leases and the houses that the earlier Mennonites were leaving? I know of no clear evidence indicating that they did, but it remains an intriguing and likely hypothesis nonetheless.

It gains a little more credence when one jumps ahead to 1848 and realizes that use of the land was passed back from Swiss-Volhynian Mennonites to a group with the names Decker, Kohn, Ratzlaff, Schmidt, and Voth—apart from Schmidt not identical with the 1833 group but of the same tribe of Mennonites, so to speak. In the end, both land transfers suggest that these two groups—the Swiss-Volhynian Mennonites and the Prussian Mennonites (for lack of a better term)—had periodically close relations with each other throughout their shared Volhynian sojourn (see further Schrag 1974, 62–66).

One side note before we end. It is highly likely that at least two of the 1833 Dosidorf Mennonites who wished to move to Molotschna were among the original residents of Waldheim. As noted in the second post on the Waldheim settlers (here), we can deduce the names of four of the eight original Waldheim residents by comparing entries in the 1839 and 1840 lists. Those four settlers were:

• Peter Heinrich Nachtigal
• Kornelius Johann Funk
• Kornelius David Unruh
• Peter Tobias Sperling

Although we cannot know for certain, it seems likely that Peter Nachtigal in the 1833 list above is the same as Peter Heinrich Nachtigal here, likewise Cornelius Funk in the 1833 list and Kornelius Johann Funk here.

Of course, we should not overlook the identification of Peter Schmidt as Cornelius Funk’s stepson in the 1839 Waldheim settler list, so this gives us a third Dosidorf Mennonite who settled in Waldheim. Of the four 1833 Dosidorf heads of household, only Peter Wedel has not been located thus far.

Where has all this led us? We know now that the Dosidorf Mennonites did end up in Waldheim, and we suspect that their Volhynian land was taken over for a time by Swiss-Volhynian Mennonites who would farm it for at least the next ten years.


Works Cited

Schrag, Martin H. 1974. The European History (1525–1874) of the Swiss Mennonites from Volhynia. Edited by Harley J. Stucky. North Newton, KS: Mennonite Press for Swiss Mennonite Cultural and Historical Association.

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

Volhynian land leases 5

Accidental discoveries are often interesting, especially when they reveal how what appear to be stray threads actually fit within a larger tapestry. Consider, for example, the 1848 land lease we recently examined (here). We studied the lease in order to learn what we could about nineteenth-century lease terms and how they dealt with issues of taxation. If you recall, in this lease eight Mennonite families were renting land from another Mennonite (see here). The lease began as follows:

The Mennonite Christoph Gering, residing on his own property in the colony Dosidorf, will lease to eight families, eight huben of land, including eight houses, gardens, fields, meadows, and woods. 

With that in mind, permit me to tell a wandering story, with a promise that we will return to the same spot. On a number of occasions we we have consulted the Volhynia article in the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (here) written by Martin H. Schrag (1959). We have confirmed his statements (here, about the association between Zofyovka and Ostrwoka), questioned his claims (here, about locating Ostrowka northeast of Lutsk or Luck), and even wondered why he omitted Bullers, and only Bullers, from his summary of the 1811 Zofyovka lease (here).

Schrag wrote more than the GAMEO article, of course. For example, he wrote several articles on the topic of Volhynian Mennonites for Mennonite Life (Schrag 1954, 1958; both available online), and his master’s thesis was on a similar subject: “European History of the Swiss-Volhynian Mennonite Ancestors of Mennonites Now Living in Kansas and South Dakota” (Schrag 1956). This latter work was also published in revised form as The European History (1525–1874) of the Swiss Mennonites from Volhynia (Schrag 1974).

Schrag’s book is not about our family (although the name Buller does appear once, which will be the subject of a later post) or our larger group. The Swiss-Volhynian Mennonites were a group separate from our ancestors and their Mennonite congregations. However, since it deals with Volhynia, it is an interesting read just the same, and in one instance it provides background on a Buller Time post.

Roughly halfway through the book Schrag discusses the location of the Swiss-Volhynian villages (a summary of Schrag 1958). Within that section he writes:

The larger part of the Urszulin-Michelsdorf colony resettled at Eduardsdorf about 1807. Villages colonized from Eduardsdorf include Zahoriz, Hecker, Gorritt (Koryto) and possibly Futtor. In a matter of a year the Vignanka folk either moved or became a part of the Eduardsdorf complex. The remaining Urszulin-Michelsdorf Mennonites moved (1837) to the Volhynian villages of Horodyszcze, Dosidorf (Zabara) and Waldheim. (Schrag 1974, 50)

The village we need to notice now is not the one that may jump out at us (Waldheim) but the village before that: Dosidorf (Zabara). If the name Dosidorf sounds familiar, it is because it is the village in which the Mennonite landlord in the 1848 lease above lived. But that is not all. Earlier in his book Schrag discusses the family names among the Swiss-Volhynian Mennonites:

In summary, the names of Gering, Graber, Kaufmann, Stucky, Schrag, Flickinger, Mündlein, Voran, Albrecht, Wolbert, Senner, Schwartz, Sutter, and Mauer were found in the Urszulin-Michelsdorf community. (Schrag 1974, 48)

Schrag’s summary corresponds to the evidence of the 1848 lease, where a Mennonite named Gering of Dosidorf rented land to eight Mennonites named Decker, Kohn, Ratzlaff, Schmidt, and Voth. That Gering was a member of the Swiss-Volhynian branch of Mennonites can scarcely be doubted. This also goes to a larger issue that we will address in the future, namely, the relations between the Swiss-Volhynian Mennonites and the Mennonites of whom our family was a part. Suffice it to say for the moment that there is probably more to explore down that trail.

