Buller Bicentennial

Only a few hours in the year remain, but we should not let this year pass without recognizing that 2017 is the two hundredth anniversary of a significant event in our family history. What happened in 1817? Perhaps the scan of a census entry below, families 16–18, will jog your memory.

Family 18 is our own Benjamin and Helena, with their sons Benjamin and David. Indeed, it was in 1817, two hundred years ago this year, that they emigrated from the Przechovka region to Volhynia, where they lived for the next two decades, until they moved to Waldheim in Molotschna colony. 

That move was a significant event in our family’s history, since for at least two centuries prior to that the Bullers had lived in Poland, which was eventually annexed into West Prussia. Poland, along the Vistula River, had been the only home that generations of Bullers had ever known, but Benjamin and family left that life behind to start a new one as tenants on the estate of a nobleman named Waclav Borejko, where the Benjamin Bullers and seventeen other Mennonite families founded a village named Zofyovka.

If you wish to revisit that part of our family story, you can read the following posts:

• His Name Was Benjamin
• Benjamin and Helena Buller
• Bullers in Rovno 1
• Bullers in Rovno 2

We will return to the Benjamin’s Father and Alexanderwohl series in the new year. In the meantime, Happy New Year! 

Searching for Benjamin’s Father 10

The last post in this series concluded that a child born to Benjamin Heinrch and Maricke Cornelsen Buller after their first seven children—all of whom are recorded in the church book—might have been omitted from the church records. This would explain Benjamin Benjamin’s absence from the Przechovka church book. Of course, the explanation is rather hollow if we cannot point to evidence that Benjamin Benjamin was alive in that area at the appropriate time. 

Glenn Penner believes that such evidence exists. He writes: “I also believe that Benjamin 2 [Benjamin Benjamin] was the 19-year-old Benjamin Buller found in Przechowko in 1810 (here). Again I see no other possibility.” The census that Glenn references is one that he and Esther Patkau transcribed. The webpage linked explains the background to the census:

The following is a transcription and partial translation of a census of Mennonites in the Schwetz region of West Prussia for the year 1810. The Mennonite families covered in this census are almost exclusively from the Przechovka congregation. The majority of this group moved to the Molotschna Colony in Russia, forming the Alexanderwohl congregation. This census is particularly important in that it complements the Alexanderwohl church records and provides information that is not found in the church records. It also contains a considerable amount of information not in the current version of the Grandma database.

Before looking at the details of the census, we should highlight several statements in this description. First, the census was taken in 1810; if Benjamin Benjamin was born around 1789 (currently our best guess), he would have been twenty-one or so. Second, the Mennonite families in this census are “almost exclusively from the Przechovka congregation.” In other words, there is a high probability that anyone listed on this census was a member of that congregation. Third, the census provides some information that is not included in the church book. This reinforces our impression from the previous post, namely, that absence from the church book cannot be used as proof of absence from the church itself.

The census lists fourteen Bullers, grouped into two families and one single Buller living with another family. The first family was headed by Jacob Buller, who was married at that time to Anna Pankratz (his second wife). In addition to her two children by her first marriage, the family included Anna, Heinrich, Elisabeth, Maria, Jacob, and Sara. The second family was headed by another Jacob Buller, who was married to Maria Schmiten; they had three daughters living at that time: Maria, Anna, and Helena. The two families totaled thirteen Bullers; only one Buller remains.

The remaining Buller is listed as a nineteen-year-old servant in the family of Benjamin Wedel, who at that time was an elder, the highest leadership position in the congregation. This Buller’s name was, of course, also Benjamin. An age of nineteen would place his year of birth in 1791 or thereabouts, close enough to our current estimate of 1789 for Benjamin Benjamin to be considered a reasonable match.

To be clear, the census does not identify Benjamin’s father’s name, so we cannot know with certainty that this is Benjamin Benjamin. However, between 1769 and 1808, a forty-year period, we have documentary evidence for only three Benjamin Bullers: one born circa 1789 (our Benjamin Benjamin), one born in 1804, and one born in 1806 in Brenkenhoffswalde, in the Neumark region (see here). There may have been still other Benjamin Bullers during that time, but we have no evidence that there were, and it thus seems more than reasonable to think that the Benjamin Buller listed in the 1810 census was, in fact, Benjamin Benjamin Buller, our earliest known ancestor—at least for now.

The series is not yet over, since we need to take the time to put all the pieces of this puzzle together into a coherent picture. But first we will reflect a little on Benjamin’s status as a servant in another family’s home. How common was this in the 1810 Schwetz area, and what, if anything, does it reveal about Benjamin Buller’s life?

Alexanderwohl 2

The previous post surveyed the layout of Alexanderwohl, modern Svitle, by means of an 1874 map and a modern satellite photo. The next few posts in this series will narrow our focus to individual sites within Alexanderwohl, in order to expand our familiarity with this Mennonite village. We begin with the Alexanderwohl school.

According to the 1874 map, the school was located in the plot across from where the church had been built. Rudy P. Friesen agrees: “The village school was located at the centre of the village, parallel to the street and directly across from the church” (1996, 210). That description is consistent with what we saw earlier on the map.

However, closer examination of the satellite photo, and comparison to Friesen’s description and the map, raises a question. According to Friesen and the map, the school was apparently located below the letter a in the photograph below, but the structure below the letter b seems more consistent with the shape of a school and with the description of the school as being parallel to the street. So where was the school located? Although the map and Friesen’s account might seem to favor the a location, the b site appears to be the more likely.

This is not to call into question Friesen’s expertise on the schoolhouse. In fact, Friesen identified the building on location during one of his several tours of Molotschna. He knows which building is the old schoolhouse; this is a matter of locating in the satellite photo the building that he identified. He describes the building as follows:  

The exterior walls were built of brick with modest ornamentation. The front entrance faced the street. The building is still in use today. The walls have been plastered and the roof has been replaced with corrugated cement-asbestos. (1996, 210)

Friesen’s comment about the front of the school facing the street supports the idea that the structure under the letter is the old schoolhouse. His photographs of the schoolhouse point in the same direction.

The top photo shows the front and the west (left) end of the structure. Notice that both Friesen photo and the b structure in the satellite photo have the same extension to the back (away from the street). This would seem to confirm that, although the school was across from the church, it was not directly across from the church building. 

Google Earth offers one last perspective that presumably settles the matter. The photo is taken from the north. The building in the foreground and parallel to the street is the schoolhouse; the building across the street in the background is on the site of the church. 

We still do not know when the school was built, but at least we are able to put a place with a name. We will do the same in the next post, as we learn all that we can about the Alexanderwohl Mennonite church.

