GM 1: Benjamin Buller 1

Our GRANDMA-oriented series begins with our earliest known ancestor, Grandpa Chris’s great-great-grandfather: Benjamin Buller 1.

The graphic below represents Benjamin 1’s entry in GM.

The entry is blank because Benjamin 1 is not included in the database, probably with good reason: we have no direct evidence of any aspect of his life.

Name: The only evidence we have for Benjamin 1’s identity is his son’s full name. That is, the 1839 list of Mennonites who transferred from Volhynia to Waldheim in Molotschna colony identified the person we know as Benjamin 2 (above) as Benjamin Benjamin Buller (see here). This signals that Benjamin 2’s father was also named Benjamin. It is on this basis that we posit his existence and his name.

Birth: We can guess an approximate date of birth, but this is nothing more than a hypothesis. Note first that Benjamin 2 named his firstborn son Benjamin as well. If Benjamin 2’s father did the same (reasonable but by no means certain), then we might imagine that Benjamin 1 was born around 1765. The logic and math are simple: if Benjamin 2 was Benjamin 1’s firstborn son, and if Benjamin 2 was born when his father was in his early to mid-twenties, then one can subtract twenty to twenty-five years from Benjamin 2’s birth year (1789) to get Benjamin 1’s birth year: 1764–1769, rounded to approximately 1765 for the sake of simplicity.

Location: The evidence for Benjamin 1’s location is even sketchier. We can suggest that Benjamin 1 lived in Poland/Prussia, based on the census statement that his son Benjamin 2 “left the Kingdom of Prussia” and moved to Volhynia (see the Register of Mennonites in Rovno Region, Volhynia, 1819–1820). This is not proof per se, but it seems reasonable to think that twenty-eight-year-old Benjamin 2 lived in the vicinity of his family before emigrating to Volhynia.

As to  the specific part of Poland in which Benjamin lived (he lived before the partitions of Poland led to the area becoming part of Prussia), the Schwetz (Przechowka) area seems most likely. That is the one area in which our Bullers seemed most heavily congregated. It is possible the family lived in the Neumark area, since Jeziorka and Przechowka Mennonites moved there in 1765, but there is no mention of a Benjamin Buller in any of the Neumark records (see the May and June 2016 blog posts on Franztal, Brenkenhoffswalde, and Neumark).

We should not forget that there is no known listing of Benjamin 1 or his family in the Przechowka church book. So, although we are probably safe to locate Benjamin in the Schwetz area, we should not imagine him as part of that particular church. He was Mennonite, to be sure, but apparently not a member of that Mennonite church.

In the end, all we can say about Benjamin 1 with any certainty is that his name was Benjamin and that he fathered a son named Benjamin in the late 1780s. That is probably not enough for a listing in the GRANDMA databse, but perhaps it actually is. (This GM series is intended to lead to additions and corrections to GRANDMA, that is all up to the database’s managers.)