For now we stay with the 1848 lease and the notion that Gering was a Swiss-Volhynian Mennonite. Interestingly, the descendants of this group maintain a website chock full of information (see here). Their genealogy page, for example, links to an extensive list of individuals current and historical, all the way back into the eighteenth century (if not earlier). Might the Gering landlord be listed there? Before we check, we should review the introduction to the lease:

On 20 October 1847, Christoph ______ [Gering], son of Moses, Mennonite and hereditary lord of the Mennonite colony, Novograd-Volynskiy district, Volhynian authority, entered into the following contract with these Mennonites from Ostrog district.…

A check of the Swiss Volhynian Genealogy Database (here) reveals no Christoph Gering. There is, however, one—and only one—Moses Gering, and he had a son named Christian who died at the age of seventy in 1859 in Volhhynia.

What makes this even more interesting is Rod Ratzlaff’s earlier suggestion (here) that this landlord might have been the Christian Gering listed in the GRANDMA database (number 91532). Everything we have seen here indicates strongly that Rod was right. The logic is a little messy but proceeds as follows:

1. The 1848 Mennonite landlord Gering lived in the village of Dosidorf.
2. Dosidorf had been populated by Swiss-Volhynian Mennonites since 1837.
3. One of the Swiss-Volhynian families in the settlement group was named Gering.

•  Therefore, it is likely that landlord Gering was a Swiss-Volhynian Mennonite.

4. Landlord Gering’s father was named Moses Gering.

5. There is only one known Moses Gering among the Swiss-Volhynian Mennonites.

6. Moses Gering had a son named Christian who lived at the right time and died in Volhynia.

•  Therefore, it is likely that landlord Gering was actually named Christian, not Christoph.

•  Therefore, it also likely that GRANDMA 91532 is the Gering who signed the 1848 lease.

The accidental discovery of the village name Dosidorf in Martin Schrag’s book prompted an interesting excursion that led us to confirm, I think, Rod Ratzlaff’s suggestion that the landlord was Christian Gering. In the end, this is a minor matter, but the journey broadened our understanding of Volhynia and of its varied Mennonite populations—and that makes it all worthwhile.

Works Cited

Ratzlaff, Rod, ed. 2016. Land Contract for Mennonite Colonists Resettling in the Village of Dosidorf, 1848. Translated from the German by Ute Brandenburg. Available online here.

Schrag, Martin H. 1954. The Swiss-Volhynian Mennonite Back­ground. Mennonite  Life 10.4:156–61. Available online here.

———. 1956. European History of the Swiss-Volhynian Mennonite Ancestors of Mennonites Now Living in Kansas and South Dakota. Master’s thesis, Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

———. 1958. A Geographic Study Determines Location of Swiss-Volhynian Mennonite Villages, 1800–74. Mennonite Life 13.3:142–43. Available online here.

———. 1959. Volhynia (Ukraine). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1959. Available online here.

———. 1974. The European History (1525–1874) of the Swiss Mennonites from Volhynia. Edited by Harley J. Stucky. North Newton, KS: Mennonite Press for Swiss Mennonite Cultural and Historical Association.

Volhynian land leases 4

We began this short series with a simple question: Why did some Mennonite tenants pay taxes after renting for seven years, while other Mennonite tenants (including Benjamin Buller) were still exempt from taxes after sixteen years (see here and especially the 1833 list here)? The simple answer, one might think, was that, there being no standard lease terms, the second group must have negotiated a better lease than the first group. Unfortunately, that answer seems unlikely for several reasons.

First, the Rovno census (here) that lists both groups of families states that the second group settled on the property of the same landlord under the same terms as the first group. The difference apparently does not reflect different lease terms. Second, both groups had first lived in Volhynia in the village of Zofyovka, renting land from the same person (Waclav Borejko) who leased land to the Mennonites in the 1811 lease examined earlier.

It becomes more confusing. The first group of Mennonite tenants in the 1833 list apparently settled on the land of Waclav Borejko in 1811. Borejko’s known 1811 lease promised his tenants freedom from taxation forever. Why, then, did some of his tenants (the first nine families listed on the 1833 list) begin paying taxes seven years into their lease?

Perhaps the confusion stems from a misunderstanding of the taxes they had been paying. Perhaps the 1833 list is not talking about real-estate taxes at all but rather some other kind of tax. The translation of the list certainly allows for that possibility, since it states the following about the first group:

These above-mentioned nine families have enjoyed their free years and, since 1818, have paid the royal contributions.