Work Cited

Friesen, Rudy P., with Sergey Shmakin. 1996. Into the Past: Buildings of the Mennonite Commonwealth. Winnepeg: Raduga.

Searching for Benjamin’s Father 9

At long last we arrive at the crux of the matter. Glenn Penner’s suggestion encompasses many details (for the full version, see here), each of which deserved attention. Thus far we have confirmed every one. The two Benjamin Bullers listed in the GRANDMA database (60393 and 32139) are indeed the same individual, who had at least five daughters and two sons. We discovered further that by 1815, while still in Poland/West Prussia, Benjamin had buried his wife, both sons, and one daughter. Five years later Benjamin, his daughter Trincke/Katharina and her husband Johann Ratzlaff, and nearly all the rest of the Przechovka Mennonite church emigrated to Molotschna, where they founded the village Alexanderwohl. There Benjamin lived in Wirtschaft 16 with Johann and Katharina, until he died in 1830.

All that is known with a good deal of certainty. Still, none of it proves that Benjamin Heinrich Buller was the father of Benjamin Benjamin Buller, at present our earliest known ancestor. That possibility remains to be examined, as we will do over the next several posts. We begin with a statement of the hypothesis as I understand it.

The father of David Buller (father of Peter D, father of Peter P, and so on) was named Benjamin Benjamin, his middle name indicating that his father was also named Benjamin. We have documented that fact on more than one occasion. Consequently, our task is to find a Buller named Benjamin who was associated with the Przechovka church (as were, we believe, all Mennonite Bullers) who would have had children at the time when Benjamin Benjamin was born, that is, around 1789. Glenn’s hypothesis is that we have evidence for only one Benjamin Buller who fits every criterion: Benjamin Heinrich Buller.

We already know that we have no positive evidence, no documentary proof, that this hypothesis is true. Consequently, instead of seeking to prove the hypothesis, we should try to disprove it by raising every possible objection against it. If, in the end, the hypothesis still stands, then we may conclude, until evidence demonstrates otherwise, that the hypothesis is the most likely explanation of all the facts at hand.

With all that as background, we begin with the strongest piece of evidence against the hypothesis: Benjamin Benjamin Buller is absent from the Przechovka church book (PCB). Why is this important? Seven of Benjamin Heinrich and Maricke Cornelsen Buller’s children are listed in the PCB, so one would expect any other children born to the couple also to be registered in the book. The fact that Benjamin is not listed at all requires some explanation.

The organization of the PCB may well provide one clue. The book begins by listing and describing briefly the families of the church, then proceeds to list the known members of each family as a group. Thus the Ratzlaff family members extend from entry 23 through 192, at which point the Wedel family members are listed as entries 193–287. After that the family listings proceed alphabetically from Becker, Buller, and Cornels through Thoms, Unrau, and Voht (yes, that is how it is spelled). Looking through all the family listings, most of the latest years of birth are 1783 or 1784, although a few 1788 entries appear. All this makes sense, given what we know about the origin of the PCB: in 1784 Jacob Wedel compiled, as best as he could, the names of all the members of the church from its beginning through to his day. All the names were grouped, of course, by family.

With only a few exceptions, children born after that time were listed in the second half of the book one after another by date, that is, not by family. So, for example, the children born in 1787 extend from entry 1238 through entry 1261, with 1788 spanning 1262 to 1277; the 1789 births are found in entries 1278–1293, those for 1790 in 1294–1308.

However, the listing of births is not as tidy as this description makes it sound. In fact, the listings are fairly jumbled in some cases. For example, the second section of the book, after the family groups, begins with two 1794 births, followed by ten 1795 births, then eight 1796 births, fifteen 1797 births, and two 1800 births. Then the book shifts to several small family groups before taking up the births by year again, except that entries 1196–1204 present births between 1760 and 1784 in no particular order. The listing then picks up with 1785 and proceeds in an orderly fashion through 1794, skips 1795–1796, mixes 1798 and 1797, then moves forward systematically year by year through 1818.

What relevance does this potentially tedious description of the PCB have for the question at hand? As we noted in an earlier post, Benjamin Heinrich’s first five children, born between 1775 and 1783, were listed in the family-group section (see photograph above); the final two children recorded were born in 1784 and 1788, respectively, that is, too late to be included in the family group. They were thus listed in the second section, as entries 1198 and 1264.

If Benjamin Benjamin was born in 1789 or thereabouts (as our records for him imply), why is he not listed in the second section as well? We would expect to find him in the upper 1200s or lower 1300s, but he appears neither there nor anywhere in the PCB.

The explanation for this is probably due to the periodically haphazard nature of the church’s record keeping. We should not think of the list as a precise and rigidly ordered account of all the births that took place in the church. The entries for 1789 offer a good example of the dynamics at play. The dates of birth for that year are listed below:

• February 3
• February 23
• February 8
• April 1
• April 28
• March 14
• July 7
• August 4
• May 28
• August 16
• March 27
• May 2
• September 29
• October 3
• November 5
• December 18

It appears that entries were made as information was provided to the record keeper, which led to him list, for example, an August birth followed by a May birth followed by another August one and then a March birth, followed by an earlier May birth. In other words, the process for recording births was rather loose, with the record keeper presumably adding information when he was told to do so. If parents forgot to tell him of a birth right away, he did not enter a record until they did so. If they neglected to tell him at all, presumably the birth went unrecorded.

The haphazard nature of the process could explain Benjamin Benjamin’s absence from the church book. In fact, we have another example close at hand that supports this theory. An earlier post in this series told how Johann Ratzlaff and his wife Katharina Buller emigrated to Molotschna as part of the Przechovka church. The passport identified Johann as hailing from Przechovka, and we know that Katharina/Trincke was a member of that church (entry 371). In short, there is little doubt that Johann was a member of the church, as was his father Peter Ratzlaff. Nevertheless, Johann Ratzlaff is never listed in the PCB; his birth, baptism, and marriage to church member Katharina are not recorded or even hinted at in the church book.

I have little doubt that we could multiply similar instances of church members who do not appear in the church book. The cause of this would make for an interesting study all on its own, but the reality seems inescapable: some members of the Przechovka church are never listed in the church book.

All that to say: it is feasible that Benjamin Heinrch and Maricke Cornelsen Buller had another child who was born after all the rest (i.e., after 1788) but who for some reason was not recorded in the church book: Benjamin Benjamin. The absence of this child from the church book is disappointing but not decisive. Benjamin Benjamin may well have been born into the church circa 1789; the next post in this series will consider another piece of evidence that implies that, in fact, he was.

Alexanderwohl 1

Whether or not Benjamin Heinrich Buller stands in our direct family line, the Molotschna village in which he lived—Alexanderwohl—is of central importance to the Russian phase of the larger Buller family history. It was in Alexanderwohl, for example, that Bullers first lived in Molotschna (as far as we know), and it was in Alexanderwohl that the majority of Bullers lived during the first half-century of the colony’s existence. Consequently, Alexanderwohl warrants attention alongside the Benjamin Buller series (which we will continue).

We begin with geography, with a satellite photo that helps us place Alexanderwohl in relation to other villages that we have encountered.

The modern village names are too small to read, but only three need to be highlighted (the numbers below correspond to those on the map):

1. modern Svitle = Mennonite Alexanderwohl
2. modern Vladivka = Mennonite Waldheim
3. modern Hrushivka = Mennonite Alexanderkrone

Waldheim, which was established seventeen years after Alexanderwohl and counted Benjamin Benjamin and David Benjamin Buller among its early residents, was located roughly 8 miles east of Alexanderwohl. Alexanderkrone, where Peter D and family lived before moving less than a mile west to Kleefeld (no longer extant), was roughly 7 miles south of Alexanderwohl. Clearly, the three main villages with which our family was associated were relatively close.

With a clearer sense of where Alexanderwohl fits within the broader context, we are ready to zoom in on the village itself. The following map shows the layout of Alexanderwohl around 1874. The names of the plot owners do not interest us at this point, some fifty years after the village was founded, but the layout itself does, since the division into Wirtschaften likely remained unaltered.

The extension of the village around a bend to the west is probably a somewhat later development and not part of the original settlement. An aerial photo of Svitle/Alexanderwohl today reveals that the modern village retains its former shape.

The original part of Alexanderwohl is of greatest interest, so we will focus—visually and otherwise—on that.

The original village was laid out, as one can see, as a series of thirty numbered plots; the two plots at the east end are unnumbered in this map. The numbering begins at the northwest corner and proceeds east through number 15, then crosses the center street to the south and picks up with 16 on the east end and proceeds west through number 30 on the west. One element of the numbering is uncertain at this point: the 1835 census we have referenced lists plots 1–32 for Alexanderwohl, so clearly by that time there were thirty-two plots, not merely thirty. Presumably the two unnumbered plots on the east were counted in 1835, but how they were numbered remains unknown. This may affect where we locate Benjamin in Alexanderwohl (below).

Several landmarks deserve mention. The red number 2 marks the site of the school in the center of the village, where many Molotschna schools were located. I have not yet discovered when the school was built, but it was probably early in Alexanderwohl’s history, since the school building doubled as the congregational meeting house until a church building (number 4) was constructed in the 1860s.

Note that Alexanderwohl had both an old (5) and a newer (6) cemetery. Presumably the old one served the needs of the early settlers, but as time went on and generations passed, a larger area was set aside closer to the location of the new church building.

Finally, the plot that Johann and Katharina Ratzlaff owned and at which Benjamin Heinrich Buller lived was Alexanderwohl 16 (number 3 above). If the numbers on the 1874 map are same as the plot assignments of 1835 village, then we know where Benjamin lived. However, it is possible (though not likely, in my view) that the plot numbering changed over those four decades, in which case we do not know exactly where Benjamin spent his final years.

Assuming that Alexanderwohl 16 in Benjamin’s day was located in the same place as on the map, we can spot roughly, if not exactly, where Johann, Katharina, and Benjamin lived on a satellite photo of the east end of Svitle.

The numbering is the same in the photo as in the map, so the church is on the left (4), and eight plots to the right (east) is the likely site of Alexanderwohl 16, where we think the final home of Benjamin Heinrich Buller was located. 

We are not yet finished with Alexanderwohl or with satellite photos of its modern equivalent Svitle. The next post in this series will explore how a bird’s-eye view might expand and even clarify our understanding of a significant site in this Molotschna village. 

Map Credit

The map of Alexanderwohl is taken from Duerksen and Duerksen 1987, 25. The map itself offers further credit as follows: Richard H. Schmidt, 1981. Adapted from a sketch by Peter Boase, born in Alexanderwohl in 1863, and a map by Abraham Warkentine, teacher in the village school in 1912. Prepared in consultation with Bernhard Sawatzky, Gerhard G. Baergen and Franz Klassen, all thoroughly acquainted with the Alexanderwohl village.

Work Cited

Duerksen, Velda Richert, and Jacob A. Duerksen, trans. 1987. Church Book of the Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church in the Molotschna Colony of South Russia. Translation of the Kirchen Buch der Gemeinde zu Alexanderwohl. Goessel, KS: Mennonite Immigrant Historical Foundation.

Searching for Benjamin’s Father 8

We are nearly ready to take up the question whether Benjamin Heinrich Buller was the father of our own Benjamin Benjamin Buller, who was the father of David, the father of Peter D, the father of Peter P, the father of Grandpa Chris. Before we do so, however, we have a few more details to cover.

We begin with a portion of Glenn Penner’s suggestion about Benjamin (see here for the full version):

I believe that not long after Benjamin 2 moved to Volhynia, his father Benjamin 1  [Heinrich] (who would have been a widower of about 70 or more years) left for South Russia with his daughter Catharina and her husband Johann Ratzlaff (and the majority of the Przechowka congregation).

The part we want to highlight from this is the mention of Benjamin Heinrich being with his daughter Katharina (aka Trincke) and her husband Johann Ratzlaff. According to the GRANDMA database, Johann and Katharina were recorded as living at Alexanderwohl 16 in the 1835 census, the same plot at which we found Benjamin in the previous post in this series. 

As noted earlier, the 1835 census also reports that Benjamin died in 1830. This raises the question, of course, whether they lived with Benjamin or he with them prior to his death. Asked more simply: Who owned Alexanderwohl 16: Benjamin or Johann and Katharina? A short detour will lead us to a likely answer.

It is reasonable to think that Benjamin, Katharina, and Johann all emigrated to Alexanderwohl at the same time, but we cannot document that and thus do not know it to be true. In fact, the Przechovka church members populated Alexanderwohl over the course of several years, 1821–1824, although by far the largest number arrived that first year, leaving in 1820 and founding the village in 1821.

We believe that Johann and Katharina were part of the first group. According to Peter Rempel, the couple received their visa from the Russian General Consulate in Danzig. He translates the record entry as follows:

Johann Ratzlaff from Przechowko, his wife Katharina 45 (b. ca. 1775). Passport from Marienwerder issued on July 11, 1820. (2007, 173)

Granted, we cannot be certain that this couple is Benjamin’s daughter and her husband, although the GRANDMA database knows of no other possibilities. Given the location from which they left, the year of migration, and the names of the husband and wife, it is highly likely that this is who we think it is.