The crucial terms, obviously, are free years and royal contributions. Although free years sounds like it could fit within the terms of the leases we have examined, royal contributions seems to relate to a completely different context. Given what we have learned about real-estate taxes and leases and rent, it seems reasonable to conclude that the 1833 list is talking about something entirely different.

Of course, this does not solve the problem of why some Mennonites paid royal contributions seven years after entering Russia while others still enjoyed “free years” sixteen years after emigrating. It merely shifts the question to a different context: what taxes the Russian government required of its Mennonite settlers and how those taxes may have changed over time, so that one group of emigrants was liable for taxes earlier than a group who emigrated even six years later.

We are obviously no closer to giving an answer to our initial questions; however, we have learned a great deal about Volhynian leases and now have a better sense of where the answer is most likely to be found. Now, if only we knew how to explore nineteenth-century Russian tax law on immigrant groups such as the Mennonites.… I guess there is additional research to conduct.

Volhynian land leases 3

The last lease from this brief series is much later than the first two, from 1848. It also differs in that both the landlord (Christoph Gering) and the renters are Mennonite. As will become evident below, the lease reflects a significantly different situation than what we have previously seen. As before, we begin with the lease terms of most relevance to our question about real estate taxes on land leased by Benjamin Buller and other Mennonites (see here; once again we have Rod Ratzlaff to thank for his editing and posting of the lease).

Zabara, formerly known as Dosidorf. The village was roughly 40 miles
north of Antonovka, the village of the 1804 lease.

1. The Mennonite Christoph Gering, residing on his own property in the colony Dosidorf, will lease to eight families, eight huben of land, including eight houses, gardens, fields, meadows, and woods. There is also unarable land which separates the eight huben from the border to Groß Prawatin and Klein Prawatin and Zakrenicze. This land shall be distributed among the eight families so each receives one hube of land, and each farmer has an equal share of arable and unarable land.

2. Rent on this land and buildings shall be paid on 24 March 1848, and thereafter for twenty years, [page 2] that is, until 24 March 1868. The annual amount of rent to be paid is 18 silver rubles for each hube. The settlers agree to make payments twice annually: on 24 September and on 24 March, over the amount of nine silver rubles each. After twenty years have passed, the settlers will commit to stay on the land for another term of twenty years, and continue with subsequent twenty-year terms, unless both parties agree to ask the court to draft a new contract. 

As with the first two leases, the agreement begins by describing in general the location and amount of land in view. A hube was anywhere between 30 and 50 acres, so the lease covers somewhere between 240 and 400 acres.

Noteworthy is the mention of eight houses. The previous lease agreements provided access to lumber that the settlers could use to build their own houses; this contract is for already-developed land. This is a significant difference and is reflected in the terms of the contract: this agreement requires renters to pay rent from day one; there is no rent-free period mentioned.

The length of the contract is a new development: the earlier contracts were open-ended, but this one is subject to renewal every twenty years. Also new is the biannual payment of rent, in contrast to the annual payment in the earlier agreements.

The subject of taxes is addressed in paragraph 5, although not as clearly as one would like:

5. All Imperial taxes that are currently required, those that may be mandated in the future, [page 4] and also the ______ [Poschline?] for the libations, as well as any other requirements, must be paid by the settlers, without causing inconveniences to the landlord. The settlers must also keep the street and the bridge on their eight huben land in good repair. 

My sense is that the imperial taxes were not real-estate taxes but were rather additional taxes that the Mennonites had to pay; this impression is given by the immediately following mention of taxes that might be imposed on them in the future. If this is correct, then the payment of real-estate taxes is not addressed in this lease. Presumably the landlord paid those taxes out of the rent he collected twice a year. The fact that the settlers paid rent from the start may well explain the absence of any mention of real-estate taxes: there was no need to specify who would pay taxes because the rent paid included the taxes from the beginning.

A final provision offers, it seems, additional perspective on the payment of taxes:

13. All eight families are responsible for lease payment and for adherence to the items of this contract, all for one, and one for all, and guarantee each other’s property. [page 6] However, should a settler want to resettle to another location and still owe taxes, Landlord Gering may, to his own protection, confiscate livestock and property from this settler. These shall be appraised as decided by a committee of honest individuals; the same as mentioned under Item 3 of this contract.  

This paragraph makes the most sense if ultimately the landlord was responsible for all taxes owed by his tenants. Thus, if a tenant wanted to leave and owed taxes, this landlord had the right to seize the tenant’s property in order to pay the taxes due.

In the end, the 1848 contract confirms some of our earlier conclusions about the payment of taxes and rent. For example, although taxes and rent could be separated (1804), most often the real-estate taxes due were the landlord’s responsibility but paid out of the rent collected, as shown below.

	landlord	renters
year 1	pays taxes out of rent collected	pay rent (which includes taxes)
year 2	pays taxes out of rent collected	pay rent (which includes taxes)
years 3–	pays taxes out of rent collected	pay rent (which includes taxes)

Most important, this lease reinforces our sense that there was no standard agreement; the terms could be whatever the landlord and renters wished. As always, the law of supply and demand led landlord and renter to mutually acceptable terms, even as the context and culture of the day gave shape to the specific contracts (e.g., provisions that the renters had to mill their grain at the landlord’s mill for his standard fee).