Assuming that to be true, it is important to note that Benjamin is not listed, which might imply that he was traveling separately, perhaps even at a completely different time. Another record provides more detail but leaves the same impression. This entry is appears in a record of households founded in Russia in 1820:

Johann Ratzlaff…, whose family consists of 1 male and 1 female. Settled in Russia in the year 1820. They had no cash. They brought possessions valued at 401 rubles, 5 kopeks, 1 wagon, 1 horse, 2 head of cattle; wagon, horse or head of cattle cost 264 rubles. The local administration suggested providing financial aid for the purchase of 1 horse at a sum of 50 rubles, and also for building a house and establishing the household, at a sum of 589 rubles. (2007, 176)

Benjamin is not listed or counted here; furthermore, he does not appear in any similar records in the Rempel book. This absence is probably insignificant, apart from the fact that it leaves us in the dark as to when Benjamin emigrated. Odds are that he was a member of the large church migration, not the smaller groups of families that followed in the years after.

So much for what we do not know. What can we know? There is an important clue in the second entry above that answers the question with which we began. Johann received financial aid to purchase a second horse “and also for building a house and establishing the household.” This implies rather strongly that Alexanderwohl 16 was not Benjamin’s plot or house but rather Johann and Katharina’s. If they had not been plot owners, they would not have received a government loan to build a house.

Little by little we have added details to Benjamin’s life from beginning to end. On the basis of this latest evidence, we know not only that he died in 1830 but also that he spent the last decade of his life in the home of his daughter Katharina and her husband Johann Ratzlaff. But where in Alexanderwohl was that home? The next post will answer that question with surprising specificity, after which we will finally (!) turn to the question about a possible connection between Benjamin Heinrich and our own Benjamin Benjamin, father of David.   

Work Cited

Rempel. Peter. 2007. Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828. Edited by Alfred H. Redekopp and Richard D. Thiessen. Winnepeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Bullers in Alexanderwohl

The listing of male Bullers who were heads of households in the 1835 census is worth a second look. In time we will likely explore further each individual listed, but for now it will suffice to examine all those who did not live in the village Alexanderwohl. I repeat the list of Bullers for easy reference. 

Buller, Abram Abram	(b. ca. –)	Prangenau	14
Buller, Benjamin Benjamin	(b. ca. –)	Alexanderwohl	16
Buller, David David	(b. ca.1812)	Alexanderwohl	1
Buller, Heinrich Jakob	(b. ca.1787)	Alexanderwohl	26
Buller, Heinrich Peter	(b. ca.1811)	Alexanderwohl	30
Buller, Jakob Jakob	(b. ca.1795)	Franztal	5
Buller, Jakob Jakob	(b. ca.1795)	Alexanderwohl	15
Buller, Jakob Peter	(b. ca.1758)	Alexanderwohl	9
Buller, Jakob Wilhelm	(b. ca.1809)	Lindenau	23
Buller, Peter David	(b. ca.1809)	Liebenau	3
Buller, Peter David	(b. ca.1809)	Alexanderwohl	1
Buller, Peter Peter	(b. ca.1807)	Alexanderwohl	30
Buller, Wilhelm Abram	(b. ca. 1766)	Lindenau	23

1. Abram Abram Buller was actually Abraham Abraham Buhler (GM 102468), who had moved to Molotschna from Chortitza, the Old Colony. His family was not related to ours and previously lived in Tiegenhof, which was 20 miles east of Gdansk (Danzig) in the Vistula Delta area.

2. The two Jakob Jakob Buller listings are apparently the same person (5587). According to the notes in GRANDMA, “In the 1835 census, he is listed at Alexanderwohl #15, and is said to have come from Franzthal, Molotschna in 1822. The entry for Franzthal #5 says he moved away from there in 1822.” Before that he was part of the Przechovka church, so he was no doubt part of our larger family. He was the son of Jacob Buller, who was the son of Peter Buller, who was the son of George Buller, who was the son of George Buller and Dina Thoms (see the Buller chart here).

3. The two persons from Lindenau are father and son, but their last name is more properly spelled Buhler: Wilhelm Abraham was the father (44021), Jakob Wilhelm the son (101065). Like Abraham Buhler, they came from the Tiegenhof area. They were not related to our family.

4. Peter David Buller (32781) is listed twice, for a reason similar to Jakob Jakob: he had moved from one Molotschna village (Alexanderwohl) to another (Liebenau). Peter David was actually Benjamin Heinrich Buller’s grandson. If you recall (see the David paragraph here), Benjamin’s son David died in 1813, and his widow remarried Martin David Cornelsen, and they moved to Alexanderwohl in 1820 with the rest of the Przechovka church. This explains Peter David appearing in Alexanderwohl in the 1835 census. GRANDMA explains further that “that he moved away from there in 1830. He is listed at Liebenau #3, where it says he came to Russia in 1820.” His move to Lindenau appears to have been related to his marriage to the widow Maria Schellenberg Regier, who lived in that village.

What do we learn from this simple exercise? First, the thirteen names listed represent eleven distinct persons; two sets of names are duplicates. Second, of the eleven individuals listed, three are not part of our family line; their names are more commonly spelled Buhler, and they emigrated to Russia from the northern part of Poland. 

This leaves eight Bullers listed who were part of our broader family: interestingly, all eight currently lived or had previously lived in Alexanderwohl. The connection between our family and the Przechovka church that established that village could not be clearer. Of course, the picture would soon change, as our own ancestor Benjamin Benjamin and his family, including son David, would move to Waldheim within a few years, and other Bullers would likewise move to Molotschna and settle in villages other than Alexanderwohl. Nevertheless, the concentration of Bullers around Alexanderwohl is a good reminder of our origins in the Przechovka church and thus our relationship to all of the Bullers who originated there.

Searching for Benjamin’s Father 7

Thus far we have learned a considerable amount of information about Benjamin Heinrich Buller. We know that he was probably born in the mid-1750s, was baptized in the Przechovka Mennonite church on 31 August 1772, married Maricke Cornelsen on 30 June 1774, and raised a family with her in the village of Klein Konopath of at least five daughters and two sons. We also confirmed Glenn Penner’s suggestion that two Benjamin Bullers listed in the GRANDMA database (60393 and 32139) are, in fact the same person—Benjamin Heinrich Buller. We then discovered that by 1815 Benjamin had buried his wife Maricke, two sons, and one daughter. Finally, most recently we came to realize that Benjamin was on the low end of land-owning Mennonites in Deutsch Konopath, with only 4 acres that he could call his own (compared with an average of 30.6 acres).

What we have not yet considered is whether Benjamin Heinrich Buller is in our direct family line. That is the question of real interest. We will soon take up that question, but first we should trace more of Benjamin’s life, to the extent that we are able.

Glenn Penner’s earlier statement (here) mentions that Benjamin Heinrich, Glenn believes, “left for South Russia with his daughter Catharina and her husband Johann Ratzlaff (and the majority of the Przechowka congregation).” What is the basis of this suggestion? Several listings within the 1835 Molotschna census. We looked briefly at that census three years ago (here), but it deserves a closer examination. (For additional background to the Russian census, see the post by Steve Fast on his blog Mennonite Genealogy Forum  here.)

Although nothing beats looking at the original records, for now we can rely on several indexes that Richard D. Thiessen has posted online. The first (here) lists all the Mennonite “male household heads, married males, adopted males, males accepted into households, and step-sons” in alphabetical order by last name. Thirteen Bullers are identified:

Buller, Abram Abram	(b. ca. –)	Prangenau	14
Buller, Benjamin Benjamin	(b. ca. –)	Alexanderwohl	16
Buller, David David	(b. ca.1812)	Alexanderwohl	1
Buller, Heinrich Jakob	(b. ca.1787)	Alexanderwohl	26
Buller, Heinrich Peter	(b. ca.1811)	Alexanderwohl	30
Buller, Jakob Jakob	(b. ca.1795)	Franztal	5
Buller, Jakob Jakob	(b. ca.1795)	Alexanderwohl	15
Buller, Jakob Peter	(b. ca.1758)	Alexanderwohl	9
Buller, Jakob Wilhelm	(b. ca.1809)	Lindenau	23
Buller, Peter David	(b. ca.1809)	Liebenau	3
Buller, Peter David	(b. ca.1809)	Alexanderwohl	1
Buller, Peter Peter	(b. ca.1807)	Alexanderwohl	30
Buller, Wilhelm Abram	(b. ca. 1766)	Lindenau	23

Modern Svetloye; formerly Alexanderwohl.

Before we focus on the Buller of most interest to us, two things are worthy of note. First, eight of the thirteen lived in Alexanderwohl, which was the Molotschna village settled by the members of the Przechovka church who emigrated to Molotschna. Given the close association of Bullers with that church in Poland/West Prussia, it is not surprising to see a concentration of Bullers in the Molotschna village where the church members settled.

Second, one should note that some of the household heads occupied the same Wirtschaft (plot). So, for example, David David and Peter David both inhabited Alexanderwohl number 1; likewise, Peter Peter and Heinrich Peter both lived in Alexanderwohl 30, and Peter David and Wilhelm Abram both lived in Lindenau 23. This will become significant for our purposes a little later on.

Of course, given the title of this series, our interest lies with the Buller named Benjamin, who lived at Alexanderwohl 16. Attentive readers will notice immediately that his middle name is incorrect; we have been following the life of Benjamin Heinrich Buller, not Benjamin Benjamin Buller. The only Benjamin Benjamin we have encountered thus far is from the next generation (David Buller’s father) and the one after that (David Buller’s older brother). The person living at Alexanderwohl 16 cannot be either of those, and we simply know of no other Benjamin Benjamin Buller who might have lived in Alexanderwohl at this time.

Before we go further we need to add one more piece of information to the mix. According to the 1835 census (as recorded in the GRANDMA database), Benjamin Benjamin died in 1830, so he was not alive when the census was taken. Nevertheless, the 1835 census included information about him, presumably to update the government’s records, since it was known that he had moved to New Russia in 1820.

We have previously concluded that Benjamin Benjamin (GM 60393) is the same person as Benjamin Heinrich (GM 32139), but how can two men with different middle names be the same person? Glenn Penner explains as follows:

The only inconsistency here is that 60393 is given the patronymic Benjamin in the 1835 census and 32139 is known to be the son of Heinrich Buller. This ties in with some work I have been doing on the 1835 census. I have found that many of the men who died between the 1816 and 1835 censuses were given the same patronymic as their first names in the 1835 census and that some of these are incorrect. This is particularly true for those men who were older when they died (their fathers would have died in Prussia and their children never knew these grandfathers). This would be the case for Benjamin 1. It is likely that none of his survivors in Alexanderwohl knew the name of Benjamin 1’s father. It seems to me that whenever this was the case for the 1835 census the census taker simply repeated the deceased man’s name as the middle name patronymic.

To state matters simply, whenever family members did not know the name of the father of a deceased male such as Benjamin, the census taker repeated that male’s first name as his middle name. In this case, daughter Katharina (aka Trincke) may have never known her grandfather Heinrich Buller—he may well have been deceased when she was born, although we cannot say that for certain—which makes it reasonable to think that she could not supply his name. Also possible is that the census taker spoke not with her but with her husband Johann Ratzlaff, who certainly would not have known the name of his grandfather-in-law.

Although certainty may never be within our grasp, Glenn’s explanation makes the best sense of this apparently contradictory information. The earlier identification of the two Benjamin Bullers as the same person stands, and we can proceed under that assumption until other evidence proves decisively otherwise. Thus we can safely say that, born in the area of Jeziorka (we think) in the mid-1750s, Benjamin Heinrich Buller lived into his mid-seventies before passing away in the village of Alexanderwohl in the year 1830.

One more piece of documentary evidence merits examination before we turn seriously to the question of whether Benjamin Heinrich Buller stands in our direct family line. That document, of course, will be the topic of the following post.

Searching for Benjamin’s Father 6

Before going further down the Benjamin line, we pause briefly to add some depth to our portrait of Benjamin himself. We can, using the 1789 census of land-owning Mennonites, gain some sense of where Benjamin ranked within his immediate community. Our approach will be simple: we will order the Mennonite landowners in Benjamin’s village by amount of land owned as a means of comparing Benjamin’s land holdings with those closest to him.

Of course, we should note a few caveats. First, only Mennonites who owned land are listed; this is not a ranking of members of the total Mennonite community, since other Mennonites no doubt earned a living through means other than farming. Second, the census lists only Mennonites who owned land, not Lutheran or Catholic residents of Benjamin’s village who likewise owned land. Third, the farmers listed below may have owned some land and rented other land, so we cannot regard the ordering as the final word on how much land any individual listed actually farmed. The ordering is simply a relative ranking of likely wealth as measured in terms of land ownership.