Having worked through three leases, we know a good deal more about the payment of and exemption from taxes than we we began. Whether or not that helps us understand the Benjamin Buller situation is the topic of the next post.


Work Cited

Ratzlaff, Rod, ed. 2016. Land Contract for Mennonite Colonists Resettling in the Village of Dosidorf, 1848. Translated from the German by Ute Brandenburg. Available online here.

Volhynian land leases 2

The prior post examined an 1804 lease between Antoni Wyczfinski and nineteen Mennonite families for the rental of hayfields and farmland in the Antonovka area. This post focuses on a lease written in 1811 for the rental of land in another area of Volhynia, the village of Zofyovka, north of Wyscock in the Rovno district (see here and the posts following).

Antonovka (prior post) was located near Ostrog (lower center). Zofyovka was
some distance to the northwest (uppermost dot in the center).

We have actually spent time with this second lease before (here), when we were attempting to find out who the first Bullers in Volhynia actually were. We return to the lease now for a different reason: to discover what light it might shed on our questions about the payment of or exemption from taxes by renters (for more on the questions, see here).

As with the previous post, we will focus on the terms of the lease most relevant to our questions. This lease can be accessed at the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia website here (see Giesinger 1977). We begin with paragraph 1 of section 1:

1. The aforementioned Mennonites and their descendants shall be forever free of taxes and seignorial duties, as well as of money payments in lieu of these, except for the land rent stipulated in this contract. They shall not be subject to compensation payments of any kind; shall not be required to provide quarters for soldiers or make money payments in lieu thereof, at the behest of their lord; shall not be required to furnish army recruits, as their lord’s subjects have to do, or make money payments in lieu thereof; and shall enjoy also all the rights and privileges conferred on Mennonites in the Emperor’s Privilegium.

There is a good deal of information to extract from this paragraph.

1. Unlike the lessees of the prior contract (who enjoyed a one-year tax exemption), these Mennonite renters were forever free of taxes and seignorial duties such as providing a certain amount of unpaid labor each year or giving to the landlord a certain percentage of their produce. These settlers would owe only the rent specified in the contract.

2. Like the Mennonites of the 1804 contract, this group was also freed from the obligation to house soldiers; beyond that, this group was guaranteed freedom from any compensation payments for the enjoyment of that right. This suggests, perhaps, that such compensation payments were imposed on the land owner, who then could pass them on to the renters (1804 contract) or absorb them himself (this contract).

3. More broadly, this contract guarantees “all the rights and privileges conferred on Mennonites in the Emperor’s Privilegium.” As we have observed before, the Privilegium encompassed the benefits first promised by Catherine the Great and ratified by Tzar Paul I in 1800, such as freedom from military service, free exercise of religion, a grant of 65 dessiatines of land, and tax exemption on that land for a limited period of time. The 1804 lease agreement made no reference to the Privilegium, but here it finds clear expression.

Thus far we have learned that this lease promised the Mennonite renters that they would be free from taxes for all time. The rent they were obligated to pay is the other side of the equation. We read about that in the contract’s section.

1. There will be divided among them 33 hides of land, each containing 30 morgen Warsaw measure, for which they will be expected to pay on New Year’s Day annually 18 silver rubles per hide, that is, the equivalent of 120 gulden in the silver currency used here,

2. They will have three rent-free years, from 1 January 1812 to 1 January 1815. On the latter date the first payment of 18 silver rubles, i.e. 120 gulden, of land rent will be expected. …

6. The lord will advance to each colonist 200 gulden in silver currency, which sum the colonists promise to repay in two installments, the first on 1 January 1814, the second on the same date in 1816. 

It is impossible to compare the rental rates from 1804 with those from 1811, since the two contracts use slightly different measures of land and specify different currencies. Still, we can note similarities and differences between the two.

1. Both contracts specify an annual rental payment. This agreement uses a single rental rate for all types of land, whereas the 1804 one based the rent on the type of land being used each year.

2. The 1811 contract gives the lessees three years of rent-free use of the land (in addition to perpetual tax exemption), whereas the 1804 contract granted only two years without payment of rent.

3. The 1811 contract promises each settler a loan of 200 gulden (equal to the rent for to help him establish a household; the 1804 lease had no such provision.

A diagram of the terms of the 1811 contract is significantly different from the 1804 agreement:

	landlord	renters
year 1	pays taxes and forgoes rent	Ø
year 2	pays taxes and forgoes rent	Ø
year 3	pays taxes and forgoes rent	Ø
years 4–	pays taxes	pay rent

There are other aspect of the leases that would reward closer examination, but for now we will keep the focus on the question of renter taxation and tax exemption. Based on our review of the 1804 and 1811 leases, we can conclude with relative confidence that taxation and rent payments were separate matters. The landlord was responsible for the real estate tax, but he could pass that responsibility on to his renters it (as in the 1804 agreement) or bear it all on his own (1811 agreement). Likewise, the landlord was free to negotiate whatever rental terms he wished, including an initial exemption from rent, if he so wished.

Above all, we can see already that there was no standard template for land leases. Although every lease by necessity had to cover certain elements, the terms negotiated varied widely, as is evident in these two exemplars. We will see to what extent that trend continues when we consider a third lease from nineteenth-century Volhynia.