With all those caveats in mind, we are ready to present the ordered list of Mennonite landowners in the village Deutsch Konopath (both greater and lesser) of the district Schwetz. The map below shows that Deutsch Konopath was located just west of Wintersdorf, that is, Przechovka. In all likelihood, then, the Mennonites listed along with Benjmanin were fellow members of the Przechovka church. (It might be interesting to see how many can be identified in the church book.)

The Mennonites listed are numbered in the census, but the significance of the numbers is not obvious and is probably merely a record-keeping device. The key data in the list are the totals of land owned, in Hufen, Morgen, and Ruten listed in the three columns. According to Adalbert Goertz (here), who transcribed this census, these measures of areas correspond to our own system as follows:

• 1 Hufen = ca. 41 acres
• 1 Hufen = 30 Morgen, so 1 Morgen = ca. 1.4 acres
• 1 Morgen = 300 Ruten (square rods)

The following table ranks the Mennonite landowners from Deutsch Konopath in order from greatest to least amount of land owned. The first column provides the person’s number from the list, followed by the name of the landowner, then number of Hufen, Morgen, and Ruten owned in three columns; the last column is the equivalent of the land owned in acres (rounded).

3	Ratzlaw, Johan	2	0	0	82
4	Tessmann, Jacob	1	14	0	61
1	Wedel, Cornelius	1	8	0	52
2	Tessmann, Peter	1	4	0	47
8	Panckau, Andr.	1	0	0	41
9	Schmidt, Jacob	0	26	0	36
5	Ratzlaw, Tobias	0	25	0	35
10	Becker, Johann	0	20	0	28
7	Schmidt, Peter	0	19	0	27
6	Buller, Peter	0	12	0	17
15	Ratzlaw, Adam	0	8	0	11
11	Pankratz, Jacob	0	6	0	8
12	Funck, Peter	0	6	0	8
13	Buller, Benjamin	0	3	0	4
14	Buller, Peter	0	2	150	2

Clearly, Benjamin was not one of the wealthiest Mennonite landowners in Deutsch Konopath; in fact, quite the opposite. A quick comparison with the other listings for the Schwetz district only reinforces the picture revealed in the table above. Most Mennonite landowners in the area had far more land than Benjamin; only a few owned as little as he did, although the two other Bullers of Deutsch Konopath were in the bottom six out of fifteen as well. 

There are no great revelations here, but we do gain some insight into Benjamin Buller’s situation. He was a farmer, to be sure, but he apparently survived by renting most of the land from which he eked out a living. By 1789 he had seven children, all of them living at home. Life was likely difficult and the future uncertain, and Benjamin and his family (our family?) survived and made it all the way to Molotschna.  

Searching for Benjamin’s Father 5

Post 4 in this series examined Benjamin Heinrich Buller’s nuclear family in greater detail, with a focus on the five daughters and two sons of Benjamin and Maricke Cornelsen Buller listed in the Przechovka church book: Maricke, Heinrich, Ancke, David, Trincke, Efcke, and Elizabeth. This post first introduces one more piece of evidence concerning Benjamin, then takes a step back and reflects on the state of the family in the decade before the entire Przechovka church moved to Alexanderwohl village in Molotschna colony.

The 1789 Census

We return first to part of Glenn Penner’s statement about the identity of Benjamin Buller 1, father of Benjamin Buller 2, father of David, father of Peter D, and so on. The second paragraph of Glenn’s full explanation (here) reads:

I also believe that Benjamin 1 was the Benjamin Buller found in Deutsch Konopath in the 1789 census of Mennonite land owners in West Prussia. Note that 32139 was married in Deutsch Konopath in 1774.

The census to which Glenn is referring has been transcribed here; you can find the Benjamin listed by searching for “Buller, Benja.” (ca. a fourth of the way down the page). What we learn from that census is that in 1789 a Benjamin Buller who resided in Deutsch Konopath owned 3 Morgen of land (ca. 4.2 acres). Of course, from our last post we know that Benjamin Heinrich Buller lived in Deutsch Konopath, Klein (lesser) Konopath, to be exact, where his seven named children were born between 1775 and 1788.

If this discussion of a 1789 census of land-owning Mennonites feels a little familiar, there is good reason: Buller Time addressed it in some depth in early 2016 (here). That post goes into much greater detail about the historical context and purpose of the census. It also identifies all the other Bullers who appear on the list.

Suffice it to say that Glenn is undoubtedly correct to link the Benjamin on the 1789 census with the Benjamin Heinrich Buller listed in the Przechovka church book. Thus far his hypothesis has held up nicely. There are, of course, more pieces of the puzzle to examine, but so far so good. 

Benjamin Buller in 1815 

Having examined the details of Benjamin’s family in the previous post, we need to step back and take in the bigger picture. What did the family look like in the decade prior to the emigration of the church to Molotschna? We begin by surveying the seven children:

1.  Maricke: born 1775, married Peter Nachtigal in 1796


2.  Heinrich: born 1777, married a Lutheran, died in 1807


3.  Ancke: born 1779, married Peter Becker in 1811


4.  David: born 1780, married Anna Unrau in 1808, died 1813


5.  Trincke: born 1783, married Johann Peter Ratzlaff at some point


6.  Efcke: born 1784, married Peter Schmidt in 1808


7.  Elizabeth: born 1788, died in 1807

By 1815, of the five daughters born to Benjamin and his wife Maricke Cornelsen, four were married and one was deceased. Both sons born to the couple had passed away at a relatively young age. But that is not all.

As noted earlier, Benjamin’s wife Maricke is entry 409 in the Przechovka church book. The two sides of her entry in that book (left-hand page and right-hand page) are shown below.

According to the first extract, Maricke (the middle line) was born in 1753, baptized at age fifteen in 1768, and married to 352 (Benjamin Buller) in an unspecified year (we know it was 1774 from his entry). The second extract is our primary concern. The right-hand column records the date of death, which was 15 September 1807—the same year that son Heinrich and daughter Elizabeth also passed away.

One more extract from the church book will complete the picture.

Pictured above is the right-hand page for number 352, Benjamin Heinrich Buller. One might wonder why a blank page is worth showing. There are actually three groups of columns on right-hand pages. The first group of columns provides space for recording a second marriage, since the early death of a spouse was so frequent. In fact, young adult mortality was so common that the church book provided a second group of columns for the recording of third marriages. The fact that the entire right-hand page for Benjamin Buller is blank indicates that during the time of the Przechovka church book (i.e., through the early 1820s) he was alive (nothing recorded in the third group of columns, as there is for his deceased wife Maricke) and unmarried (no remarriage is recorded).