Work Cited

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

Volhynian land leases 1

A little while back we became stumped by questions related to the tax-exempt status of Benjamin Buller and other Mennonites even after sixteen years into their land lease, as opposed to others who began paying taxes after seven years (see here).

In an attempt to work through the confusion, we will spend some time looking at land leases from that time and place (roughly). Perhaps what we learn from these leases will help us to make sense of our earlier questions.

Aerial view of Antonovka

We begin with a rental agreement from 1804, kindly translated by Ola Heska and edited and posted online by Rod Ratzlaff (see here).  I encourage you to consult the source for yourselves, since Rod has offered background to and comments on the entire lease. To summarize, the agreement was made between a Polish (Volhynian) judge and nineteen Mennonite heads of household (yes, including a few Bullers). The land in question is near Antonovka (see here and here), and Rod Ratzlaff suggests quite plausibly that it may well be the beginning of that Mennonite village.

Only a few paragraphs are relevant to our questions, so we will focus on them. We begin by quoting the first three paragraphs after the listing of the parties to the contract.

1. The Honorable Antoni Wiczfinski promises to provide the hayfield called Buzyny located by the Wilia river with the adjacent ploughland which will be measured out by a sworn Surveyor, however many voloks are located in this place—starting from the gully called Sadzawka to the border of Kamionka, as will be shown in the Survey.

2. The colonists commit to pay 5 złotys per each morga of hayfield and 4 złotys from each ploughland and from each household; and they will make certain to make payments from each morga of ploughland as well as the hayfield.

3. The period of tax exemption is set for one year only; and in the second year each colonist will pay the Landlord rent in the amount of 20 złotys per volok in the month of November by the Feast of St. Martin.  And in the third year on that day and month they should and will promptly pay a general rent of 5 złotys per morga of hayfield, and 4 zlotys per morga of ploughland, deducting each year a third part from the ploughland for a fallow field as it is customary to do.

Before we go further, we should define and explain several terms. As Rod Ratzlaff (2016) notes, a volok was a unit of area measurement equal to a little more than 44 acres in Poland. The volok was used to determine the amount of taxes due on a given piece of property. This approach to taxation was in contrast to the earlier system, which calculated taxes due based on the size of the household. A second term of interest here is złoty (Polish for “golden”), a standard unit of Polish currency since the Middle Ages. Finally, the term morga (or morgen, a term we have encountered before) is also a unit of area measurement. In Poland, a morga was approximately 1.4 acres, so a volok was equivalent to 30–33 morgas.

Now that we have these details in hand, we are ready to examine the terms of the lease. Paragraph 1 begins by locating the property in question in general terms and specifying that the land under lease will be surveyed. The results of the survey will be expressed, apparently, in voloks.

With the land identified, paragraph 2 sets the amount of rent to be paid. It is not perfectly clear in the paragraph that rent is under discussion, but it becomes evident a little later. In contrast to paragraph 1, paragraph 2 shifts to morgas in setting the rental terms. The amount due annually will be 5 złotys per each morga of hayfield and 4 złotys for each morga of ploughland (tillable land). Clearly, the hayfield was more valuable to the landlord and settlers than the farmland. Does this imply, perhaps, that their livelihood was more livestock-centered than crop-based?

At any rate, paragraph 3 both clarifies and complicates the picture. It speaks first of a tax exemption of one year, followed by rent due the following year of 20 złotys per volok. This mixing of terms and categories is more than a little confusing: in year 1 the renters were exempt from taxes, but in year 2 they had to begin paying rent.

Calculating the rent due in year 2 may shed some light on the question, since the amount due in year 2 is far less than the annual rent payments thereafter. For the sake of the calculation, we will assume that two-thirds of the land was hayfield; that would mean that 22 morgas of each volok being rented would normally generate 110 zlotys (22 morgas x 5 zlotys per volok), while the remaining 11 morgas of farmland would generate 44 zlotys (11 x 4). All together, this would equal a full volok renting at 154 zlotys. However, in year 2 the renters are obligated to pay only 20 zlotys per volok, roughly 13 percent of the usual rental rate.

Before we explore how this might answer our earlier question, we should note one important sentence in paragraph 3:

And in the third year on that day and month they should and will promptly pay a general rent of 5 złotys per morga of hayfield, and 4 zlotys per morga of ploughland, deducting each year a third part from the ploughland for a fallow field as it is customary to do.

The sentence repeats the rental terms from paragraph 2 (5 złotys per morga of hayfield and 4 zlotys per morga of ploughland) but adds an important clarification. The Mennonite renters are expected to use the three-field system, the usual practice of that day in which land was cultivated for two years and left fallow for the third year. Imagine, for example, that a farmer had a total of 15 acres available for tilling; he would plant crops in 10 acres each year and leave 5 acres fallow, rotating which 5 acres were fallow so that the soil had opportunity to regenerate every three years. What this lease states is that the renters did not have to pay rent on the land left fallow each year; they were responsible only for the land expected to be tilled, that is, two-thirds of the land available to the farmer.

That interesting insight into early nineteenth-century Volhynian farming practices aside, how can we explain the relationship between rent and exemption from and payment of taxes from this lease? The key may (may!) be in thinking about what is said regarding years 1, 2, and 3. For the renters, year 1 was the only tax-exempt year; they were liable for taxes every year thereafter. Importantly, however, year 2 was also different from year 3 and following, in that the renters owed only 20 zlotys per volok in year 2 but would be liable for closer to 150 zlotys per volok every year after that.

Why might this be significant? One might theorize on the basis of this evidence that the renters were paying the taxes only in year 2 (year 1 was the only tax-exempt year) and then began paying the taxes and the rent beginning with year 3. In other words, there was a gradual shift from the landlord paying all the expenses in year 1 to the renters paying them all in year 2. One might diagram it as follows:

	landlord	renters
year 1	pays taxes and forgoes rent	Ø
year 2	forgoes rent	pay taxes
years 3–	Ø	pay taxes and rent

If this theory is correct, then we know both the governmental tax rate (20 zlotys per volok) and the rental rates (5 złotys per morga of hayfield, 4 zlotys per morga of ploughland) that were within the realm of acceptable terms at that time. There are additional leases to examine, so everything written here should be regarded as a possible explanation of this lease. That being said, there does seem to be a valid distinction between paying real estate taxes and paying rent, and it seems that the taxes due on leased land may have been included in the total rental payment required.

One final note before we finish. It is also clear from later in this lease that real estate taxes were not the only possibly type of tax. Paragraph 10 reads:

10. The Honorable Landlord assures that he will take utmost care that the colonists’ homes will never be used to house troops. In regards to taxes to the Treasury that the government will impose on them, the colonists will be obligated to pay them.

The lease does not state that the settlers would owe taxes to the royal treasury, but it recognized the possibility and obligated the colonists, not the landlord, to pay them. Interestingly, immediately prior to this statement of obligation is a sentence about the Mennonites not being forced to house troops. The juxtaposition of these two sentences cannot be accidental, and it is probably correct to think that the tax that could be imposed was related to the Mennonites’ exemption from the military and from any direct support of the military. In other words, the lease seems to anticipate the imposition of a tax in compensation for the Mennonite exemption from military participation and support. Whether such a tax was imposed in this situation I do not know, but a similar tax was certainly enacted in other places at other times (e.g., Prussia).

Work Cited

Ratzlaff, Rod, ed. 2016. Antonovka Land Contract, 1804. Translated from the Russian by Ola Heska. Available online here.

Benjamin Buller 14

The document that provides the focus of this post is different from all the others, more down-to-earth, one might say. The title given to the document, which was extracted and translated by Glenn Penner, describes exactly what it is: a “List of Mennonites in Waldheim Who Planted Potatoes and Flax in Spring 1839.” Like all the other primary records we have been examining, this one is posted on the Mennonite Genealogical Resources website (see here).

We will not reproduce the entire document here (that will come later), only the portion that pertains to our family. The record includes five columns: (1) a number for some of the farmers; (2) the name of the farmer; (3) the quantity of potatoes in chetwert and (4) chetwerik; and (5) the quantity of flax in chetwerik. Thus, for Benjamin Buller II and III we have the following entries:

Number	Name	Potatoes		Flax
		chetwert	chetwerik	chetwerik
13	Benjamin Buller	2	0	1
	Benjamin Buller Jr.	1	2	1

These two brief entries raise a host of questions. We will work our way logically through them all.

1. What is a chetwert? a chetwerik?
According to Glenn Penner’s note, 1 chetwert = 2.1 hectoliters = 5.95 bushels; 1 chetwerik = 1/8 chetwert. So, the amounts for Benjamin II were slightly less than 12 bushels of potatoes and a little less than 6 bushels of flax. For Benjamin III, the amounts were roughly 7.5 bushels of potatoes and a little less than 6 bushels of flax.

According to Small Farmer’s Journal (here), one bushel of potatoes weighs 60 pounds, so 12 bushels would be equal to 720 pounds of potatoes.

2. What is being recorded: the amount planted or the amount harvested?
Presumably these are the amounts planted. Although 720 pounds of potatoes seems like a significant amount, a family of eight relying on potatoes for a substantial amount of its diet would probably eat through that much in around 45 days (see here; 2 lbs of potatoes per day per person x 8 people x 45 days = 720). This supports the notion that this was the amount planted, not the amount harvested.

The question that remains (maybe a reader with more experience gardening or farming can answer this) is: How much space would one need to plant 720 pounds of potatoes?

Pulling flax, from Josh MacFayden’s Flax History (here)

3. Why were these the only items planted?
The potatoes were obviously for human consumption and apparently provided a significant part of the early Waldheim residents’ diet.

Flax was planted because, once harvested, it could be woven into linen, which was then used to make clothing. It is likely that each household was equipped to spin and weave the flax into linen, but we also know that some Mennonites were dedicated linen weavers (German Leinweber). We will return to several specific linen weavers in a future post.

4. Why does Benjamin II have a number but Benjamin III does not?
The date of the record offers a clue here: this is a record of Waldheim Mennonites who planted in spring 1839. Benjamin II received his land allotment in 1839 (hence the number); Benjamin III did not receive his allotment until the following year (hence no number).