In other words, by 1815 Benjamin Buller had buried two sons, a daughter, and a wife; his other four daughters were married with, one assumes, families and homes of their own. Did Benjamin live on his own or with one of his daughters? We cannot say at this point. Neither do we know if Benjamin still owned and farmed the 3 Morgen of land listed on the 1789 census. Benjamin will reappear on the pages of history later on, but as of 1815 this is all that we can say about our possible ancestor. 

Happy Birthday, Traveling Man!

The standard birthday collage (here) has been put on the shelf this year; it will return in 2018, perhaps even with a new picture or two (perhaps). This year’s birthday theme is centered around all of the places that I can recall Dad living over the course of his eighty-four years, all located and measured out in the GoogleMap below.

The dominant color of this map is blue—the color of water. How appropriate for Carl Buller, since water has been a recurring motif throughout his life. 

On 11 December 1933, for example, Carl was born on the banks (sort of) of the West Fork of the Big Blue River; at least the trees lining the river were visible from the farmhouse. Later in life, first as a farmer and then as a business owner, irrigation water played a vital role in growing both crops and Henderson Irrigation. Some years later Carl flew over the ocean a number of times as he visited and then lived in Brazil (Recife and its surroundings), where he met and married Suely and they began a family together. When they finally moved back to the States, their first few homes were not near water (although I believe several of them had pools!), but in time they settled in Stow, Ohio, twenty-five miles south of Lake Erie, and now they live in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, roughly a mile from the shore of Lake Michigan.

What is more impressive than the water motif is the total miles that Dad has traveled throughout the course of his life. Not counting trips back and forth across the country and to other countries, only taking into account the distances between the various places he has lived, he has traversed 11,665 miles. To put that into perspective, it is roughly twice the distance Peter D and family journeyed from Molotschna colony to Henderson, Nebraska. I guess some things never change with Bullers.

At any rate, Happy Birthday, Traveling Dad! Wishing you many miles and many more years on your life-long journey!

Searching for Benjamin’s Father 4

The previous post explored—and confirmed beyond reasonable doubt—Glenn Penner’s hypothesis that two Benjamin Bullers listed in the GRANDMA database (60393 and 32139) are one and the same person. Glenn suggests further that this Benjamin was the father of our Benjamin 2, who was the father of David, father of Peter D, father of Peter P, father of Grandpa Chris. We will examine that hypothesis in due course, but first we need to learn all that we can about the Benjamin who was the subject of the prior post.

1. Benjamin’s Lineage

The simplest way to present Benjamin’s ancestry is via a chart that we have used in the past.

As noted many times, the original Przechovka Buller was George, who was married to Dina Thoms. Three sons of George and Dina are known to us: Hans, George, and Peter. Son Hans (on the left) also had three sons: Hans, George, and Heinrich. The latter is of primary interest to us, since Heinrich had a daughter Maricke and a son Benjamin. The number under Benjamin’s name in the chart above is 352 (his entry number in the Przechovka church book [hereafter PCB]), which matches the identity of the Benjamin discussed in the previous post (60393 and 32139).

In other words, Benjamin 352 was the great-grandson of George Buller and Dina Thoms. His lineage can be represented simply as follows: George > Hans > Heinrich > Benjamin. None of this surprises; the fact that Benjamin is recorded in the PCB means that he had to be descended from George and Dina. What is of real interest is Benjamin’s own family: his wife and children.

2. Benjamin’s Nuclear Family

As noted earlier, Benjamin Buller married Maricke Cornelsen (PCB 409). Together they had at least seven children: five daughters and two sons. I specify at least five daughters and two sons because we do not yet know if these were the only children born to Benjamin and Maricke. Given the possibility that this family may stand in our direct ancestral line, the members of it deserve a closer look.

The previous post reported that Benjamin and Maricke were wed in Deutsch Konopath on 30 June 1774; a closer look at the PCB reveals that the location was actually Klein Konopath (a misreading of Dt. for Kl.). Their first five children were born over the course of the next nine years.

Maricke, the oldest, was born on 22 August 1775 in Konopath (technically Kunpat in the PCB);  since her parents were wed in and her younger siblings born in Klein Konopath, one can assume that she was born there as well. She was obviously named after her mother. The date of her baptism is not recorded. According to her entry, she was married on 4 December 1796 to Peter Nachtigal (PCB 667) in Klein Konopath. (GM reads her husband’s entry as 9 December, but it looks like a 4 in the PCB, at least to my eyes.)

Hinrich (Heinrich) was born next, on 1 September 1777. He also was named after a family member, in this case his father Benjamin’s father. Heinrich was baptized sometime in 1795, around the age of eighteen. According to the GM entry for Heinrich, the words written on the right side of his entry indicate that he married a Lutheran named Maria. The extract below has the word Lutheran in the top line and Maria in the bottom line, so the GM is no doubt correct.

If you recall (see here), each PCB entry extends across two pages. A person’s lineage, date of birth, baptism, and first marriage are recorded on the left-hand pages; subsequent marriages, date of death, and length of life appear on right-hand pages. With Heinrich, we need to look at the right-hand page to learn important information about him.

Heinrich is PCB 368, and one can easily see a record in the death column: 18 May 1807, age twenty-nine years and eight months. The church book records no other information about Heinrich. Given his marriage to a Lutheran, perhaps he left the church, in which case any children born to that marriage were not entered in the church records.

Ancke, daughter two, was born 12 July 1779 and baptized sometime in 1795. She married Peter Becker (336) on 23 June 1811. According to the GM entry for Peter, they “probably settled in Wegtzin, Revinsk district, in 1820 (Fond 383 Opis 29 Dielo 1212, St. Petersburg Archives).” If that is correct, it would be an interesting lead, since Wegtzin (or Wysock) is the Volhynian location where Benjamin 2 and Helena and their family arrived in 1817. The fact that both Buller families ended up in the same village several years apart proves nothing, of course, but it is an intriguing, perhaps even suggestive coincidence.

David was the family’s second son, born on 10 December 1780. He was baptized 5 October 1800; his PCB entry does not record a marriage, but GM states that he married Anna Unrau 1 May 1808. They had only three children, since David died on 17 March 1813 at the age of thirty-two years and three months (see PCB 370 in the image immediately above). Anna remarried Martin David Cornelsen, and in 1820 they immigrated to Alexandwohl in Molotschna colony.

Trincke (aka Katharina) followed, born 4 January 1783. She was baptized in 1798, but no marriage is recorded for her. However, the 1835 Molotschna census indicates that (if we are correct to identify Trincke and Katharina, as seems reasonable) she was married to Johann Peter Ratzlaff, and they and her father Benjamin Buller lived at Alexanderwohl plot 16. Further, the passport records identify a Johann Ratzlaff and his wife Katharina of Przechovka on a visa issued 17 August 1820. (The visa gives her age as forty-five, which is eight years different from what we expect. Whether this points to an error on our part or the visa’s is uncertain.) Importantly, although Katharina and Johann ended up at the same village and plot as her father Benjamin, the visa does not list him along with them. In addition, no children are listed, merely Johann and Katharina (Rempel 2007, 173, 176).

Benjamin and Maricke’s first five children are listed in the Buller section; two additional ones appear later in the church book, since they were presumably added after the first wave of record keeping had been completed.

Efcke (PCB 1198) was born 14 October 1784 and baptized in 1798, the same year as Trincke. Efcke Buller and Peter Schmidt wed on 6 November 1808, and together they had three daughters. Based on the later location of their children, it appears that they relocated in Alexanderwohl with the rest of the church (early 1820s), but at this point we can say no more than that.

Elizabeth (PCB 1264), the last child of Benjamin and Maricke recorded in the church book, was born sometime in 1788. She died at the age of eighteen on 29 January 1807, less than four months before her older brother Heinrich passed away. It seems certain that she never married.

Now that we have all the known facts on the table, we are ready to discuss Benjamin Heinrich Buller and his family in greater detail in the following post. Was this Benjamin an ancestor of ours, the father of Benjamin who was the father of David? Glenn Penner thinks he was. We continue to explore the question, not knowing where the evidence will lead or what it will lead us to conclude.


Work Cited

Rempel. Peter. 2007. Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828. Edited by Alfred H. Redekopp and Richard D. Thiessen. Winnepeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Searching for Benjamin’s Father 3

So we begin in earnest our search for Benjamin’s father. To repeat and reiterate, the purpose of this series is to search for the father of Benjamin 1, who is the father of Benjamin 2, the father of David, the father of Peter D, and so on. Glenn Penner’s entire explanation can be found here. This post focuses on the first sentence of the first full paragraph, which is repeated below:

I believe that your ancestor Benjamin Buller (GRANDMA 402138) was the son of Benjamin who was both 60393 and 32139. I believe that not long after Benjamin 2 moved to Volhynia, his father Benjamin 1 (who would have been a widower of about 70 or more years) left for South Russia with his daughter Catharina and her husband Johann Ratzlaff (and the majority of the Przechowka congregation). Considering the rarity of the name Benjamin among the early Bullers I cannot think of any other possibility without inventing more Benjamin Bullers (and I have no documentation available that would justify that).

To be clear, when Glenn identifies “your ancestor Benjamin (GRANDMA 402138),” he is referring to Benjamin 2, father of David. Thus, Glenn is claiming that Benjamin 2 was the son of Benjamin 1, who is actually listed twice in the GRANDMA database with two different IDs: 60393 and 32139. 

This hypothesis thus has two parts to explore and check: Are the two Benjamins 60393 and 32139 the same individual? If so, is it possible that this Benjamin is our Benjamin 1? We begin with the first question, which requires us to examine the GM entries for the two Benjamins.

At first glance, these two would appear to be completely different individuals. The wife of the first is unknown, that of the second clearly known. The first Benjamin has only a single daughter, the second five daughters and two sons. In fact, the daughter of the first, Katharina, was born about the same time as the second Benjamin’s daughter Trincke, in 1783. Moreover, the first is known only from the 1835 Molotschna census, while the second is dutifully recorded in the Przechovka church book that we have consulted on a number of occasions. Still, first glances can be deceiving, and the hypothesis deserves a closer look.

Because we know that the second Benjamin, 32139, appears in the Przechovka church book as entry 352 (the P352 in the notes section), we can find out more about him from that primary source. The two screen shots below show the information recorded for Benjamin and the first five of his children.

The top image has number 352, Benjamin Buller, listed as the son of entries 343 (Hinrich Buller) and 308 (Ancke Beckers). That information matches the parents listed for GM 32139, so we know we are dealing with the same person within GM and the church book. 

We do not learn everything we would like about Benjamin 32139, since birth information is missing. However, we can see that he was baptized on 31 August 1772 and married on 30 June 1774—as accurately recorded by GM. He married number 409 in the church book, which turns out to be, as expected, Maricke Cornelsen. The site of their wedding was Deutsch Konopath, a village just to the west of the Przechovka church.

In the second image, the listing of the first five children Maricke, Hinrich, Ancke, David, and Trincke correspond exactly to the GM listing; because they were born later than 1783, the year of Trincke’s birth, children six and seven, Efcke and Elizabeth, appear later in the church book (numbers 1198 and 1264, respectively). Worth noting is that the baptismal information is provided for all five children except the first; however, marriages are recorded only for the first three.

How does this information compare to the GM data for Benjamin 60393? Most important to note is the different locations of the information sources for the two Benjamins. Everything we know about Benjamin 32139 originates in Poland (Prussia), from the Przechovka church book; all that we know about Benjamin 60393 derives from a Molotschna record, specifically the 1835 colony census. This raises the possibility that the two sets of records concern the same person and are distinguished merely by their provenance, where they originated. Not to be forgotten in all this is the fact that the Mennonite congregation at Przechovka (where Benjamin 32139 is attested) moved during the early 1820s to the Molotschna village of Alexanderwohol (where Benjamin 60393 is reported to have lived before his death). 

One datum seems to stand in the way of identifying these two Benjamin Bullers: the existence of two different daughters born at the same time. Benjamin 60393’s daughter Trincke was born 4 January 1783; Benjamin 32139’s daughter Katharina was born about 1783. Does this settle the question? In fact, it does—although perhaps not as one might think.

As is demonstrated in a number of Mennonite records, the names Trincke and Katharina were often used to refer to the same person, much as Chris and Cornelius both reference Grandpa in our own family. To state the matter directly, Trincke daughter  of Benjamin 32139 and Katharina daughter of 60393 are almost certainly the same person, which means that, not surprisingly, Glenn Penner is correct to suggest that GM Benjamins 60393 and 32139 are the same person. If the two daughter listings refer to the same person, then so do the two father listings.

This justifiable merging of records enables us to fill out the history of this Benjamin Buller. Whereas the Przechovka Benjamin vanishes into an unknown future, the Alexanderwohl Benjamin appears on the stage from an unknown beginning. By combining the two records, we now know the full story, where this single individual’s life began and where it ended. 

To be clear, we do not yet know whether this Benjamin is a direct ancestor of ours; to this point all we have established is that the two Benjamins of the GRANDMA database are, in fact, one and the same person whose life details merit further exploration, which we will do in the subsequent post in this series.