5. What might the crops and quantities reveal about the extent of farming in view?
Benjamin II planted somewhat more than Benjamin III, but not by a large amount. Since Benjamin III did not yet have his land assignment, the rough equivalence between the amounts planted implies that these were not field crops, as it were. That is, it seems unlikely that Benjamin II filled his allotment of 65 dessiatines (ca. 175 acres) with 12 bushels of potatoes and 6 bushels of flax.

It seems more likely (at least at the moment) that these crops were part of the large garden that every Mennonite family maintained, whether on a land allotment or, more likely, community land that was available for all residents (not just landowners) to use. We do not know any of this for certain, but it seems a reasonable explanation of what we do know.

6. Why is David not listed alongside his father and brother?
This seems the clearest indication that David was still single and living at home. Benjamin was still living at home, according to the list of 1840 settlers (here), but it seems likely that he was married (just-married Mennonites often lived with one set of parents until the birth of a child) and ready to establish his own household. I would take this as evidence that David and Helena were probably not yet married. Who knows, Helena’s family may not have even been in Waldheim by then.

There is no further Buller-relevant information to be gleaned from this record, as far as I can tell. However, the list deserves much more attention, since in it one finds the information that permits us to clarify, expand, and eventually rewrite the early history of Waldheim. We will come back to that … in time. First, I believe we should interrupt the Benjamin Buller series to go back to a question raised earlier about when Mennonite tenants paid taxes and when they did not.

Waldheim settlers 4

The 1839–1841 list that we introduced in the previous post (here) is important not just as evidence that our family—Grandpa Chris’s great-great-grandfather Benjamin and great-great-uncle Benjamin—were landowners in Waldheim, Molotschna colony, but also as an independent primary source that may confirm or clarify what the earlier sources revealed about the early Waldheim population.

We begin with an point made toward the end of the previous post, that the list of “Mennonites Assigned Wirtschaften in Waldheim in 1839–1841” (see original here) contains an error: Benjamin II and Benjmain III did not receive their land assignments in the same year, as the list states. We should keep this in mind as we compare the records discussed earlier (the 1839 and 1840 lists) with this one (the 1839–1841 list). The key information from the two sets is presented side by side below:

Surname	First Name	Settlement Year (1839 and 1840 Lists)	Settlement Year (1839–1841 List)
Schultz	Tobias		1841
Beier	Martin	1840	1840
Dirks	Heinrich	1839	1839
Wedel	Cornelius	1839	1839
Voth	Heinrich	1840	1840
Schmidt	Peter	1839	1839
Dirks	Tobias	1839	1839
Pankratz	Peter	1839	1839
Wedel	Cornelius	1839	1840
Wedel	Cornelius		1840
Schmidt	Peter	1840	1840
Pankratz	Jacob	1840	1840
Sperling	Heinrich	1840	1840
Nachtigal	David	1840	1840
Wedel	Johann	1840	1840
Nachtigal	Andreas	1840	1840
Richert	Jacob	1840	1840
Klassen	Jacob	1839	1840
Koehn	David	1839	1840
Buller	Benjamin	1839	1840
Dirks	David	1839	1840
Koehn	David	1839	1840
Ewert	Johann (Sr.)	1839	1840
Schmidt	Johann	1840	1840
Buller	Benjamin	1840	1840
Boese	Samuel	1840	1840
Unruh	Cornelius	1840	1840
Buller	Jacob	1840	1840
Wedel	Heinrich	1840	1840
Wedel	Benjamin	1839	1840
Unruh	Benjamin	1840
Schmidt	Andreas	1840

A few observations will highlight and explain the discrepancies.

1. The most significant difference (indicated by the use of bold red font) is the fact that the 1839–1841 list dates eight settlers who are on the 1839 list (translated by Steve Fast, “List of Mennonites Who Transferred from Volhynia to Waldheim and Were Assigned Land in the Year 1839”) to the year 1840. It is important to note in this context that the 1839 list translated by Steve Fast was actually written in 1839; the 1839–1841 list, however, was written in 1841 at the earliest (i.e., because it lists an event from 1841). Because the 1839 Fast list was written contemporaneously with the events that it records, we should trust its accuracy over the later (1839–1841) list.

2. Another interesting difference is the fact that two names on the 1839–1841 list do not appear at all on the 1839 and 1840 lists: Tobias Schultz and Cornelius Wedel (the third one listed). The reason for Schultz not appearing on the 1839 and 1840 lists is clear: he settled in Waldheim in 1841, according to the 1839–1841 list. It is reasonable to conclude that the same was true for Cornelius Wedel; once again the 1839–1841 list apparently has the wrong year of settlement listed.

3. Finally, two names that appear on the 1840 list (Benjamin Unruh and Andreas Schmidt) are not to be found on the 1839–1841 list. It is unclear why they are not listed, but the greater reliability of the 1840 list suggests that this is yet another error in the 1839–1841 list.

4. In spite of the discrepancies indicated above, we should not overlook the fact that twenty-eight of the thirty names listed on the 1839–1841 list also appear on the 1839 and 1840 lists. They two lists agree on the identities of nearly all the settlers from these years, although they disagree somewhat on the year of settlement. The point is: these independent sources largely confirm each other.

Beyond that, the evidence of the combined lists helps us to reconstruct the settlement of Waldheim over its first four years of existence.

1. We know that Waldheim had forty Wirtschaften when it was fully settled.

2. We also have evidence from multiple sources that state that eight settlers arrived the first year of Waldheim’s existence. (The Gemeindebericht dates this to 1836, but it seems better to date it to 1838, in keeping with the statement on the 1839 list of settlers.)

3. Subtracting eight 1838 settlers from the total forty settlers possible leaves thirty-two settler slots for the years following. Now it is time to count the number of 1839 settlers in column 3, followed by the number of 1840 settlers in column 3. The totals are thirteen for 1839 and seventeen for 1840. (We count the two final 1840 names even though they do not appear on the 1839–1841 list.)

4. Adding eight from 1838 and thirteen from 1839 and seventeen from 1840 gives us thirty-eight, two shy of our expected total. Those two were, it seems safe to conclude, the 1841 settlers Tobias Schultz and Cornelius Wedel discussed above.

It all adds up. Waldheim was settled in the following manner:

Year	Settlers
1838	8
1839	13
1840	17
1841	2

One last time (maybe) we must revisit the 1848 Gemeindebericht (community report), which states:

This village was founded in 1836. That year eight landowners settled in it, twelve in the year 1838, and twenty landowners in 1840.

The Gemeindebericht is mistaken. It should read:

This village was founded in 1838. That year eight landowners settled in it, thirteen in the year 1839, seventeen landowners in 1840, and two in 1841.

Because it is based on contemporaneous records (rather than fallible human memory a decade after the fact), the revised statement can be regarded as a documented, reliable statement of the first four years of Waldheim’s existence.

It is not, of course, the final word. There are more primary sources to explore, and the next one will reveal not only specific details about the Waldheim Bullers but also further history about Waldheim’s earliest years and first settlers.

Benjamin Buller 13

Although we will return to the 1840 list of settlers indirectly, as a matter of comparison with other records, for now we move on to the fifth primary source provided by Glenn Penner and Steve Fast (for the complete list and links to all the documents, see here).

By way of recap, we began with the 1833 list of Mennonites who wanted to leave Volhynia for the more promising fields of Molotschna colony (here, here,  here, here, and especially here). After that we explored a list of Waldheim settlers who were assigned a Wirtschaft in 1839 (here, here, here, and here), followed by a similar list for 1840 (here, here, and here).

In this post we turn to a new record that is apparently independent of the prior records but covers the same time and place: “Mennonites Assigned Wirtschaften in Waldheim in 1839–1841” (extracted by Glenn Penner; see here). The document is relatively simple: it lists thirty of Waldheim’s first settlers from the years 1839 through 1841. For ease of reference, I reproduce the entire list below:

Surname	First Name	Wirtschaft Number	Year Settled
Schultz	Tobias	1	1841
Beier	Martin	2	1840
Dirks	Heinrich	3	1839
Wedel	Cornelius	4	1839
Voth	Heinrich	5	1840
Schmidt	Peter	6	1839
Dirks	Tobias	7	1839
Pankratz	Peter	9	1839
Wedel	Cornelius	10	1840
Wedel	Cornelius	15	1840
Schmidt	Peter	17	1840
Pankratz	Jacob	18	1840
Sperling	Heinrich	19	1840
Nachtigal	David	20	1840
Wedel	Johann	21	1840
Nachtigal	Andreas	22	1840
Richert	Jacob	23	1840
Klassen	Jacob	24	1840
Koehn	David	25	1840
Buller	Benjamin	26	1840
Dirks	David	32	1840
Koehn	David	33	1840
Ewert	Johann (Sr.)	34	1840
Schmidt	Johann	35	1840
Buller	Benjamin	36	1840
Boese	Samuel	37	1840
Unruh	Cornelius	38	1840
Buller	Jacob	39	1840
Wedel	Heinrich	40	1840
Wedel	Benjamin	31	1840

For the moment, our main interest is in our immediate family members. We do not know who Jacob Buller, owner of Wirtschaft 39 was, but the other two Bullers on the list are, of course, Benjmain II and Benjamin III. It is impossible to determine, based on the information given, which Wirtschaft was assigned to father and which to son. All we can say is that our family owned Wirtschaften 26 and 36 by the end of 1841.

But look at the two Benjamin Buller entries again. Both Benjamins are said to have settled in 1840. However, we know better. Benjamin II settled in 1839, the year before his son received his land. This observation is important, since it highlights a problem with this record: many of the settlement years appear to be inaccurate.

We will return to that issue in the next post, but for now we close with the observation that none of the original eight 1838 settlers is listed. One wonders why the list begins with the second wave of settlers, the 1839 ones, and why only thirty settlers are listed in this record. We will keep in mind all of these questions when we return to this record in the following post.


Source

Mennonites Assigned Wirtschaften in Waldheim in 1839–1841. Peter J. Braun Archives, File 738. Extracted by Glenn Penner. Available online here.